Parsva Balasana: Chicken Canine Pose

Chances are high Parsva Balasana (Chicken Canine Pose) doesn’t have a 2,000-year historical past within the yoga custom. Extra probably, the idea of a fowl canine—image of one in all their favourite pastimes—might have come from the British who colonized India, as did so a lot of yoga’s extra gymnastic poses.

This doesn’t diminish its worth, nonetheless. Parsva Balasana confers many advantages. Training Chicken Canine Pose:

• strengthens and stabilizes the core.
• strengthens the low again.
• challenges, and due to this fact will increase, your potential to stability.
• might promote stability between the proper and left lobes of your mind by way of the contralateral relationships between the legs and arms.

As a core stabilizer, Chicken Canine Pose is less complicated in your again than crunches or sit-ups. The important thing to participating your core in Chicken Canine Pose is to recollect to make use of your hyoid bone. A small, u-shaped bone on the prime of your throat, the hyoid bone is greatest recognized for its affect on swallowing. Nonetheless, this small bone—the one bone within the physique circuitously related to a different bone—can be key in figuring out our posture.

When the hyoid bone is drawn in on the prime of the throat, the entire digestive system and core muscle groups tone again to offer frontal help to your backbone. When the hyoid bone pushes ahead, because it does if you throw your head again, these constructions push into your entrance physique. Do this experiment:

1. Lie in your stomach on a yoga mat.
2. Carry up into Sphinx Pose, so that you just’re supported by your forearms.
3. Tilt your head again so far as it should go, and pay attention to how your stomach rests in your mat.
4. Now raise your head to an upright place, so that you just look straight forward.
5. Draw the hyoid bone again on the prime of your throat and really feel what occurs in your stomach.
6. Shuttle between the 2 head positions to really feel the distinction in your core.

I talk about intimately the significance of hyoid bone positioning in an article about Chaturanga Dandasana. It’s crucial to know the connection between your head place and core stability in just about each yoga asana. However In poses akin to Bhujangasana (Cobra Pose), Urdva Mukha Svanasana (Upward Dealing with Canine Pose), Chaturanga Dandasana and Chicken Canine Pose, it’s particularly essential since your core is particularly topic to the pull of gravity and the load can put stress in your backbone. Drawing your hyoid bone again causes your core to tone again into your backbone, stabilizing your core and defending your backbone.

1. Come to your palms and knees on a nonskid yoga mat. Chances are you’ll wish to place a yoga blanket underneath your knees for additional padding.
2. Prolong your proper leg straight again, straightening your knee. There’s no must attempt to raise the leg above your pelvis. This could truly trigger stress in your low again. Let your leg be parallel to the ground.
3. Prolong your left arm ahead, straightening your elbow. Once more, there’s no must hyperextend your shoulder joint by lifting your hand greater than your torso.
4. Floor firmly by way of your proper palm and left knee, shin and foot, rooting them into your mat.
5. Concurrently prolong the proper leg backward and left arm ahead, conserving the again of your neck lengthy and drawing your hyoid bone again into the throat.
6. Keep for five to 10 deep breaths, persevering with to floor the proper palm and left knee, shin and foot as you prolong the left arm and proper leg.
7. Return to all fours. Relaxation right here in the event you like, feeling the results of the pose. You may also relaxation in Balasana (Baby’s Pose) in the event you want.
8. Apply Chicken Canine Pose on the opposite facet.

Chicken Canine Pose is acceptable for all practitioners, from starting to skilled. Add it into your apply to strengthen and stabilize your low again and core.

About Charlotte Bell

Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and commenced instructing in 1986. Charlotte is the writer of Aware Yoga, Aware Life: A Information for On a regular basis Apply and Yoga for Meditators, each revealed by Rodmell Press. Her third ebook is titled Hip-Wholesome Asana: The Yoga Practitioner’s Information to Defending the Hips and Avoiding SI Joint Ache (Shambhala Publications). She writes a month-to-month column for CATALYST Journal and serves as editor for Yoga U On-line. Charlotte is a founding board member for GreenTREE Yoga, a non-profit that brings yoga to underserved populations. A lifelong musician, Charlotte performs oboe and English horn within the Salt Lake Symphony and folks sextet Crimson Rock Rondo, whose DVD gained two Emmy awards in 2010.