Straightforward strategies to Apply Ardha Chandrasana

“], “filter”: { “nextExceptions”: “img, decide, blockquote, div”, “nextContainsExceptions”: “img, decide, blockquote, a.btn, a.o-button”} }”>

Heading out the door? Study this textual content on the model new Outdoor+ app on the market now on iOS items for members!
>”,”determine”:”in-content-cta”,”type”:”hyperlink”}}”>Receive the app.

Ardha Chandrasana (Half Moon Pose) is a troublesome posture that may test your steadiness. You usher in energies from every the moon (calm, cooling) and the photo voltaic (fiery, intense), as you root down alongside together with your standing leg and stabilizing arm whereas lifting and growing your raised leg and reverse arm.

Apply Half Moon Pose on all sides to work on postural imbalances. Once you’ve bought a very good chest or hips (say, from sitting at a laptop all day), do some hip opening stretches sooner than shifting into this pose, as a method to further merely rotate your torso and lengthen your ribcage.

Within the occasion you lose your steadiness and fall in Half Moon Pose, merely refocus and reconnect alongside together with your breath. It’s the similar strategy in every day life: Everytime you get distracted, come once more to your breath and to the present second.

Half divider

Sanskrit

Ardha Chandrasana (are-dah chan-DRAHS-anna)

proper this second = half
chandra = glittering, shining, having the brilliancy or hue of sunshine (talked about of the gods); typically translated as “moon”

Half divider

Half Moon Pose fundamentals

Pose type: Standing Steadiness

Targets: Full Physique

Benefits: Half Moon Pose improves steadiness and counteracts the implications of sitting.

Totally different Half Moon perks:

  • Strengthens your core muscle tissues
  • In your standing thigh: strengthens your thighs and ankles. It moreover stretches the once more of your thigh (hamstrings) and your buttocks (glutes)
  • On the lifted thigh, it stretches your groin and entrance of your hip (hip flexors), collectively together with your psoas. It moreover strengthens your thighs (notably your outer thighs/abductors) and your buttocks (glutes).

Half divider

Straightforward strategies to do Half Moon Pose

  1. Start in Utthita Trikonasana (Extended Triangle) alongside together with your left foot forward.
  2. Ship your correct hand to your hip and swap your head to take a look on the floor.
  3. Bend your entrance leg and shift your weight into your entrance foot.
  4. Attain your entrance hand considerably forward and place it on the mat or a block immediately beneath your entrance shoulder. Press down through your fingers to common your self.
  5. Carry your once more leg until your thigh is parallel to the bottom. Slowly flip your chest to face the very best, twisting your torso and hips. Attain your prime hand to the ceiling.
  6. Each maintain your gaze on the bottom or slowly carry it to your prime hand. Maintain a slight bend in your standing leg so that you just don’t hyperextend your knee.
  7. Exit the pose the similar strategy you bought right here into it and return to Extended Triangle.

Half divider

Beginner concepts

Once you’ve bought drawback touching the bottom alongside together with your lower hand, assist your hand on a block. Start with the block at its highest peak and, in case your steadiness is common and comfortable, lower it down first to its middle peak, then lastly if potential to its lowest peak.

Uncover the pose

Half Moon Pose is usually sequenced someplace within the midst of a standing pose assortment, often after Triangle Pose.

For an added drawback and quad stretch, bend your prime leg and attain in your prime foot to return into Chapasana, or Sugar Cane Pose—a variation of Half Moon Pose that is further of a backend.

Be acutely aware!

  • Within the occasion you’re having trouble balancing, maintain your gaze straight ahead.
  • In case you’re side-bending an extreme quantity of to realize the bottom, place a block beneath you bottom hand.

Half divider

Half Moon Pose variations

{Photograph}: Andrew Clark; Garments: Calia

Half Moon Pose on a chair

To make the pose easier in your lower once more, try it alongside together with your hand or forearm on the seat of a chair. Carry your leg up as extreme as you might with out forcing. You could attain your prime hand straight to the ceiling or maintain it in your hip. Look down, straight ahead, or up.

{Photograph}: Andrew Clark

Half Moon Pose with the knee down

To focus on strengthening larger than steadiness, try the pose on the bottom with one knee down and the underside shin extending straight behind you need a kickstand.

