BOW POSE
Dhanurasana
(don-your-AHS-anna)
Dhanu = bow
Bend back into the shape of a bow to feel energetically locked, loaded, and ready to take aim.
Steps
- Lie on your stomach.
- Bend your legs and hold on to your ankles, bringing your knees hips-distance apart. Listen and experience the breath. Relax your eyes and the back of your neck as you rest your forehead on the ground. Feel the relaxation at the front of your thighs as you allow the bottom of your pelvis to lift minutely from the ground. Elongate your waist and lower back. Let your tailbone feel like it is pushing into the floor.
- First lift your legs slowly; then lift your head and chest. As your legs, head and chest lift, your arms will extend further as if they were the string of a bow.
- Lift your thighs strongly upward and into your hamstrings and arc your chest forward and upward, letting your head and neck follow that graceful line.
- Open your back body as much as your front body. If the lower back pinches, do not lift so high and try to stretch through the lumbar spine. If your knees hurt, make sure you are not pushing the bottom of your pelvis into the ground, and play with the position of your feet (Dorsi and plantar flexing).
Modifications and Props
If it isn’t possible for you to hold your ankles directly, wrap a strap around the fronts of your ankles and hold the free ends of the strap, keeping your arms fully extended.
Variations:
You can hold your ankles from the inside of the ankle to experience a different rotation of ones shoulder joint.
Benefits:
Stretches the entire front of the body, ankles, thighs and groins chest, and through the deep hip flexors (psoas); Strengthens the back muscles; Improves posture; Stimulates the organs of the abdomen and neck
Contraindications:
Untreated high or low blood pressure; Migraine; Insomnia; Serious lower-back or neck injury