Why Pigeon Pose Is the Stretch You Need to Loosen Up Those Cranky Hips

For those who’re one of many 25% of Individuals who don’t get the really useful quantity of bodily exercise every week, you may be all-too-familiar with a standard aspect impact of spending a little bit an excessive amount of time sitting: cranky hips, decrease again ache, and the overall feeling like your muscle tissue 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 also help by stretching the muscle tissue in your decrease again and hips, serving to enhance their mobility and making them really feel extra refreshed than ever.

For all the things you could learn about pigeon pose—together with which muscle tissue it hits, the perks of including it to your routine, and the best way to repair frequent kind errors—carry on studying.

Which muscle tissue does pigeon pose stretch?

In accordance with bodily therapist Kim Grundy, PT, DPT, pigeon pose stretches muscle tissue 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 accountable for shifting your legs and knees up towards your physique. Say, as an example, in case 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 automobile.
• Glutes: Three glutes muscle tissue make up your butt: the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, and gluteus minimus. Collectively, they work to increase and rotate your thigh outward, and mean you can do issues like stroll or run.
• Internal thighs: Your inside thighs are made up of 5 muscle tissue 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 Drugs.

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 tissue without delay,” Dr. Grundy says. “It may be notably 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 allow 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 health club.

2. It may possibly ease ache.

Together with soothing the aches that come from merely sitting an excessive amount of, pigeon pose can even assist of us who reside 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 stress on the nerve. As a result of pigeon pose stretches your glutes, it might promote blood circulation to your muscle tissue and nerves in that space, which may also help alleviate sciatic ache, in response to Dr. Grundy.

Moreover, doing pigeon pose may enhance decrease again ache, because it stretches the muscle tissue there, Grundy says. And tight muscle tissue can really feel fairly rattling achy!

Who ought to attempt pigeon pose?

There’s a giant group of people that may gain advantage from this one: “Pigeon pose is a good stretch for these wanting to enhance hip flexibility and loosen up the muscle tissue within the decrease again,” Dr. Grundy says. So, like we talked about, just about all of us who spend lots of time parked in a chair or on a sofa.