YOGA POSTURES: Forward Bend Poses

Theme: Learn Doing Yoga Exercises, How to do the different postures of Yoga.

Rája Grivásana - Inverted position preparation, Head Stand Posture.

This posture is one of the easiest postures. Generally, this posture is done before doing Sirsasana. However, RajaGrivasana is itself an independent pose, known as 'Head Stand Posture'. Only the pregnant woman should do take care. She should ask her trained yoga instructor before doing this pose.

How to Do Raj Grivasana

Here is step-by-step guidance for doing this pose.

• Come to kneeling position and put your forearms fully touching the floor. The fingers are to keep interlaced.

• Put your head on the area cupped by your fingers and the forearms.

• Then raise your waist as straight as possible. You can do it by taking your feet closer to head. It will send your hips over your shoulder.

• In this position, your body would make the shape of a triangle on the floor. This posture is an independent yoga posture. It is called Raja Grivasana.

• You can stay in this pose as long as you like.

Benefits of Doing Raj Grivasana

• Doing of this posture would give almost all the benefits that Sirsasana would give. Like all other postures, it increases the flow of blood to our head and brain. This in turn would result in improvement of intellectual functions. It would help in increasing our memory.

• It would help us to get relief from back pain or pain in leg and thigh muscles.

• A person suffering from Sciatica would also be benefited. But in that case, this posture must be done in presence of a trained teacher.

• When we are doing the inverted asanas, we are acting against the force of gravity. This would give feeling some strange facts about our body and the functioning of various systems. We could feel rejuvenated experiencing a new perspective of life and health. (Image Courtesy By Marcocarvalho [CC-BY-3.0], from Wikimedia Commons

Balasana, The Child Pose [Forward-Bend]

The yoga postures render our body in different positions. There is hardly any muscle or limb that is not being activated by one of this asana. Here some postures putting our body in forwarding bend postures are given. These postures help stretching all the limbs that we might not be stretching while doing our general work. 

These exercises and yoga postures provide good exercises to calves, hips and the hamstrings. Hath Yoga has devised postures providing complete exercise to all of the limbs and muscles of our body. This posture, Balasana, Child Pose is one of the simplest yoga postures. It provides exercises to back muscles and calves. 

How to do Child Pose

Before doing this posture, you can seat in Vajrasana, The Thunderbolt posture. It’s a posture where we sit kneeling on the floor keeping the knees wide.

After that position, just exhale and let the head be touching the floor. The whole torso would be pasted on the thighs. The hands would be simply put backwards alongside the torso. The shoulder should be as near to the floor as possible. This posture can be practised as one of the relaxing postures like Corpse Pose.

Uttanasana:

Any of the variations of these Standing Forward bend postures would work as stress-reducing exercise. You would feel that the element of fatigue and anxiety is considerably reduced after doing this posture. 

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via Wikimedia Commons

There are certain postures that would benefit much if this asana is done in sequence.

This Asana is very easy to do. You just bend forward and try to touch your knees with your head. Those who have some back-pain or muscle-pain should avoid doing this Uttasana.

It is always advisable to do certain Yoga poses in the presence of a yoga teacher. After getting sufficient training, one can do almost all the yoga poses.

Paschimottanasana : 

Joseph RENGER, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons 

This posture is relatively an easy one. You can feel very much relaxed after doing this asana. It provides good exercise to the muscles of the back, legs and the hands. 

It is advised for weight loss and back pain. This posture would provide enough exercise for the calves, too.

SINHASANA, the Lion Pose: 

Regular practice of Lion Pose would help to improve the memory power. The mind would function with a renewed flow of energy. While doing this asana, we would find that our respiration become regularizes. Due to the regularized and respiration, you would get the improvement if you are suffering from throat-trouble.

If you are a new entrant in this yoga exercises, you should not remain in one posture for more time. Avoid being in one posture for a longer period, as it would make your limbs paining a little bit. Ensure that you get proper and enough rest between two sessions of exercises, too. You can rest in Shavasana, as it would give you more energy to go to the next session of doing yoga postures.