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In case you’re among the many many tens of hundreds of thousands of people glued to a desk for hours upon hours every day, then you definitely definately need Dhanurasana (Bow Pose) in your life. This heart-opening backbend stretches your hip flexors and hamstrings (aka the muscle tissues that are shortened and tightened, respectively, from all that sitting) whereas strengthening your once more. It helps improve your posture by opening your chest and shoulders, counteracting the time you spend hunched over your computer.
Likelihood is you may find yourself holding your breath in Bow Pose—resist this urge. Rising by way of the doorway, once more, and sides of your physique stretches the diaphragm to have the ability to take deeper breaths. Respiration additional deeply can lower your coronary coronary heart cost, regulate blood pressure, and allow you relax. Strengthening your diaphragm by way of your yoga comply with will allow you get out of your head, preserve grounded in your physique, and quiet your ideas—on and off the mat.
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Sanskrit
Dhanurasana (don-your-AHS-anna)
water = bow
asana = pose
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Bow Pose Fundamentals
Pose Variety: Backbend
Targets: Core
Benefits: Like all backbends, Bow Pose is energizing and stimulates the adrenal glands, which can enable you to fight fatigue. It moreover will improve blood transfer to your digestive system. It’d help to assemble confidence and empowerment. Bow Pose moreover improves posture and counteracts the results of sitting for extended durations of time, equal to slouching and kyphosis (irregular curvature of the spine). It’d help relieve once more ache. It stretches your abdomen, chest, shoulders, entrance of your hips (hip flexors), and the doorway of your thighs (quadriceps). Bow Pose strengthens your once more muscle tissues, the once more of your thighs, and buttocks (glutes).
Totally different bow pose perks:
- Stimulates stomach organs and relieves constipation.
- Relieves light backaches, fatigue, anxiousness, and menstrual discomfort.
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do Bow Pose
- Begin in your abdomen collectively along with your legs hip-distance apart and your palms on the mat beside your lower ribs.
- Lengthen your ft straight once more and press down with the tops of all 10 toenails to activate your quadriceps.
- Rotate your inside thighs in direction of the ceiling (to broaden your lower once more) and company your outer ankles into your midline (to cease your ft from turning inward).
- Protect your arms on the mat as you elevate your head and chest a few inches off the mat and keep a slight tuck of your chin. Roll your shoulders once more and up.
- Bend your knees and attain once more collectively along with your arms to clasp the pores and skin of your ankles. (Ensure that to realize once more with every arms on the an identical time.) This hand place locations your shoulders in internal rotation, so roll your shoulders once more and up as soon as extra.
- Press your thighs into the mat.
- Protect your ft flexed and your outer ankles from bowing out. Press the bottoms of your ft up in direction of the ceiling to energise your legs.
- Protect your thighs on the mat as you push your shins in direction of the wall in once more of you as you elevate and open your chest. Roll your shoulders once more as soon as extra to bolster the outside rotation.
- Carry your thighs off the mat. Begin collectively along with your inside thighs.
- Sit back your glutes.
- Proceed to press your shins once more and away out of your arms as you attain your sternum forward and up, balancing in your navel.
- Carry your gaze barely so the curve of your neck is a continuation of the curve of your increased once more.
- Keep for 5–10 breaths. To ease out of the pose, bend your knees and reduce your legs to the bottom. Then launch your grip.
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Beginner concepts
- Usually newbies uncover it robust to boost their thighs away from the bottom. Give your legs an assist by lying collectively along with your thighs supported on a folded or rolled-up blanket.
- Likelihood is you may uncover your knees have to splay out to the sides. Protect them hip-distance apart.
- In case you uncover it robust to stability in Bow Pose, try it once you lie on one side in your mat. This allows you to comply with the type of the pose sooner than you moreover need to sustain your stability.
- Uncover within the occasion you tend to hold your breath on this pose. That solely makes it harder. Protect your breath sluggish and common.
- In case you experience any pinching, compression, or ache in your low once more, slowly lower until you are feeling cozy or come out of the pose. Start slowly and take heed to your physique as you progress.
Remember
Avoid or modify this pose if in case you may have extreme or low blood pressure, endure from migraines or a hernia, or have any factors collectively along with your low once more or neck.
Avoid this pose in case you’re pregnant.
Deepen the pose
- Grip your ankles additional firmly after which bend your elbows and try and straighten your legs. It will improve the stretch in your entrance physique and intensifies the bend of your once more physique.
- Carry your thighs, calves, and inside ft to the contact. (Do not do this if in case you may have low once more factors.)
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Coach tip
Usually newbies uncover it robust to boost their thighs away from the bottom. Faculty college students can present their legs a bit upward improve by lying with their thighs supported on a rolled-up blanket.
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Variations
Bow Pose with a strap
Whether or not it’s troublesome to realize your ankles, place a strap spherical your ankles to extend your attain. You could clasp the strap behind your once more, collectively along with your arms extended straight behind you as within the occasion you had been reaching in your ankles, or it’s possible you’ll attain above and keep the strap from overhead.(In case you don’t have a strap, it’s possible you’ll as a substitute use a belt, towel, or sweatshirt.)
Half Bow Pose
Carry one leg at a time and use one hand to realize once more and seize each the an identical or reverse leg, counting on which is additional cozy for you. Use the other arm to prop your self up in your forearm proper right into a slight backbend. You could loop a strap spherical your foot to extend your attain. (In case you don’t have a strap, it’s possible you’ll as a substitute use a belt, towel, or sweatshirt.)
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Why we love this pose
“I began to deepen my comply with of Dhanurasana after I received right here to know it interprets to ‘Bow’ pose. I am a Sagittarius rising, and I uncover Dhanurasana changing into for me, since Sagittarius is the archer. Whereas working in direction of the pose, I take into consideration myself as a bow and my breath as an arrow, slicing by way of stagnant areas inside my complete being. It opens my thighs, pelvic space, stomach, and coronary coronary heart areas, which is required for me as an ex-football participant. I recently was invited to deepen my understanding of the philosophical roots of yoga. In that course of, I’ve opened to this asana way more. I have been working in direction of Dhanurasana whereas meditating on the eradicating of what in Jainism is called ‘pudgala druvya,’ a type of cloth substance that will keep us in samsara (cycle of lack of life and rebirth).” —Cameron Allen, YJ astrology columnist
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Preparatory and counter poses
Sooner than attempting this intense pose, ship your physique into progressively troublesome backbends along with poses that stretch the doorway of your hips and legs.
Preparatory poses
Bhujangasana (Cobra Pose)
Salabhasana (Locust Pose)
Urdhva Mukha Svanasana (Upward-Coping with Canine Pose)
Setu Bandha Sarvangasana (Bridge Pose)
Virasana (Hero Pose)
Supta Virasana (Reclining Hero Pose)
Counter poses
Balasana (Baby’s Pose)
Pavanamuktasana (Wind-Relieving Pose, whereby you lie in your once more collectively along with your knees drawn into your chest)
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Anatomy
In Dhanurasana, the numerous elements of your physique—arms, wrists, elbows, and shoulders on the upper physique and ft, ankles, knees, and hips on the lower physique—work collectively to concurrently stretch your whole entrance side and strengthen your once more.
To proceed with the bow analogy, everytime you attain in your ankles collectively along with your arms, the string tighten the bow, which stretches as a result of it resists the movement, explains Ray Prolonged, MD, a board-certified orthopedic surgeon and yoga instructor.
Throughout the drawings below, pink muscle tissues are stretching and blue muscle tissues are contracting. The shade of the color represents the facility of the stretch and the facility of contraction. Darker = stronger.

