In the event you’re one of many 25% of Individuals who don’t get the beneficial 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—often known as Eka Pada Rajakapotasana in Sanskrit—may help by stretching the muscle tissues in your decrease again and hips, serving to enhance their mobility and making them really feel extra refreshed than ever.
For every little thing it’s essential find out about pigeon pose—together with which muscle tissues it hits, the perks of including it to your routine, and find out how to repair frequent type errors—carry on studying.
Which muscle tissues does pigeon pose stretch?
In response to bodily therapist Kim Grundy, PT, DPT, pigeon pose stretches muscle tissues in your decrease physique, together with the next:
- Hip flexors: Situated on the entrance of your hips, your hip flexors—which embrace the iliacus, psoas main, rectus femoris, and sartorius—are chargeable for transferring your legs and knees up towards your physique. Say, for example, in case you 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 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 assist you to do issues like stroll or run.
- Interior thighs: Your internal thighs are made up of 5 muscle tissues that work to maneuver your legs in towards the middle of your physique. This helps hold you regular and stabilized as you stroll, per the Nationwide Library of Medication.
What are the advantages of pigeon pose?
1. It may possibly assist your hips transfer simpler.
“This pose is superb for enhancing hip mobility, because it stretches a number of hip muscle 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 may additionally assist you to faucet into your full vary of movement, which might are available clutch in case you do workout routines like squats and lunges on the fitness center.
2. It may possibly ease ache.
Together with soothing the aches that come from merely sitting an excessive amount of, pigeon pose may assist people who stay 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 harm to or strain on the nerve. As a result of pigeon pose stretches your glutes, it will probably promote blood circulation to your muscle tissues and nerves in that space, which may help alleviate sciatic ache, in accordance with Dr. Grundy.
Moreover, doing pigeon pose can also 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 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 muscle tissues within the decrease again,” Dr. Grundy says. So, like we talked about, just about all of us who spend quite a lot of time parked in a chair or on a sofa.
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