Benefits
Tadasana teaches us everything about balancing the structure of the body while standing.  In Tadasana, we learn to befriend gravity.  And when the body is aligned, unity and peace are felt in every fibre of our being.

• improves posture, postural awareness and stamina for everyday living
• develops a sense of balance/symmetry
• strengthens thighs, knees and ankles
• tones the abdomen, the lower back and the buttocks
• relieves stiffness in shoulders
• may relieve sciatica
• reduces flat feet and helps build the arches of the feet
• makes us more grounded and confident
• awakens us to ourselves and heightens our perceptions of the most subtle physiological, mental and emotional      sensations
• is conducive to mental and emotional stability
• helps centering mind and body
• enables us to find freedom (physical and mental) in our yoga practice and out of the mat too
• enables us to find joy in our spirit
• develops acuity, sensitivity and awareness
• develops an intuitive and nurturing approach
• teaches us to work with the body as opposed to against it
• enables us to transcend the physical body

Cautions

• headache
• insomnia
• low blood pressure

Before we enter into Tadasana
Tadasana is at the same time one of the simplest and one of the most difficult postures of yoga.  The more yoga skills we develop, the more the postures reveal themselves to us.  Before being able to attempt any posture, one must first understand its basic intrinsic mechanics.  This is where the difficulty lies for many of us. 

Everyone benefits from doing Tadasana.  Complete beginners must take extreme care when following the various steps of a posture, so as to achieve the best possible posture at this moment in their life journey.  As we learn to integrate the various aspects of a posture, we find that the body becomes better aligned and that many of the steps of the pose are less conscious.  However, we should remain mindful and do the posture each time as if for the first time.

We confine ourselves to a gross physical level before moving on to more refined ones.  There exists such a great level of details concerning Tadasana that it can be very confusing.  Not only are there lots of instructions to follow but we can only really proceed on to the next one when the previous one has been fully integrated.  All the adjustments suggested are not meant as obstacles to be conquered one by one.  They are intended for us to feel and explore in a sensitive and intuitive way.  As beginners, none of us are expected to respond and incorporate every single step in one go.  As our practice becomes more subtle and our body more responsive, we are able to move on to the next level of refinement until the body becomes able to do all the adjustments simultaneously.  This is not just a mental exercise, we begin to work with the inner intelligence of the body, we work intuitively with the breath, listening attentively to the feedback of our body.  Our practice becomes more internalised as we awaken the consiousness of all the various cells of the tissues.  We suddenly find that there is an inner dialogue going on within ourselves, and that by observing, then working on and with the body as opposed to against it, the body begins to reveal itself to us.  There is less a sense of "doing" the pose and more a sense of "being" in the pose.  The pose is not done from without but from within.  We realize the potential harmful effects that forcing a movement on to the outer body can have on the inner body and we learn to work with both harmoniously.  With practice, we discover that body and mind become one and that our individual consciousness merges with the universal consciousness or Atman.  Once the practitioner becomes one with the essence of life, he/she can enter the ultimate state of Samadhi.

How to do the posture
"The body extends upwards, with the base as firm as a rock;  the mind is steady and attentive.  Tadasana teaches balance, centering and evenness and direction of extensions.  These principles apply to all the postures."--- B.K.S. Iyengar

Like with all the standing postures, we start with the foundation of the pose - our feet.  We are trying to get a feeling of the whole earth with our feet.  We try to come to the point where we cannot tell the soles of our feet from the surface of the earth because we have become one with it.

In Tadasana, we should always be aware of our skeletal alignment so the weight is borne mainly by our bones rather than our muscles.  It is very important to ensure that shoulders and hips are at the same height and that the head is not placing undue strain on the upper back.  Ideally, the aim in Tadasana is to bring the ankles, the knees, the hips, the shoulders and the ears in a perfect vertical alignment (plumb line alignment).  The idea is to work all sides of the body equally so as not to overwork/underwork certain parts.  We can do this by keeping our whole body picture in our mind's eye at all times.  As we get older, there is a tendency for the skin on the back of the body to stretch too much and for the skin on the front of the body to shrink.  Doing Tadasana correctly enables the skin to remain evenly stretched all over the body.

The following steps are by no means exhaustive.  They are only intended as a guide and should be approached in a sensitive way.  No two bodies are the same and it is up to each one of us to find out which instruction speaks to our body, noting the resistance felt in certain parts of the body, observing where the energetic pathways need to be opened, becoming aware of any dull areas in the body.