Eka Pada Dhanurasana & PT Corner

Like the seasons, our moods, energy levels, and bodies change.  We can find consistency through daily yoga practice and in cold February weather, practice back bends to cultivate warmth, life-force, and joy.

Evolution Yoga focuses on Eka Pada Dhanurasana (Single Foot/Leg Bow Pose) this month. Eka Pada Dhanurasana pose strengthens the core and spine, opens the hips, chest, and shoulders,  and invites heat, energy, and joy.

Evolution P.T. Corner:

Figure 1

Figure 2

Here’s some advice from our Physical Therapist, Janet Carsadden about this pose:

Our pose of the month Eka Pada Dhanurasana is both a chest opener and stretches the front of your hip and thigh.

Tightness in the front of the hip is a common issue with many yogis. Classes are often taught with far more  forward bending poses, that stretch the back of the leg, than back ward bending, that stretches the front of the hip and leg.  We westerners also spend so much of our day sitting that the front of the hip is constantly bent.  The result is tight hip flexors.

Too much tightness can cause strain to our back. When your psoas and iliacus muscles are short they draw your low back and pelvis forward into a sway back, while your hip stays bent.

I often see students in a lunge pose, or lunge while grasping the foot, where the front of the thigh is being stretched, but the front of the hip is not being lengthening, due to incorrect technique (see figure 1).

A simple solution is to draw in your abdomen to reduce the arch in the low back and push the back hip forward (see figure 2).  You should now feel a strong stretch in both the front of the hip and the thigh. This is a great preparatory stretch for our pose of the month.

Try playing with this pose and see if you can feel both parts of the stretch. Then try the same technique of drawing the belly in and pushing the hip forward in Eka Pada Dhanurasana

Shanti,
Janet