Dandasana (Staff Pose, the plank of Surya Namaskar)

Dandasana means staff pose, from danda, a stick or a staff, and the idea is a body held as straight and as firm as a staff. In our Surya Namaskar it is the fifth position: the straight arm plank, hands under shoulders, one line from heels to head.

You should know that the name is not settled across traditions, and it is worth saying so plainly rather than pretending otherwise. The Bihar School sequence has no plank at all and uses Parvatasana in this slot. The Sivananda tradition puts Phalakasana, the plank, here. Some Indian schools name it Dandasana, some Samtulanasana, some Phalakasana. In seated hatha yoga, meanwhile, Dandasana is something entirely different: sitting on the floor with the legs straight out in front, spine upright.

So when a teacher says Dandasana, look at what they are doing. In a sun salutation it means the plank. On the floor before a forward bend it means the seated staff pose. Both are named after the same straight stick, which is the logic that connects them.

The whole pose is one instruction: make a straight line and hold it while breathing. Almost nobody manages it first time, and the two failures are opposite.

The sag. The hips drop, the lower back arches, the belly hangs. This is the common one, and it happens because the trunk is not strong enough yet to hold the pelvis up, so the lumbar spine takes over. It is not merely inelegant, it compresses the very part of the back that people come to yoga to look after.

The tent. The hips ride high, the body makes an inverted V. This is the body avoiding the work, usually unconsciously. It feels fine because it is much easier.

The cure for both: get someone to look at you from the side, or set your phone against a wall and record ten seconds. Almost every student is surprised, because the sensation of a straight plank and the sensation of a sagging one are very similar from the inside, and completely different from outside. Ten seconds of video does what ten minutes of my explaining does not.

This is the position in the practice where wrists complain, and there are more people with irritable wrists in a class than anyone expects: typists, people who ride two wheelers, people with early arthritis in the thumb.

Four things that help, in order:

1. Spread the fingers wide and press down through the base of the index finger and the base of the thumb. Most of the load should be at the front of the hand, not in the heel of the palm.
2. Stack the wrist under the shoulder. Hands forward of the shoulders sharply increases the wrist angle.
3. Take the forearm version if there is any wrist history at all. The wrist is straight and takes nothing.
4. Use fists. Make loose fists and take the weight on the flat of the knuckles with the wrist in line with the forearm. This keeps you in the pose with no wrist extension at all.

What does not help is pushing through it. A wrist that hurts in a plank on Monday will hurt more on Wednesday, and wrist problems are slow.

In Surya Namaskar this position lasts one breath, and in most traditions it is held on the exhalation or with the breath held out. It is where most beginners run out of steam in round four, and it is where the round either stays controlled or falls apart.

What usually happens is this: the student steps back, the hips drop, the shoulders sink towards the ears, and they let themselves fall to the floor for the next position rather than lowering. Twelve rounds of that and the shoulders and the lower back are both unhappy.

What should happen: step back into a firm line, feel the whole body switch on for one breath, and then lower with control into Ashtanga Namaskara, knees first, then chest, then chin. That controlled lowering is the strength the sun salutation actually builds, and skipping it is why some people practise for years without getting stronger.

If you cannot hold one clean breath here, drop the knees for this position in every round. That is the correct practice, not a compromise.

A plank is one of the very few things in a yoga practice that can be measured, so measure it. Not to compete, but because a number tells you the truth about whether you are progressing, and prose does not.

A realistic eight week progression for an adult starting from nothing:

• Weeks one and two: wall plank, thirty seconds, three times, daily.
• Weeks three and four: knees down plank, twenty seconds, three times.
• Weeks five and six: knees down, forty seconds, or full plank for fifteen seconds, three times.
• Weeks seven and eight: full plank, thirty seconds, three times, with the line checked on video once a week.

A minute of clean full plank is a genuinely strong trunk for a non athlete, and there is very little reason to go beyond it. Longer holds mostly test patience and start to degrade the line. If you want more, make it harder rather than longer: lift one foot a few centimetres for five breaths, then the other.

Anyone rebuilding strength after some years away will find the same graded approach across the whole practice on the beginners over forty page.

One breath inside the sun salutation. Twenty to sixty seconds when practised on its own, repeated two or three times with a rest between.

Two rules I do not bend. First, the line comes before the clock: the moment the hips sag, the hold is over, whatever the timer says. Second, the breath keeps moving: if you are holding your breath to hold the pose, you are training a habit that will follow you into every difficult posture and into the rest of your day.

Anyone with raised blood pressure should keep the holds to twenty seconds and rest fully between them, because an isometric hold raises pressure for as long as it lasts. If in doubt, use the wall version, which gives you the alignment education and very little of the load.

This is a strength position, so the honest measure is how long the line holds rather than how long you stay.

Knees down is a complete version of this pose and is better than a sagging full one at every stage, including after ten years.

The plank position exists in the sun salutation as the moment between the standing half and the floor half, and its whole job is to hold a straight line for one breath.

The pose it leads into and out of is Adho Mukha Svanasana, and the two share a wrist problem: the weight collapses into the inner hand and the base of the thumb, and a week later the wrist complains. Spread the fingers, press the base of the index finger down as firmly as the heel of the hand, and drop the knees rather than let the hips sag.

A sagging plank is not a plank, it is a backbend with tired arms, and the lower back is what pays for it.

Around it: it is stepped into from Ashwa Sanchalanasana and lowered from into Ashtanga Namaskara, so it lasts one breath and is easy to skip badly. Knees down is a complete version. Warm the wrists with Marjariasana first, rest in Balasana when the arms have had enough, and finish in Savasana. It appears only inside Surya Namaskar, which itself sits inside the ten minute morning routine and the seven day beginner plan once the standing work is steady. The name is confusing: in most of the hatha literature Dandasana is a seated staff pose, and only in the salutation is it the plank.