Poses >> Upavistha Konasana

Upavista Konasana
upavistha (seated, sitting)
kona (angle)

1. Begin sitting in dandasana.
2. Place your hands on the inner knees and lean back slightly. Bend your knees and bring your feet together in a loose baddhakonasana. Then lean back again and open your legs all the way out in a wide straddle. Check back in with your alignment to ensure that you are not slumping in the pelvis. Your knees should be pointing up, neither rolling forward or back. If they are rolling forward/inward, use your thumbs to draw the outer hip creases back and down to create more external rotation. If they are rolling outward/backward, then sit on more padding.
3. Activate your leg muscles, drawing the muscles up the bones and extending out through flexed feet.�
4. Inhale, then as you exhale, begin to fold forward. Take your time! If you go too fast you will find that your legs rolled in or out and you missed that moment when it happened. That is the moment that you are looking for — to learn the place that you want to stay with. That is where the work happens. Stay in alignment as your boundary and then work on deepening the pose within that guideline.
5. Over time, you will be able to go down onto your elbows but in the meantime, you might put them on blocks. You can put your head on a block or cushion. You can stay wherever you are and wait. This pose cultivates patience, which is equally useful to having loose hips.
6. Inhale to come up and rewind the whole process to end up in dandasana.

Video and Text by Yogamates Featured Teacher: Cyndi Lee