Should 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 facet impact of spending a bit an excessive amount of time sitting: cranky hips, decrease again ache, and the final 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—may help 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 pieces you have to find out about pigeon pose—together with which muscular tissues it hits, the perks of including it to your routine, and find out how to repair widespread type errors—carry on studying.
Which muscular tissues does pigeon pose stretch?
In line with bodily therapist Kim Grundy, PT, DPT, pigeon pose stretches muscular tissues in your decrease physique, together with the next:
- Hip flexors: Situated on the entrance of your hips, your hip flexors—which embody the iliacus, psoas main, rectus femoris, and sartorius—are liable for transferring your legs and knees up towards your physique. Say, as an example, when you have been doing the excessive knees train.
- Piriformis: Your piriformis muscle, which fits 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 automobile.
- 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 permit you to do issues like stroll or run.
- Interior thighs: Your internal thighs are made up of 5 muscular 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 will possibly assist your hips transfer simpler.
“This pose is great for enhancing hip mobility, because it stretches a number of hip muscular tissues directly,” Dr. Grundy says. “It may be significantly helpful 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 could additionally assist you to faucet into your full vary of movement, which might are available in clutch when you do workout routines like squats and lunges on the fitness center.
2. It will possibly ease ache.
Together with soothing the aches that come from merely sitting an excessive amount of, pigeon pose may 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 brought on by damage to or stress on the nerve. As a result of pigeon pose stretches your glutes, it could possibly promote blood circulation to your muscular tissues and nerves in that space, which may help alleviate sciatic ache, in keeping with Dr. Grundy.
Moreover, doing pigeon pose might also 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 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 muscular tissues within the decrease again,” Dr. Grundy says. So, like we talked about, just about all of us who spend a whole lot of time parked in a chair or on a sofa.
