In the event you’re one of many 25% of Individuals who don’t get the beneficial quantity of bodily exercise every week, you is likely to be all-too-familiar with a standard aspect impact of spending slightly an excessive amount of time sitting: cranky hips, decrease again ache, and the overall feeling like your muscular tissues have tightened up into a giant ball of stress.
The excellent news? Yoga poses, particularly pigeon pose—also referred to as eka pada rajakapotasana in Sanskrit—can assist by stretching the muscular tissues in your decrease again and hips, serving to increase their mobility and making them really feel extra refreshed than ever.
For all the things it’s good to find out about pigeon pose—together with which muscular tissues it hits, the perks of including it to your routine, and the best way to repair frequent type errors—carry on studying.
Which muscular tissues does pigeon pose stretch?
Based on bodily therapist Kim Grundy, PT, DPT, pigeon pose stretches muscular tissues in your decrease physique, together with the next:
- Hip flexors: Positioned on the entrance of your hips, your hip flexors—which embody the iliacus, psoas main, rectus femoris, and sartorius—are answerable for shifting your legs and knees up towards your physique. Say, as an illustration, for those who have been doing the excessive knees train.
- Piriformis: Your piriformis muscle, which works out of your decrease backbone to your higher thigh, rotates your hips, legs, and toes outward, serving to you carry out motion like stepping right into a automotive.
- Glutes: Three glutes muscular tissues make up your butt: the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, and gluteus minimus. Collectively, they work to increase and rotate your thigh outward and assist you to do issues like stroll or run.
- Internal thighs: Your interior thighs are made up of 5 muscular tissues that work to maneuver your legs in towards the middle of your physique. This helps maintain you regular and stabilized as you stroll, per the Nationwide Library of Drugs.
What are the advantages of pigeon pose?
1. It could assist your hips transfer simpler.
“This pose is superb for bettering hip mobility, because it stretches a number of hip muscular tissues without delay,” Dr. Grundy says. “It may be notably useful for people with tight hip flexors from extended sitting at a desk.” Together with serving to your decrease physique merely really feel less tense and achy, this may additionally enable you to faucet into your full vary of movement, which might are available clutch for those who do workouts like squats and lunges on the gymnasium.
2. It could ease ache.
Together with soothing the aches that come from merely sitting an excessive amount of, pigeon pose may also assist people who reside with sciatica—a situation that triggers ache in your sciatic nerve, which travels down every leg out of your butt, and is commonly brought on by damage to or strain on the nerve. As a result of pigeon pose stretches your glutes, it may well promote blood circulate to your muscular tissues and nerves in that space, which can assist alleviate sciatic ache, in keeping with Dr. Grundy.
Moreover, doing pigeon pose may enhance decrease again ache, because it stretches the muscular tissues there, Grundy says. And tight muscular tissues can really feel fairly rattling achy!
Who ought to strive pigeon pose?
There’s a giant group of people that may benefit from this one: “Pigeon pose is a good stretch for these wanting to enhance hip flexibility and loosen up the muscular tissues within the decrease again,” Dr. Grundy says. So, like we talked about, just about all of us who spend numerous time parked in a chair or on a sofa.
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