Expand your groin areas to broaden the front of your pelvis and feel both your knees rotate away from each other.   These two feelings are part of the same action.   Also deepen the fold of your front groin as you try to move your rear groin away from your front one.

Move your tailbone downward away from your lower spine and forward toward the front of the room.   Draw your sternum toward your head.   Extend outward through the crown of your head.

First try just looking upward at the triceps of your upper arm, then raise your chin and look up at your fingertips and feel the openness and the change this action creates in your whole body and mind.   Lift your ear to touch your arm.

Actions of the hands, arms, and shoulders

Rotate the inner crease of your lower elbow to face the direction your lower foot is pointing and press your forearm and lower leg together.

There is a strong relationship between the front knee and the lower arm in this pose.   Rotate your triceps toward your thigh and press your thigh against your triceps and then observe what that does for your shoulder.   Also make the knee-into-the-triceps action stronger than the triceps-into-the-knee action to assist in moving your front knee back.

Draw both of your shoulders back.   Especially draw your upper shoulder strongly back.   Rotate your upper collarbone back toward your shoulder blade on that side.   Let this action help to lift the center of your chest.

Lengthen the line from your rear outer ankle all the way up your upper side and out through your fingertips.   Have your upper arm essentially in line with your torso, rather than letting it slope downward too much   Keep focusing on this line and charging the lengthening action here.   The lengthening energy divides at about your upper hip.   Below your hip, your lengthening energy is moving down through your rear leg.   Above your hip, your energy is moving up through your arm.

As you twist your torso back, you twist your upper forearm forward to keep your hand facing the floor, however both of your upper arms remain in external rotation.   Extend more through the thumb of your upper hand and pull your upper triceps muscle into your armpit as you go on lengthening outward through that arm.   As in most asanas, though your limb muscles are engaging your bones and drawing inward toward your torso, maintain the feeling of extending outward through your bones.

 

Pay particular attention to your front knee when you are coming out of the pose so that it does not turn inward when you are not concentrating on it so much.

Since one of the difficult actions of this pose is to keep your front knee pressing back toward the wall behind you, occasionally first to take your lower hand to the floor or a block inside your front foot and press that arm into your front knee to help you get the pushing-back action of your front knee.   Once you have achieved the feeling of that action, then take your lower hand back to the outside of your front foot for the classical pose.

You can also occasionally try doing the pose with your front foot up on a block to help you feel your front hip more.   Stretch the heel of your front hand to the floor as much as possible in this variation.