Urdhva Hastasana (Upward Salute)

Urdhva Hastasana is Tadasana with the arms overhead. Urdhva means upward and hasta means hand, so the name says precisely what happens: the hands go up. In the Surya Namaskar tradition taught across India the same position is usually called Hasta Uttanasana, the raised arms pose, and you will hear both names in the same hall without anybody minding.

It is the second of the twelve positions of Surya Namaskar and the eleventh as well, once on the way out and once on the way back. Practised alone it takes fifteen seconds. Practised inside the sequence it is the position that sets up the whole round, because if the spine lengthens here the forward fold that follows starts from a long spine rather than a collapsed one.

It is also the pose people think requires nothing. Watch a room do it and you will see six different postures: shoulders up, ribs out, head thrown back, arms drifting forward of the ears. It requires a good deal.

This is the whole instruction, and it is the one I repeat most.

When a beginner is told to raise the arms and look up, the body takes the shortest route: it hinges at the lower back. The belly pushes forward, the ribs flare, the head drops back, and the student reports a pinch in the lumbar spine. Nothing about that is a stretch. It is a compression.

1. Ground. Weight even on both feet, tailbone dropping.
2. Lengthen. Ribs in, sides of the waist getting longer, as though the space between each rib and the hip bone is being opened.
3. Curve, if there is room. Only now let the upper back arch, the chest open and the gaze lift.

Most days, for most people, step three is very small. That is correct. A centimetre of upper back curve on a long spine is worth more than a dramatic bend from a short one, and it is the difference between a pose that helps a stiff back and one that irritates it. If back pain is your reason for practising, the same principle runs through everything on the yoga for back pain page.

A large proportion of adults cannot bring the arms straight overhead beside the ears without the lower back arching to make up the difference. This is not a flexibility failing to be ashamed of. It is what a decade of sitting does to the shoulders and the upper back.

Three honest options, in order of preference:

• Take the hands wider. The wider the arms, the more room in the shoulder joint. Nothing is lost.
• Bend the elbows a little. A soft goalpost shape overhead still opens the chest and still lifts the ribs.
• Stop at shoulder height. If overhead means the ribs must flare, then overhead is not available today. Come to shoulder height, keep the spine long, and do that for a month.

What you should not do is force the arms back into line by arching the lower back. That is how a person acquires a sore lumbar spine from a pose that is supposed to open the chest. Anyone coming back to movement after some years away will find the whole approach set out on the beginners over forty page.

In one round of Surya Namaskar you pass through this position twice. Both times it is an inhalation, and both times the movement of the arms is supposed to be caused by the breath rather than accompanied by it.

Coming out of the first standing position, the inhale begins and the arms rise on it. If the arms have finished moving and the inhale is still going, you moved too fast. If the inhale finished first, you moved too slowly. Matching the two is most of what people mean when they talk about a flowing practice, and it is learned here rather than anywhere clever.

On the way back, at position eleven, this is where light headedness turns up. You have come from a forward fold, the head has been below the heart, and now you are standing and lifting the arms. Come up slowly, keep the eyes open, and do not add the backward curve on the last round if you feel at all swimmy.

Its counter movement in the sequence is Uttanasana, the forward fold, which arrives on the very next breath.

This is the pose I give to working students who tell me they have no time, and it is the one they actually do.

Sitting at your desk, feet flat, push the chair back a little. Inhale and sweep the arms out and up. Feel the ribs lift off the pelvis. Draw the shoulders down. Stay for three breaths, then lower the arms slowly on an exhale. Repeat twice. It takes half a minute, needs no mat, no change of clothes and no explanation to your colleagues.

Done three times in a working day it reverses, briefly, the shape a chair presses you into: rounded upper back, closed chest, shortened front of the shoulders. It does not undo eight hours of sitting. It does interrupt it, which over months turns out to matter. The desk yoga sequence puts it together with four other movements that can be done in the same clothes.

Inside Surya Namaskar: one inhalation, twice per half round. That is all.

On its own: three to five breaths, repeated three times, is a complete practice for the shoulders and takes under two minutes. Anyone with high blood pressure should keep each hold to two breaths and lower the arms between repetitions rather than staying up.

A four week progression that works:

• Week one: arms to shoulder height, three breaths, three times a day.
• Week two: arms overhead at whatever width keeps the ribs in, three breaths.
• Week three: add the belt between the hands, five breaths.
• Week four: add the small upper back curve and the side bend variation.

Once the shoulders move freely overhead, the pose stops being a practice in itself and becomes a doorway, which is what it is in the sequence.

Practised on its own this is a repeated movement rather than a held pose, so the useful number is repetitions joined to the breath.

The arms go as high as they go with the ribs staying down. For a good number of adults that is well short of vertical, and nothing is lost by it.

Standing with the arms overhead is the second position of the sun salutation and the tenth, but it has a life outside that sequence and it is worth knowing where.

It is the first movement in the ten minute morning routine, done twice with the breath before anything else, because it is the quickest way to find out whether the shoulders are going to co operate today. It appears on the opening day of the seven day beginner plan for the same reason, paired with the standing pose it grows out of.

Anyone with a shoulder that catches overhead should take the arms only as high as they go without the ribs flaring, which is usually a good deal lower than the ceiling and is not a failure. The rule is the one that governs the whole standing family: the arms go where the ribs stay down.

Where it sits in a practice is simple: it comes second, after Tadasana and before anything that asks the spine to bend. It is the second and the eleventh position of Surya Namaskar, and in the desk sequence it is the seated version with the arms going only as far as the ceiling of the office allows. If the shoulders catch, warm them with Marjariasana first, and read yoga for neck and shoulder pain before you decide that lifting the arms overhead every day is a good idea. Rest in Balasana and finish in Savasana. If nobody has ever watched you do it, a class will change the pose in one correction.