Vrikshasan                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   (Tree pose)
Nature has the greatest power of healing. Sitting at a place surrounded by trees and the chirping of birds can automatically reduce stress, anxiety, and tension. Nature can cure depression and prevent you from various life-threatening diseases. While discussing nature the first thing that comes to our mind is trees and flowers. Flowers look beautiful and mesmerizing while trees are strong, calm, patient, and rooted in such a manner that they bear all the worst weather conditions. They always remain calm whether it is hot, cold, or rainy. The tree signifies calmness. nature though has the greatest power of healing but sometimes it becomes very difficult and expensive to visit such a place that relaxes your mind, body, and soul. What could be done in such a case? You can search for various alternatives for this. The most common and popular and effective answer is yoga. Yoga has the power of nature. It can relax and heal your mind and body. Hatha yoga even has a pose that has the benefits and name of nature. The pose is called tree pose or Vrikshasan.
Vrikshasan is a Sanskrit word that includes two different words. Vrikshasan consist of
                                  Vriksha means tree
                                  Asana means pose.
Hence, the pose is called a tree pose. The name was given based on the posture that it makes. This pose makes a posture of a tree but on one leg.
Practicing this pose will calm your Mind, Body, and soul. Vrikshasan is a standing pose. This pose is very beneficial for beginners and It can be practiced by any age group. Practicing vrikshasan is beneficial in calming your body, improving balance, and aids in neuromuscular coordination. This pose helps to deepen the thorax. Thorax is the middle part of the body between your neck and waist. This pose can be practiced for 5 minutes to the maximum you can hold on.
Benefits:
It is believed that if you know all about the asan you are practicing the benefits that you will get will be enhanced. So, it is advised to know all the benefits of the posture you are practicing to get most of the benefits out of it. let’s further get into the benefits of vrikshasan. Vrikshasan though is an easy pose but includes many physical and spiritual benefits. It helps in improving the balance of your body. It also tones the body muscles and massages your internal organs. practicing vrikasan will increase flexibility and thus improve movability in your body. It was found during research that practicing vrikshasan results in improving the posture and also strengthens your back and shoulders.

• Improve balance: vrikshasan is a primarily balancing pose. It aids in improving both physical and spiritual balance. it will improve the physical balance which will be beneficial for practicing different yogas. The spiritual balance helps an individual to control their emotions of anger, stress, anxiety, and depression.
• Tones muscles: This pose will tone your muscles and the toned muscles thus helping in reducing the excess weight of your thighs, calves, and hamstring. It makes your legs stronger and used to better endurance.
• Improve flexibility: Practicing this pose will enhance flexibility. It improves flexibility in your thigs, arms, shoulder, legs, and butts. It stretches your body and enhances flexibility in your body.
• Strengthen pelvic region and hips: Practicing this pose will help an individual in strengthening the pelvic region and hips. This pose will open up your hips and increase the flexibility in that region. The posture is weight-bearing which means it lays the weight on one part of the body and thus strengthens the pelvic region and hips.  It also gives your strong glutes and is good for uterus and ovarian health.
• Build focus and concentration: vrikshasan creates a sense of balance within the body. It also focuses on mental wellbeing and improves your mental health, builds focus and concentration, and lesser prone to meandering. It helps stabilize the nervous system and make it functional for optimization.
• Improve posture: Practicing this pose will improve posture. This posture requires standing for a longer period, spine straight, legs fully stretched and straight. It helps to build posture most organically. It strengthens your legs, shoulder, and arms and improves your posture.
• Reduces sciatica:  Practicing this pose will reduce sciatica. Sciatica is a condition of back pain that starts from the sciatica nerve in the lower body and reached the legs. It causes severe pain and discomfort in the whole area. This pose enhances the blood flow in the nerves and reduces the chances of sciatica. It can alleviate the symptoms and heal the pain to a great extent.
•  Flat feet: Practicing this pose will help in the problem of flat feet. It stretches the legs, calf, feet, ankle, and spine. The stretch hence results in curing the problem of flat feet.
• Strengthen the inner ear, eyes, and shoulders: Practicing this pose will enhance the inner ear, eyes, and shoulder. This pose gives massage to your inner ear, eyes, and shoulder. And helps in strengthening them.

Technique:
It is very important to learn the technique of any given pose. The correct technique and posture will enhance the benefits and also is very important to avoid injury. So, an individual needs to follow the technique strictly.
Step 1: Stand straight with your legs, back, and hands completely straight.
Step 2: Bend your knees and place your feet on the inner thighs of the right leg. Hold on to the pose and balance your legs.
Step 3: Raise your hands and join them as we do in tadasana. Your inner arms should touch your ears and your palms should touch one another as you are doing namaskar.
Step 4: Keep the back, neck, arms, face straight and gaze in the front direction.
Step 5: Hold on to the pose for at least 15 minutes. Do not force your breathing as this may cause injury.
Step 6: Relax and get back to the initial position. To enhance the benefits, complete this pose with tadasana as a follow-up pose.
Precautions:
Practicing a posture with proper precautions will reduce the chances of injury and avoid mishappenings. Taking precautions is as important as following a proper technique. An individual is responsible for their injury while practicing a posture. He or she must not ignore the proper instructions given by their yoga instructor as even a minor instruction if not followed can result in severe injury.

• Do not practice this pose if you are suffering from insomnia.
• People suffering from high blood pressure should not raise their hands. Hence, it is suggested not to practice this posture if you are suffering from high blood pressure.
• Do not practice this pose if you are suffering from severe headaches or migraine.
• Do not practice this pose if you are suffering from severe injury in your legs, shoulders, arms, spine, and thighs.
• This pose must be avoided in case of an acute knee injury.
• This pose can’t be practiced in case of a hip injury.
•  Do not practice this pose in case of arthritis.

Props and modification:
Props in yoga are very important for a beginner. If you have just started practicing yoga and you are not enough flexible, stable, or suffering from pain in a certain part of your body. In that case, you can use props like a wall, yoga bricks, yoga bands, or even a blanket. These props will help you to follow a particular posture without getting injured and in the most beneficial way.
Modification is a part of yoga posture. A posture can have various modified versions and an individual can increase or decrease the level of difficulty according to their strength.

• Support yourself along a wall to balance the posture.
• If you find it difficult to place the feet along the inner thighs keep your thighs as above as possible to avoid any kind of injury.
• If your find posture easy. You can also hold dumbells in your hands.