Adjust to Prasarita Padottanasana

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Assemble Prasarita Padottanasana (Broad-Legged Standing Ahead Bend) on a fragile basis. Take note of your ft as having 4 corners: your inside and outer heels, giant toe mounds, and pinkie toe mounds. Press into all 4 corners whereas elevate your inside and outer arches. This elevate will journey upward, firming the complete measurement of your legs and grounding your ft into the earth. If in case you should have tight hamstrings or hips, bend your knees barely to ease the stretch as a method to keep up your low as soon as extra extended and fold ahead out of your hip joints.

On account of your head is launched decrease than your coronary coronary coronary heart, Broad-Legged Standing Ahead Bend pose can function an alternative choice to Sirsasana (Headstand) for these with neck components, says yoga coach Richard Rosen, “Many advantages of inversions—notably bathing the poor outdated drained ideas with freshly oxygenated blood to perk it up—accrue to Prasarita with none weight-bearing stress on the neck.”

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Sanskrit

Prasarita Padottanasana (pra-sa-REE-tah pah-doh-tahn-AHS-anna)

prasarita = stretched out, expanded, unfold
on = foot
ut = intense
tan = to stretch or lengthen

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Broad-Legged Standing Ahead Bend fundamentals

Pose type: Ahead bend

Targets: Decrease physique

Advantages: This pose is sweet for stretching your hamstrings, calves, and hips; strengthening your ft, ankles, and legs; and organising consciousness of defending your decrease as soon as extra.

Fully totally different Broad-Legged Standing Ahead Bend perks:

• Counteracts the outcomes of extended sitting
• Calms and relaxes the concepts to alleviate anxious ideas and emotions
• Could ease indicators of rigidity issues and premenstrual syndrome (PMS)

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1. Start going by way of the extended side of your mat in Mountain Pose (Tadasana).
2. Step your ft 3 to 4 ft aside, alongside alongside together with your fingers in your hips.
3. Elevate tall by your whole torso and fold slowly over your legs. Bend out of your hip joints as an alternative of rounding your decrease as soon as extra. In case your as soon as extra begins to spherical, cease folding ahead.
4. Place your fingers flat on the underside, shoulder-width aside; start to stretch your torso ahead.
5. Fold deeper, bringing your head within the course of the underside. Anchor your ft, firm your leg muscular tissues and activate your inside thigh muscular tissues. Lengthen your total backbone out of your sitting bones to the crown of your head.
6. After quite a few breaths, floor into your ft, straighten your arms, and lengthen your backbone ahead.
7. Inhale as you slowly elevate as lots as standing. Step your ft collectively, come into Mountain Pose on the doorway of the mat, and pause.

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Newbie ideas

• The broader your stance, the simpler it’s to bend ahead. Nonetheless when it’s too broad, it’s doable you’ll truly actually really feel unstable and begin to tip ahead.
• Should you truly actually really feel tightness in your low as soon as extra or the as soon as extra of your legs, bend your knees as heaps as wanted to hunt out consolation.
  In case your fingers don’t attain the mat, you presumably can carry them to blocks.

Uncover the pose

There are 4 various arm positions you presumably can take contained within the pose, classically distinguished by letters of the alphabet:

1. Prasaritta Padotanasana A
   Place your fingers on the mat beneath your shoulders alongside alongside together with your fingertips consistent with your toes. Bend your elbows and draw them within the course of each other as should you had been in Chaturanga Dandasana. Let your neck sit again and the perfect of your head launch within the course of the mat.
2. Prasaritta Padotanasana B
   Defend your fingers in your hips. Draw your elbows up.
3. Prasaritta Padotanasana C
   Interlace your fingers behind your as soon as extra in a bind and elevate your knuckles within the course of the ceiling or attain your arms overhead and elevate your knuckles within the course of the wall in entrance of you.
4. Prasaritta Padotanasana D
   Use the primary two fingers on every hand to wrap spherical your giant toes as you’ll for Padangusthasana (Big Toe Pose). Bend your elbows and draw them within the course of each other as should you had been in Chaturanga Dandasana. Let your neck sit again and the perfect of your head launch within the course of the mat.

Keep in mind!

• Exit this pose slowly, notably for many who’re weak to dizziness or have low blood stress. Make certain that to take quite a few breaths to return up slowly out of the pose.
• Breathe deeply on this pose and concentrate on folding ahead with integrity and presence. Consciousness and a spotlight in even simple-seeming poses is a key to reaping the advantages of the apply of yoga. Ship that focus to your knees; if they have a tendency to hyperextend, apply with a slight bend in your knees to maintain up your hamstrings engaged.
• Keep away from or modify the pose to be additional gentle when you should have a hamstring or groin tear

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Instructor ideas

These cues will assist defend your college school college students from damage and assist them have the correct expertise of the pose:

• By no means power your self correct proper right into a ahead bend; rounding your torso ahead out of your stomach to get your fingers on the underside is counterproductive.
• Uncover principally in all probability essentially the most acceptable stance for you, which is able to rely upon the scale of your legs; shorter of us obtained’t have as broad a stance as taller of us might have.

