This pose is one of the fundamental postures in any yoga class!! It's a very simple Asana, and it looks like it's easy enough to do, however there is a lot going on in this pose behind the scenes! To fully get into the Asana, we want to straighten our spine and legs, while lifting the hips up to the sky, sucking the belly in, and bringing the heels down to the ground. This can be very difficult to achieve if you have tight hamstrings, hips, and back muscles!
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When first starting this pose it is perfectly ok to lift the heels and bend the knees to straighten and lengthen the spine! As you can see this Asana took me a year and 4 months to "master" and there are still the days when I'm feeling stiff and my knees bend or my heels lift off the mat because; no one is perfect, and a yoga practice is just that: a practice! Some days are deep and we get fully into all the Asanas and find that inner peace inside us, and other days we drag ourselves on the mat and get too focused on being frustrated that we can't get into the Asana we could do just fine yesterday.
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I'm here to tell you that's ok friends! Yoga is not always the easiest thing to do, even if it looks like it should be really easy! We tend to beat ourselves up for not being able to get into the pose or struggling, however that is all apart of the journey of yoga! Our practice, flexibility, strength, and state of mind are never the same on a day to day basis, that's why we have to do our practice daily so we can work on it! We have to learn how to accept where we are at, and let go of ego telling us we should be doing better. The goal is not about achieving that perfect lines or Asana, yoga is much more about what's going on inside the mind, in the inner body, then what is going on in the outer appearance. It is much better to modify your Asana, accepting wherever you are, however deeply you can enter the Asana, focusing on linking the breath with your movement, and bringing your attention to the inner body, because after all that is where the inner peace that we all so desperately crave lives! Once we accept where we are in our yoga practice we can then take that feeling of acceptance, and apply it to our every day lives to accept who we are as a person!