(Photo: Sarah Ezrin) Utthita Parsvakonasana (Extended Side Angle) This little engagement loop encourages deeper external rotation. Lengthen your front inner thigh toward your knee and your outer knee back toward your hip. Inhale your arms wide like a “T” and, on an exhalation, bend your front knee to come into Warrior 2. Angle your back foot and hip slightly inward to make space for your lower back. Turn your right leg out from your hip, externally rotating your thigh so your right foot points toward the front of the mat. Step your feet apart about 3-4 feet and align your front heel with your back heel. How to: From Tadasana, turn to face the left long side of the mat. Also, both poses are more accessible than Pigeon and allow you to have an opportunity to observe how powerful it can feel to hold the poses. They are both excellent at warming up the inner thigh muscles and strengthening that same side’s outer hip, both of which are key elements to external rotation work. (Photo: Sarah Ezrin) Virabhadrasana II (Warrior 2 Pose)ĭuring classes in which you focus on external rotation, the classic shapes of Warrior 2 Pose and Extended Side Angle are pretty much musts. Pause in Tadasana to reset before repeating on your left side. Bring your hands back to your hips and slowly lower your right leg. Your gaze can be on the floor, straight ahead, or upward. Once your pelvis is fairly steady and even, reach your arms overhead. Now bring your right hip forward slightly, as the hip of the lifted leg tends to roll back. Level it from side to side to keep it from tipping toward the bent knee side. Bring your hands on your hips and observe your pelvis. Some of us will have our foot at our left ankle, others on the calf, still others all the way up near the groin. Use your hand to place your right foot as far up your left leg as it can safely go. Come to Tadasana (Mountain Pose), bend your right knee, and open your inner thigh away from your midline. After a few breaths, walk your hands to the rear of your mat and slowly come up to standing. Feel free to stand alongside a wall for help with balance. How to: From Sukhasana, come forward to Tabletop, curl your toes under, and lift your hips back to Down Dog. To explore our true range of rotation, we need to keep our pelvis as stable as possible. As a result, we compensate by shifting our entire pelvis rather than just the hip joint and thigh. If the inner thigh of our lifted leg is tight, our movement will be limited in poses that ask us to externally rotate the hip, as we do in Tree Pose. This is how we get into unhelpful habits that become risk factors for overuse injuries. Our bodies tend to compensate for lack of flexibility by moving where we are most mobile and resisting where we are tightest. Tree Pose allows us to observe the relationship between the hip joint and the pelvis. (Photo: Sarah Ezrin) Vrksasana (Tree Pose) Switch the cross of your legs and repeat on your left side. Unless you’re using your hands for support, extend your arms forward alongside your ears. If your body allows you, rest your forehead on the floor, a block, or even your fists. You can keep your back straight or, if you prefer, you can allow it to round. On an inhale, reach both arms up to the sky and on an exhale, bend forward over your legs. If your knees are lifting and higher than your hips, you may need to sit on more height, like a bolster or block, and add blankets or a block beneath your back thigh as well. Cross your right shin in front of your left shin. All that said, once you add a forward bend and find a comfortable position in this variation, you’ll understand why this pose is sometimes called Sweet Pose. Consider using a blanket under your ankles for cushioning. I’ve always found the English translation of this pose to be rather ironic because there’s actually nothing easy about it! Sukhasana requires a lot of attention to the ankle and knee joints, and if you have sensitivity in those areas, it can be downright uncomfortable. The breath lengths are simply suggestions. Go-to yoga sequence for coming into Pigeon Pose The main anatomical actions we emphasize are external rotation of one hip at a time (turning the leg outward in the socket) while keeping the pelvis stable. You can prop it up to make it more accessible or add in some more complex moves to make it more challenging. I find that King Pigeon is an appropriate posture for many different levels of students. The posture is an intense hip opener, as we all know, but it’s also a deep forward bend that invites us to indulge that subdued mood and turn inward. You know those days where everyone in your yoga class seems to be low energy? Those are the days that I lean into that quietness and teach my “go-to” sequence leading up to One-Legged King Pigeon Pose. Heading out the door? Read this article on the new Outside+ app available now on iOS devices for members!
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