“], “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 obtainable now on iOS devices for members!
>”,”title”:”in-content-cta”,”form”:”hyperlink”}}”>Get hold of the app.
Baddha Konasana (Sure Angle Pose) is a go-to pose for opening the hips and stretching the within thigh muscular tissues. This seemingly simple pose moreover strengthens your core and improves your posture.
Usually often called Cobbler’s Pose, this asana prompts the muscular tissues in your once more as you lengthen and stretch by way of your spine. A sturdy and regular core will be key to this posture: “When you sit on the bottom in Baddha Konasana, your core works to take care of you from rounding the once more and dropping the chest,” says yoga coach Annie Carpenter, creator of SmartFLOW Yoga.
Whereas Sure Angle Pose might appear simple, in case you retain in it for an extended time interval, your once more muscular tissues will in all probability tire, making it troublesome to take care of your chest upright, says Carpenter. Your hip, thigh, and hamstring muscular tissues may also actually really feel fatigued. If that happens, ease out of the pose. “Exploring your edges should not create ache,” she says. “It should allow you switch in direction of an amount of stretch or muscular effort that’s sustainable for you.”
Half divider
Sanskrit
Baddha Konasana (BAH-dah cone-AHS-ah-nah)
baddha = sure
there = angle
Half divider
Sure Angle Pose fundamentals
Pose form: Seated
Targets: Hips
Benefits: Sure Angle Pose improves postural and physique consciousness. Because of it stretches your inside thigh muscular tissues (adductors) and the doorway of your thighs (quadriceps), it’ll presumably allow you recuperate after working. It’s moreover a helpful pose for people who spend a variety of time sitting in chairs.
Totally different Sure Angle Pose perks:
- The actions in Sure Angle Pose are very like some standing postures that call as a way to open your hips. Coaching it improves your ability to hold poses paying homage to Virabhadrasana II (Warrior Pose II) and Utthita Trikonasana (Extended Triangle Pose).
- Coaching Sure Angle Pose helps you get comfortable with discovering and exploring your edge. Doing so improves your ability to stay conscious at your bodily limitations.
Half divider
The best solution to
- Begin in Staff Pose. Sit straight on excessive of your sitting bones, considerably than behind them.
- Bend your knees and allow them to fall open to the perimeters.
- Draw the soles of your ft collectively and use your palms to open them as in case you’ve gotten been opening the pages of a information.
- Press your shoulder blades in direction of your increased once more to raise by way of your sternum or chest. Clasp your ankles that can assist you uncover elevate alongside your torso.
- To exit the pose, gently launch your ft and can be found once more to Staff Pose.
Half divider
Beginner concepts
Don’t forget that everyone has pure limits. Your bone development and muscular development may cease your knees from ever opening all the best way through which to the bottom. That’s OK; Baddha Konasana will nonetheless allow you to stretch your inside thighs and assemble vitality in your once more.
Uncover the pose
If in case you’ve gotten tight hips, place rolled-up blankets beneath your thighs and reduce legs. This will launch stress in your hips and reduce stress in your knees.
For individuals who want help activating your hips and inside thighs, place a block between your ft and press your ft firmly into the block, turning the soles to face upward. Then place your palms on the bottom behind you and press into them to elongate your spine.
If you find yourself leaning once more or rounding your once more, try using a strap. Carry it behind your once more, all through your sacrum, over the tops of your thighs, and cinch it beneath your ft. The strap should be tight adequate to actually really feel secure nevertheless not so restrictive that you just simply actually really feel compression in your hip joints. The strap will preserve your lower once more and preserve your ft nearer to your pelvis.
Remember!
- If in case you’ve gotten a hip or knee injury, perform this pose with folded blankets beneath your outer thighs to assist them.
- Don’t press the balls of your ft collectively on this pose—the stress might trigger stress in your lower physique. Instead, press your heels collectively whereas drawing the balls of your ft away from one another. Maintain the stress between your heels as you loosen up your thighs and launch the heads of the thigh bones in direction of the bottom; your knees will adjust to.
Half divider
Coach concepts
These cues will help defend your school college students from injury and help them have the right experience of the pose:
- In case your once more is tight or your posture needs consideration, sit alongside along with your once more in direction of a wall for assist.
- In no way stress your knees down. Instead, launch the heads of the thigh bones in direction of the bottom; your knees will adjust to. (Use blocks, folded blankets or pillows to assist your knees.)
- In case your knees are tender, switch your ft extra away from the groin.
- For individuals who uncover it tough to take a seat down upright, place a variety of folded blankets beneath your hips to raise your pelvis and spine.
Half divider
Variations
Sure Angle Pose with a slight lean forward
Lean forward regardless of amount you could—even a few millimeters—by flexing at your hips whereas preserving an prolonged spine. This may intensify the sensations in your inside thighs. To help cease slouching, you could sit on the sting of a folded blanket or bolster, which may tilt your pelvis forward in order that you would come into the pose with a flat once more.
Sure Angle Pose with props
In case your knees keep faraway from the underside, place blocks beneath your knees for assist or slide blankets that you just simply’ve folded or rolled beneath your shins and thighs.
Sure Angle Pose in a chair
Sit in a chair and draw the bottoms of your ft collectively, allowing your knees to fall out to the perimeters.
