In the event you’re one of many 25% of People who don’t get the advisable quantity of bodily exercise every week, you may be all-too-familiar with a typical aspect impact of spending somewhat an excessive amount of time sitting: cranky hips, decrease again ache, and the final feeling like your muscle tissues have tightened up into a giant ball of stress.
The excellent news? Yoga poses, particularly pigeon pose—also called eka pada rajakapotasana in Sanskrit—will help by stretching the muscle tissues in your decrease again and hips, serving to increase their mobility and making them really feel extra refreshed than ever.
For every thing you want to learn about pigeon pose—together with which muscle tissues it hits, the perks of including it to your routine, and repair frequent type errors—carry on studying.
Which muscle tissues does pigeon pose stretch?
In keeping with bodily therapist Kim Grundy, PT, DPT, pigeon pose stretches muscle 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 accountable for shifting your legs and knees up towards your physique. Say, as an example, in the event you had 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 ft outward, serving to you carry out motion like stepping right into a automotive.
- Glutes: Three glutes muscle tissues make up your butt: the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, and gluteus minimus. Collectively, they work to increase and rotate your thigh outward and can help you do issues like stroll or run.
- Inside thighs: Your inside thighs are made up of 5 muscle tissues that work to maneuver your legs in towards the middle of your physique. This helps preserve you regular and stabilized as you stroll, per the Nationwide Library of Medication.
What are the advantages of pigeon pose?
1. It might probably assist your hips transfer simpler.
“This pose is great for enhancing hip mobility, because it stretches a number of hip muscle tissues directly,” 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 make it easier to faucet into your full vary of movement, which may are available in clutch in the event you do workouts like squats and lunges on the gymnasium.
2. It might probably ease ache.
Together with soothing the aches that come from merely sitting an excessive amount of, pigeon pose may also assist of us who dwell with sciatica—a situation that triggers ache in your sciatic nerve, which travels down every leg out of your butt, and is usually attributable to harm to or stress on the nerve. As a result of pigeon pose stretches your glutes, it may possibly promote blood circulation to your muscle tissues and nerves in that space, which will help alleviate sciatic ache, in line with Dr. Grundy.
Moreover, doing pigeon pose may additionally enhance decrease again ache, because it stretches the muscle tissues there, Grundy says. And tight muscle tissues can really feel fairly rattling achy!
Who ought to attempt pigeon pose?
There’s a giant group of people that may benefit from this one: “Pigeon pose is a superb stretch for these wanting to enhance hip flexibility and loosen up the muscle tissues within the decrease again,” Dr. Grundy says. So, like we talked about, just about all of us who spend plenty of time parked in a chair or on a sofa.
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