Warrior II = Virabadrasana II = Side Warrior

Step your feet wide and parallel.  Turn your front foot out 90º.  Turn the back heel out just slightly.  On an exhale, bend the knee bringing it directly over the front ankle.  As you hold this pose, ask yourself this:  What muscles are working?

If I told you that all of your legs muscles and your lower belly should be firm, and your upper body should feel light and easy, is this true for you?  

Standing poses such as Virabadrasana II are intended to wake up the legs. Frequently, people in my classes are surprised to find they aren't using their leg muscles much at all.  And once those muscles wake up, the next surprise is that they can't hold the pose as long as they usually do.  Most surprisingly, even though the legs get tired while in the pose, is the feeling of energy flowing through the legs when the pose is over.  Effort in the pose leads to effortlessness afterwards.

The kinds of feedback given in this pose range from shaping the feet, to aligning the front knee, to getting the legs to work differently above and below the joints, to finding a way to create ease and openness in the chest and collar bones, to engaging the abdominals.  Much of this work is very hard to describe.  Verbal and written instructions often confuse the brain and get people even more stuck in their heads.  So we work with hands and blocks, using resistance to wake up the body and get out of the brain.  Touch and resistance are elemental in understanding the poses in Eischens Yoga (See "Don't Try This at Home" from May 2013).  

One day, I hope to have photos that can display this kind of feedback.  For now, it is the hands-on teaching in workshops and classes that demonstrate most clearly how to work in this pose.  
See you in class?