One very enjoyable approach to standing postures is to make the entire series about your feet.  Your mind will slip and you will find your awareness somewhere else but keep coming back to your feet.  Really spread your toes and spread them with energy.

In the West many of us are collapsed through the arches of our feet and this is then mirrored all the way up.  The pelvic floor being intimately connected to our feet as well as our knees, hips and shoulders.  If you open your feet strongly you will eventually feel all four of these areas responding.

In the following series - set B - some balance is required.  Some balance is always required of us of course but these postures challenge our habitual patterns and demand that we pull up with different muscles.  Keep your mind on your feet and go as far as you can.  The last posture counting from the top downward - phoenix rising  (photograph 9) - is exactly how it looks. You come into it directly from the posture before - side knee bend and bound (photograph 8).  The bound leg is raised and extended and what is required for this to happen are vital, intelligent feet - both.  The foot you are standing on is opening the body from ground up and the foot in the air is dynamic and powerfully releasing.

My relationship to standings are that they are a challenge every day.  Not a huge challenge but a square the shoulders, relax my abdomen, focus and commit undertaking.  Then - once I have begun - I am laughing.  I make it all about the feet - because it is - and I focus as fully as I can on the breath.  I try to breathe slowly now all the time and I let the end of the exhale be a rest point.  

I hope this inspires...