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Variations

Broad-Legged Ahead Bend with arm variations

You will take quite a few totally fully totally different hand positions in Broad-Legged Ahead Bend. Attain out and grasp your toes or the ground edges of your ft. Intertwine your fingers or clasp your fingers behind your as soon as extra and elevate them away out of your physique to create additional of a shoulder opener.

Broad-Legged Ahead Bend with fingers on blocks

In case your hamstrings are tight, place blocks in entrance of you to effectively elevate the underside to you. Defend your legs vigorous. Do not forget that yoga is about making skillful alternate options that mean you can preserve the alignment of the pose. It’s not about coming into into the deepest doable iteration of the stretch.

Broad-Legged Ahead Bend on a chair

Should you uncover it troublesome to fold ahead alongside alongside together with your fingers to the mat or blocks, leisure your fingers or forearms on the seat of a chair. You will elevate the peak of the assistance to you by along with folded blankets or towels beneath your forearms.

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Why we love this pose

“I’ve frequently relished the sensation of slowly (and I counsel slowly) releasing down into this deep ahead fold to let gravity do its subject,” says Erin Skarda, Yoga Journal digital director. “The next stretch by your legs, notably your hamstrings and calves—and your adductors and groin should you shift from side-to-side—feels oh-so-sweet. Prasarita is taken under consideration one amongst my go-to poses between Zoom conferences. I can breathe correct proper right here, fingers to reverse elbows, and really truly actually really feel the world opening in my physique and concepts. It’s the proper reset before slowly (slowly!) rising to kind out the remainder of my to-do tips.”

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Preparatory and counter poses

Prep with hamstring openers, equal to Uttanasana (Standing Ahead Bend). Use this pose to open your shoulders and coronary coronary coronary heart to organize for any deep coronary coronary coronary heart openers or arm balances.

Preparatory poses

Uttanasana (Standing Ahead Bend)

Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward-Dealing with Canine)

Counter poses

Tadasana (Mountain Pose)

Utkatasana (Chair Pose)

Garudasana (Eagle Pose)

Baddha Konasana (Certain Angle Pose)

Balasana (Toddler’s Pose)

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Anatomy

Prasarita Padottanasana is a ahead fold that could be an inversion, explains Ray Extended, MD, a board-certified orthopedic surgeon and yoga coach, because of it locations the top beneath the middle. The first objective of the stretch is the hamstrings and gastrocnemius and soleus superior extending into the erector spinae and quadratus lumborum muscular tissues of the as soon as extra.

If you flex ahead, you draw the ischial tuberosities (the distinctive of the hamstrings) upwards. Contract the quadriceps to assist your hamstrings launch. Squeeze the abdominals to activate the rectus abdominus. Contracting these muscular tissues creates reciprocal inhibition of the gluteus maximus, quadratus lumborum, and erector spinae muscular tissues, permitting them to sit down again into the stretch.

Contained in the drawings beneath, pink muscular tissues are stretching and blue muscular tissues are contracting. The shade of the colour represents the power of the stretch and the power of contraction. Darker = stronger.

This pose stretches the complete as soon as extra physique, together with the hamstringsthe gastrocnemius and soleus superior, an unimaginable chief, gluteus maximus, sq. loinsand backbone erector muscular tissues. Elevate the arches of your ft by activating the tibialis anterior and posterior. Stability inversion of the ankles with a slight eversion power by urgent the balls of your ft into the mat. This work together the peroneus longus and brevis muscular tissues on the surface of the decrease legs to stabilize your ankles.

In Prasarita Padottanasana D (as contained in the illustration above), press the palms into the mat and rotate them externally. This prompts the infraspinatus and teres minor muscular tissues of the rotator cuff. Draw your shoulders away out of your ears utilizing the decrease third of the trapezius. Phrase how these two actions open your chest and deepen the flexion of your trunk.

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

Put Broad-Legged Standing Ahead Bend into apply

Able to put this ahead bend into apply? Listed beneath are just a few flows to goal:

10 Grounding Poses to Stability Your Vata Dosha This Fall

A Calming Yoga Sequence to Assist You Gradual Down

6 Yoga Poses for Of us Who Sit All Day

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