Most postures in yoga derive their names from animals or objects whose likenesses they resemble, but Eagle is called such because of the laser-like focus it requires on behalf of the teen yogi practicing it.

If you’re a teenager new to yoga, be aware that performing eagle is truly a whole body endeavor, the result of the combined efforts of muscle strength, balance, breath and focus. As with all standing balance postures, it’s best to approach eagle, or garudasana as its called in Sanskrit, in a calm and methodical way, with a mind that’s quiet and not attached to results.

Tips for Eagle Position:

1. Come into utkatasana pose: big toes touching, knees glued together, inner thighs weaving together, hips sinking towards the floor, arms reaching toward the sky and shoulder blades melting down the back.
2. Root down through all corners of the left foot, try lifting the toes and feeling activation through the ball of the foot, the heel, and the outer edge.
3. Draw naval in and up and lift the right foot to hover. Take a couple breaths to get steady balancing on one foot.
4. When you feel stable, draw the right knee higher and wrap the right leg around the left, stacking right thigh over the left and perhaps hooking the right ankle around the left calf. Don’t get hung up on hooking the floating ankle around the standing leg; find stability and familiarity with eagle before working on this element of the posture.
5. Wrap the right arm under the left arm and weave the arms around each other so that the palms press together.
6. Elbows should be at shoulder height. You should feel an expansion across the shoulder blades. Feeling a stretch is good but if the stretch feels too intense, back off and take an arm variation, drawing the elbows to shoulder height and gluing elbows, forearms and palms together. Unraveling the arms releases some tension from the shoulders and is more accessible for some people with shoulder injuries or general tightness in the shoulder region.
7. Maintain alignment, keeping shoulders stacked directly above hips. Spine is long and straight as if you were standing against a wall. If you find your upper body hunching forward, back off a bit, unraveling arms or legs.
8. Knees should also be in line with the hips and shoulders: facing forward. Sometimes by hooking the floating ankle around the standing leg, the knees can be taken out of alignment and start to sneak over to one side. If you cannot maintain a forward-facing position of the knees, unhook the floating ankle from the standing leg.
9. Squeeze the inner thighs together; this will create tension that will help stabilize you. Set your gaze - drishti - on something in front of you that’s not moving.
10. Settling in: you may need to wiggle around a bit to come into the full expression of the posture; often by the time you’ve finished doing all the wrapping, peeling and pressing needed to come into eagle, you might have taken some of the bend out of the standing knee. Bend back into it, sinking the hips down like you’re in utkatasana.  The legs should feel like they’re working.

Fly with the Eagle

Eagle can be a very challenging pose; there’s a lot going on with it, physically and mentally. Just like with the tree pose, a person’s ability to maintain balance in eagle can vary wildly from day to day. So don’t beat yourself up if you can’t seem to hold yourself up in eagle, and know that it’s ok to have strong balance days and weak balance days. Sometimes when you’re having a less-than-spectacular balance day, it might work for you to keep plugging away at it while on other days it might work better for you to let it rest and resolve to pick up where you left off another day. One approach isn’t better than the other. Keep in mind that in yoga, there are no failures, only results. 

Meghan Meade is a twenty-something health coach, yoga teacher, high school track coach, freelance writer and an aspiring personal trainer who documents her experiences with transitioning into the health and wellness world on her blog, www.strugglemuffins.com.

This article has been reviewed by Dr. Tara Cousineau, Ph.D.