{Photograph}: Andrew Clark; Garments: Calia

Half Moon Pose with a chair and a block

One different strategy to utilize a chair is to allow it to assist your lifted leg. Leisure your lifted leg on the once more of the chair, using a blanket for cushioning. Ship a bottom hand to a block immediately beneath your shoulder.

Half divider

What we love about this pose

“Half Moon is the pose that launched me out of “block snobbery,’ ” says Tamara Jeffries, Yoga Journal‘s senior editor. “I’ve to utilize a block for assistance on this pose. Dianne Bondy had some good modifications for this using the wall. Within the occasion you set your self in a nook, you might assist the extended/lifted leg, along with your once more physique. That strategy, I can actually really feel absolutely supported whereas I focus on my alignment.”

Half divider

Preparatory and counter poses

Put collectively for Ardha Chandrasana by stretching the hamstrings. Moreover, apply poses that drawback your steadiness. Furthermore, in several poses by which your palms are on the mat, akin to Uttanasana (Standing Forward Bend), apply pressing down alongside together with your fingers into the mat, as this movement will help with steadiness if you end up balancing.

Preparatory poses

Utthita Trikonasana (Extended Triangle Pose)

Vrksasana (Tree Pose)

Counter poses

Uttanasana (Standing Forward Bend)

Prasarita Padottanasana (In depth-Legged Standing Forward Bend)

Half divider

Anatomy

In Ardha Chandrasana, your physique weight is on one leg, with one hand extended and touching the bottom. The alternative leg is extended parallel to the bottom and acts as an vigorous counterbalance. Freely interpreted, the pose carves a full moon as a result of it hangs quietly inside the sky.

Your whole limbs need to keep within the similar plane on account of tipping your leg or larger arm backward might trigger you to return out of steadiness. If this happens, you might regain stability by bending your standing knee. For added stability, lower your lifted leg barely. Every of these actions lower your center of gravity and make it easier to steadiness. All by the pose, focus in your respiratory to maintain up steadiness.

Inside the drawings beneath, pink muscle tissues are stretching and blue muscle tissues are contracting. The shade of the color represents the strain of the stretch and the strain of contraction. Darker = stronger.

Straightforward strategies to Apply Ardha Chandrasana
Illustration: Chris Macivor

Carry your once more leg by using your hip abductors—the gluteus medius, gluteus maximusand tensor fascia lata. Activate the quadriceps to straighten the knee and carry the pelvis and trunk forward.

Laterally flex the trunk by partaking the oblique abdominalsthe deep once more muscle tissuesand the hip flexors. The straight thigh and sartorius muscle tissues cross the pelvis and hip, making them synergistic hip flexors. Work together the straight thigh by lifting your kneecap in the direction of your pelvis.

Half Moon Pose: Ardha Chandrasana
(Illustration: Chris Macivor)

Use the muscle tissues on the aspect of your standing leg to assist in balancing. The gluteus medius, minimusand tensor fascia lata flex the hip and stabilize the pelvis.

Contract the upper rhomboids to draw your shoulder blades in the direction of the midline of the once more, opening the chest and turning it barely upward. Attain in the direction of the bottom with the lower arm by activating the serrated anteriordrawing the scapula away from the spine.

Excerpted with permission from The Key Poses of Yoga and Anatomy for Vinyasa Transfer and Standing Poses by Ray Prolonged.

Put Half Moon Pose into apply

Suppose You Can’t Come Into Compass Pose? This 45-Minute Apply Will Get You There

10 Vitality-Boosting Poses to Banish Sluggishness

Invigorate Your Physique and Ideas with This Warming Sequence

Half divider

About our contributors

Coach and model Natasha Rizopoulos is a senior teacher at Down Beneath Yoga in Boston, the place she supplies classes and leads 200- and 300-hour teacher trainings. A faithful Ashtanga practitioner for just a few years, she turned equally as captivated by the precision of the Iyengar system. These two traditions inform her instructing and her dynamic, anatomy-based vinyasa system Align Your Transfer. For further information, go to natasharizopoulos.com.

Ray Prolonged is an orthopedic surgeon and the founding father of Bandha Yoga, a popular assortment of yoga anatomy books, and the Every day Bandha, which provides concepts and techniques for instructing and practising safe alignment. Ray graduated from the Faculty of Michigan Medical Faculty 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 totally different primary yoga masters, and teaches anatomy workshops at yoga studios throughout the nation.

Bài viết liên quan