To ship your ankles inside attain of your arms, it is important to first work together the gluteus maximus to extend the hips after which contract the hamstrings and bend your knees. The posterior deltoids and triceps contract as you lengthen your elbows and straighten your arms so your arms can grip your ankles.
As you dorsiflex your ankles, you work together the tibial anterior muscle tissues. Contract the peroneus longus and brevis muscle tissues alongside the pores and skin of your lower legs to point out your ankles barely outward to help create a lock for the arms to additional firmly grip the ankles.
The rhomboids (between your shoulder blades and spine) draw your shoulder blades in direction of one another and open your chest. The lower trapezius attracts your shoulders away out of your neck. Collectively, the actions of the rhomboids, posterior deltoidsand triceps proceed to boost your legs and deepen the stretch.

Quite a lot of muscle tissues work collectively to arch your once more. The spine erector (working the dimensions of your spine) and the sq. loins (throughout the small of your once more) work together to extend the once more. When this happens, your spine curves additional, loosening the string of the bow (the arms grasping the ankles). To re-tighten the string of the bow whereas sustaining the extension of the spine, activate the quadriceps to extend the knees.

Bow brings an intense stretch to your complete entrance of your physique, collectively along with your rectus abdominis and deep hip flexors (psoas). For those who activate the rectus abdominisyou create an “stomach airbag” influence by compressing the stomach organs in opposition to the spine and, by way of reciprocal inhibition, this relaxes the arching of your lumbar spine.
Excerpted and tailor-made with permission from The Key Poses of Yoga and by Ray Prolonged
Put Bow Pose into comply with
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About our contributors
Coach and model Natasha Rizopoulos is a senior teacher at Down Beneath Yoga in Boston, the place she presents classes and leads 200- and 300-hour teacher trainings. A loyal Ashtanga practitioner for a number of years, she grew to turn into equally as captivated by the precision of the Iyengar system. These two traditions inform her educating and her dynamic, anatomy-based vinyasa system Align Your Transfer. For additional information, go to natasharizopoulos.com.
Ray Prolonged is an orthopedic surgeon and the founding father of Bandha Yoga, a most well-liked assortment of yoga anatomy books, and the Daily Bandha, which provides concepts and techniques for educating and dealing in direction of protected alignment. Ray graduated from the Faculty of Michigan Medical College and pursued post-graduate teaching at Cornell Faculty, McGill Faculty, the Faculty of Montreal, and the Florida Orthopedic Institute. He has studied hatha yoga for over 20 years, teaching extensively with B.Okay.S. Iyengar and completely different primary yoga masters, and teaches anatomy workshops at yoga studios throughout the nation.