In the event you’re one of many 25% of People who don’t get the beneficial quantity of bodily exercise every week, you is likely to 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 overall feeling like your muscular tissues have tightened up into a giant ball of stress.
The excellent news? Yoga poses, particularly pigeon pose—often known as eka pada rajakapotasana in Sanskrit—will help by stretching the muscular tissues in your decrease again and hips, serving to enhance their mobility and making them really feel extra refreshed than ever.
For all the pieces it’s worthwhile to learn about pigeon pose—together with which muscular tissues it hits, the perks of including it to your routine, and the way to repair widespread kind 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: Positioned on the entrance of your hips, your hip flexors—which embrace the iliacus, psoas main, rectus femoris, and sartorius—are accountable for transferring your legs and knees up towards your physique. Say, as an example, in case you have been doing the excessive knees train.
- Piriformis: Your piriformis muscle, which matches 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 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 can help you do issues like stroll or run.
- Internal thighs: Your inside 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 will probably assist your hips transfer simpler.
“This pose is superb for enhancing hip mobility, because it stretches a number of hip muscular tissues directly,” Dr. Grundy says. “It may be significantly 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 will additionally show you how to faucet into your full vary of movement, which might are available in clutch in case you do workouts like squats and lunges on the gymnasium.
2. It will 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 commonly attributable to damage to or stress on the nerve. As a result of pigeon pose stretches your glutes, it could actually promote blood circulation to your muscular tissues and nerves in that space, which will help alleviate sciatic ache, in line 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 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 loads of time parked in a chair or on a sofa.