02/10/2026
Utkatasana (Chair Pose/Fierce Pose)
This asana builds heat, strength, and flexibility. Starting in Tadasana (Mountain Pose), with feet hips distance apart or together, knees over ankles, inhale arms up, and on the exhale bend your knees and lower your hips as if sitting down in a chair. Keep low belly lifted and soften shoulders apart (widening shoulders may help reduce tension). Biceps by ears, palms facing each other. Gaze forward to protect the neck. Shift weight back to heels (you should be able to see your toes when you look down). Maintain a long, straight spine. Bring arms forward if necessary to avoid arching back. Lengthen on the inhale, and sink deeper in your chair on the exhale.
Avoid or modify if you have any shoulder, hip, back, knee or ankle injury, have low blood pressure, or are in the third trimester of pregnancy or newly postnatal.
This empowering pose calls on your inner fierceness, determination, and willpower to do hard things! Yoga teaches us to cultivate compassionate awareness within so we can move through the world with greater strength, balance, clarity, and love. Proactive compassion toward self and others (Ahimsa, non-violence) is the first Yama in Pantanjali’s Yoga Sutras, a universal vow and ethical foundation for yogic practice.
Bad Bunny’s Superbowl performance was a powerful example of ahimsa. It celebrated the culture, history, and struggle of Puerto Rico, while highlighting our unity as one nation, and interconnectedness with other countries in the Americas. It proudly uplifted the power of love, community, and faith in oneself. Healthy democracy needs active criticism, and this is a time when it is both extremely dangerous, and absolutely necessary, for everyone to exercise that right. Bad Bunny reminded how beautiful resistance can be when it is a celebration of love.
“The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”
-Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio (Bad Bunny)