Which is simultaneously a hip yoga pose, an adductor stretcher, and a pose I love to hate. It may also be a pose that works the adductor muscles eccentrically. I would check that, but my copy of Yoga Anatomy is about 18 inches more than arm’s length away.
And I will squelch my curiosity.
I will.
Really, I will.
Fine, give me a minute. I just have this one thing I need to check…
Damn, it’s not even in there.
Okay, one more minute. My Google skillz know no bounds.
*opens new tab*
*closes new tab*
Fucknuggets. I think I’m going to rescind my earlier “working eccentrically” statement, though based only on these tidbits of information pieced together:
- Various sites detailing the pose suggest that it works and/or strengthens the “entire lower body,” but when listing specific muscle groups, it focuses on pelvic floor, glutes, quads, and calves.
- The closest any of them come to mentioning the adductor group is when they explain that the pose “stretches the groins.” Which, eccentric muscle work happens as the muscle is lengthening, but “stretch” does not, to me, connote eccentric muscle work.
- When I got fed up with Google and tried the pose my own damn self, what I felt was this: Because of the moving-toward-right-angles of both the knees and the hips, I felt both stretching and strengthening sensation in both my quads and hamstrings. However, I did not feel any adductor strengthening going on, so I have to offer an apology on that one.
Plus, I am sort of miffed. Sites should maybe not describe a pose as “strengthening the entire lower body” if it leaves out some rather large muscles. A lot of the lower body? Yes. The whole lower body? No.
Oh. Oh, yes. We were looking at goddess pose.
[Jenny Glick instructing for SuryaChandraYoga. Video via YouTube.]
So. Even though I’m looking at this as a hip adductor stretch — and it is, as the hips are quite strongly abducted here — it’s still a very strong, active pose overall. It’s a pose I’d take after I was warmed up but still fairly early in my practice — at least early enough to know that I had plenty of energy reserves. It’s not one I ever use during cool down or restorative portions of my practice, and I expect that this is also true for a fair number of other yogis.
Additionally, as the video demonstrates, when getting into this pose, I take a vinyasa for the first few rounds. It’s way easier convincing my body that it’s okay to stay in this pose if I give it an easy out for those rounds. Physically, I’m sure this has a lot to do with warming up the muscles. But mentally, it has a lot to do with readying myself for how much of me is going to be working in the hold.
For folks who are wanting modifications, I know of a few but could find YouTube or other demonstration videos for zero of them. If you’re still confused by my verbal descriptions, let me know, and I’ll draw a stick figure in Paint. (And then you’ll be really confused!)
- Having the arms in goal posts is its own separate thing and not actually necessary for the leg positioning. If it’s making the balance tricky — or if you just want to — it’s totally cool to keep the hands on the hips or thighs or to bring them to prayer in front of the heart.
- If balance is the main issue, you can do this pose so that the bum is up against the wall, either with a middling amount of support or just barely brushing it.
- If more than middling support is needed at the wall, it may be worth doing this pose on the edge of a chair. For ease of leg spreading, you’ll probably want a chair without arms, and you’ll probably want to sit on the forward edge of it. The chair version allows the chair to support the weight of the pelvis and torso — instead of the quads, glutes, and hamstrings doing a lot of that work — so the pose becomes more about the work in the outer hips and the stretch through the inner thighs.
If all of that is not going to work — or if you just want an adductor stretch that’s more suitable for the end of a practice — wide angle seated fold may be a good option.