Half divider
Why we love this pose
“How does a yogi sit in meditation comfortably? At first thought, I’d say with kind attentiveness and psychological fortitude,” says Jenny Clise, a frequent YJ contributor. “Nonetheless, there is a literal issue to this as properly—by preparing the bodily physique to experience ease, as properly. I actually like Sure Angle Pose for this objective.” She web sites Cobbler’s Pose as one which improves the pliability in your lower once more, hips, thighs, groins and ankles—dissolving among the many stress it is attainable you may experience from sitting for extended durations. “There are many strategies this pose serves me, nevertheless in its rawest form, the movement of this pose helps put collectively me for a further comfortable observe of inaction. My meditation strikes from solely noticing areas of discomfort whereas seated, to mindfulness of various senses, concepts, and emotions,” says Clise.
Half divider
Preparatory and counter poses
Baddha Konasana is an intense hip stretch for lots of school college students, nevertheless there’s no must stress it. Ease your method into it by first working in direction of totally different poses that focus in your hip flexors. It helps to return into increasingly more tough hip stretches.
Preparatory poses
Counter poses
Half divider
Anatomy
Baddha Konasana is a symmetrical pose. Throughout the pose, your hips flex and change outward and your knees bend and switch away from each other in a mirrored development. As a result of this, the pose provides a chance as a way to discover and stability asymmetries, notably in your hips and pelvis, based mostly totally on the place you’re feeling tightness, explains Ray Prolonged, MD, a board-certified orthopedic surgeon and yoga coach.
When you focus on explicit elements of the pose, you convey consciousness to the nuances of each movement. Begin with abduction. Tight adductors can restrict your ability to draw your knees apart. When you begin, over time, to create dimension in these muscular tissues, it could free your hips to open your knees.
Throughout the drawings beneath, pink muscular tissues are stretching and blue muscular tissues are contracting. The shade of the color represents the stress of the stretch and the stress of contraction. Darker = stronger.

Bend your knees by contracting the hamstrings. Collaborating the hamstrings moreover attracts the tailbone down and beneath because of the hamstrings originate on the ischial tuberosities on the once more of the pelvis. This tucking of the tailbone turns the hips outward and synergizes exterior rotation.
The sartorius muscle runs from the doorway of the pelvis to the within knee. It flexes, abducts, and externally rotates your hip. When contracted, the sartorius seems like a twine on the doorway of the pelvis. This muscle moreover crosses the knee and thus aids the hamstrings in flexing and stabilizing this joint inside the pose.
Engage the psoas muscle to flex and externally rotate the hips. A cue for this movement is to place the palms on the knees and attempt to entice the knees in direction of the chest whereas resisting with the palms.
Squeeze the perimeters of the buttocks to abduct and externally rotate your hips, drawing your knees in direction of the bottom. The gluteus maximus externally rotates the hips whereas the gluteus medius and tensor fascia lata abduct them. Activating these muscular tissues stimulates reciprocal inhibition of the adductor group on the within thighs, allowing them to loosen up into the stretch.
Phrase that when your hips are completely kidnapped, the contractile stress of the tensor fascia lata and gluteus medius is way a lot much less because of these muscular tissues are shortened almost completely. At this stage, it turns into important to work together your hamstrings and use your palms to draw your ft nearer to the pelvis and your knees nearer to the bottom. The gluteus medius, tensor fascia lataand gluteus maximus (the fibers that join the iliotibial band) act collectively to provide that extra inch of abduction inside the pose.

Sit straight and tall by activating the spine erector and sq. loins muscular tissues. Collaborating these muscular tissues transmits a stress to your palms, which in flip preserve your ft. When you be part of your palms and ft, you create delicate depth inside the pose. Flex your elbows by contracting the biceps and brachialis muscular tissues. This attracts the heels nearer to the pelvis and can improve the stretch of the adductor group in your inside thighs.
One methodology to take the pose deeper is to bend your elbows to draw your physique forward. One different variation is to remain further upright as you arch your once more and draw your shoulder blades collectively to raise your torso upward, growing your chest. Use your arms and hamstrings to draw your ft nearer to the pelvis. Phrase that arching your lower once more moreover tilts the pelvis forward, pulling on the hamstrings at their attachment on the sitting bones and drawing the lower legs nearer to the thighs.
Excerpted with permission from The Key Poses of Yoga and Anatomy for Hip Openers and Forward Bends by Ray Prolonged
Put Sure Angle Pose into observe
5 Calming Yoga Poses You Can Do In 5 Minutes
7 Strategies to Use Blocks to Open Your Hips (And Your Coronary coronary heart)
5 Yoga Poses to Safely Stretch Tight Groin Muscle teams
Half divider
About our contributors
Coach and model Natasha Rizopoulos is a senior coach at Down Beneath Yoga in Boston, the place she offers classes and leads 200- and 300-hour coach trainings. A loyal Ashtanga practitioner for a couple of 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 Flow into. For further 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 On daily basis Bandha, which provides concepts and methods for instructing and dealing in direction of protected alignment. Ray graduated from the Faculty of Michigan Medical School 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 fundamental yoga masters, and teaches anatomy workshops at yoga studios throughout the nation.