Come to Tadasana in the middle of your mat, turn towards the long edge of your mat. Step one foot towards the back of your mat, the outside edge of the foot remains parallel to the short edge of your mat, step the other foot forward, toes turn out towards the front of the mat, your foot is parallel to the long edge of the mat. Ensure your front heel is aligned with the arch of your back foot.

Activate the four corners of both feet as you ground down into your mat, lightly activate your arches, back thigh switches on.

Engage your Mula and Uddiyana bandhas, lengthen up through the spine. On your next inhalation, raise your arms up to shoulder height, reach both arms out away from your body, turn your neck to look out over the middle finger of your front hand, ensure your shoulders remain stacked over the hips.

As you exhale bend through the front knee up to a 90 degree angle, ensure you keep your knee from going past your ankle, you may need to lengthen your stance if your knee goes past the 90 degree angle. Keep the thigh switched on to ensure the knee does not collapse inward, actively draw the knee towards the outside edge of your foot.

Focus on your breath here and feel the strength building in your body. I invite you to take a deep breath in and raise your shoulders as you do so, then an exhalation through the mouth, let out a big sigh, shoulders release down as you do so, do this two more times.

Remember to adjust the length of your stance as needed. If this is too intense for the shoulders you can always bring your hands to Anjali Mudra (Hearts centre) or down to your hips. Ensure you always go to the depth of bend that is available to you, if 90 degrees is available to you yet, don’t push it, instead focus on ensuring the knee remains aligned with the centre of the ankle and ease into the depth of the pose with your breath.

To make this pose a little more spicy you might like to try to draw the edges of your mat towards each other or push them away, ensure you continue to ground down as you aren’t aiming to actually move your mat.

Virabhadrasana 2 strengthens the legs, core and shoulders and lengthens through the hip flexors and hamstrings.