Gate Pose

Hi everyone, welcome to Yoga & You. I am Sanjana Prasad. Today we are going to be practicing Parighasana, Gate Pose. This is a beautiful stretch that can be done with a variety of modifications and variations, and is a wonderful prelude and preparation to deepen postures like Trikonasana and Parsvakonasana. Let's get into the practice.

We are going to start with a few postures to prepare for Parighasana. So start standing at the top of the mat with your feet hip width apart and toes pointing forward. Now from here, as you inhale, we are going to lift both your arms all the way up, and as you exhale, keep the knees bent, lengthen forward and go all the way down. We are just working on opening up the hamstrings so that once you get into Parighasana, the balance becomes comfortable.

You are going to bring in a pair of blocks here, or thick books. Now, as you inhale, you are going to arch the back, and as you exhale, round your back. If you notice, my knees are still bent. Inhale, lift the chest up; exhale, round your back. One more — inhale, arch the back; exhale, round your back. Firmly plant the feet down, inhale, and come into a neutral position.

Now you can reduce the height of the block, place your palms down, lean forward comfortably, and see if on the exhalation you can slowly straighten both knees without rounding the back. Keep your spine long, and try to maintain the contact between the belly and the thigh as you slowly straighten the knees. Inhale, relax; exhale, straighten the knees. Inhale, relax, draw the navel in as much as you can; exhale, straighten the knees. Inhale, relax — notice that every time you do it, you get a little deeper. Exhale, straighten the knees, and this time you can just stay here and breathe.

If you are very comfortable, you can remove the blocks and place your palms on the mat in front of your feet. Drop your head down slightly, stay there and breathe. One — your focus is this contact between your belly and the thigh; even as your knees are straightening out, you don't have to lock the knee, keep the knee soft. Two, bring awareness to your hamstrings. Three, four, just feel them opening up, and five. From here, let your palms stay shoulder width apart.

You're going to take a step back with your right foot, then your left foot. Feet continue to stay hip width apart as you move into downward facing dog. Now you're going to pedal your feet in downward dog to work a little bit more on the hamstrings, switching side to side. As you're switching, press the heel into the mat — one, two, three. Here also you're focusing on the contact between the belly and the thigh, and keeping the hips up, so that as you're pedaling the feet, your body is not moving forward. Hips stay back and up — just work on moving the heels up and down. Three, four, and five.

Slowly drop your knees down and come into Vajrasana. We're going to do one movement here in Vajrasana that's going to help you open up your chest, so you can work on your arm position in Parighasana, and also allow your knees to get comfortable. So as you inhale, we're going to lift your arms up from the sides, interlock the fingers and stretch up, keeping the spine neutral. Take an exhale here. Now inhale and come up onto your knees — you're kneeling — and as you exhale, when you bring your hips down, you're going to bend your elbows and bring your palms behind the head. Now if you find this very difficult, if it bothers your knees, or you don't have enough mobility in the hip, you can always slide a cushion underneath your hips to bridge that gap. You can also use a rolled-up blanket, or roll up your mat underneath the knees, to protect the knees. Let's do this two more times: inhale, lift your arms up, interlock, stretch up, stay here, exhale. Following inhale, lift up, come onto your knees; exhale, simultaneously bend your elbows and sit back. Inhale and come up, exhale, sit back. Last time, inhale, come up, exhale and sit back. Slowly inhale, stretch your arms up, exhale and come down onto the mat.

Now we're going to come into a table top position on all fours. I'm going to do it facing you so you'll be able to understand the movement a little better. Your knees are hip width apart, palms are shoulder width apart. Now from here, you're going to extend your right leg back — as I'm extending the leg back, I'm placing the top of the foot, this part of my foot, on the floor. Now as I exhale, I'm going to try and swing the leg all the way to the side; see if you're able to get it in line with your palm. If you cannot, you can just stop at the knee level. Now as you inhale, swing it all the way back, turn and look at your toes. Exhale and swing it to the knee level or a little higher — you feel your oblique muscles working here. Inhale and take it all the way back. Now an alternative to this is to use your blocks for a little bit of elevation; with the blocks you'll be able to reach comfortably. Exhale and bring it all the way to the side, inhale as you swing the leg back, turn over and look at your toes. Exhale, all the way to the side; inhale, all the way back.

This time, we're going to stop on the right side. Exhale, swing it to the right. I'm going to take a moment to come back onto my mat. Now from here, we're going to slowly use the blocks if you need to. Bring your palms on the waist and come up on one knee. Your right toes are going to be fully turned to the right side — I have aligned my right heel to my left knee. Turn your hips forward, shoulders forward. Inhale and lift both your arms up to shoulder level on both sides — this is your preparation for Parighasana. Now as you exhale, you're going to start to reach towards your right side. Imagine you're at the wall next to you and trying to extend the fingertips towards the wall, and then you start to go down towards your ankle if you're comfortable — you do not have to force yourself to go to the ankle. You always have the block; you can place the block and stop right here. If this is too much, bring the block a little closer. Here itself you will feel a nice, intense stretch underneath your leg towards the hamstring and your calf. As you get more and more comfortable with the block, you can move the block away and start to work on just sliding your hand down towards the ankle. Now the next thing you want to do is keep the chest nice and open, and once you feel that your neck and shoulder blade are comfortable, start to take your left hand over the head. Continue to gaze at the ceiling. Breathe — one, keep the right knee soft, two, and three. Inhale and slowly come all the way up. A very important point here: when you're bending to the side, make sure you're not sticking your butt back — that's a compensation that you're making to reach for the ankle. Instead, keep your hip in line. When I look at you from the side, when your teacher looks at you from the side, your body is in one line, and you stop wherever you're comfortable. This will ensure that you're opening up the hip, hamstring, chest and shoulder, and you're reaping all the benefits of the practice.

Now from this position, we can also do a slight variation of this posture, which is reverse gate pose. So before we go into that, make sure your alignment is right — your hip and knee are in one line, heel and knee in one line. Again, we're going to lift the arms up as you inhale. This time, as you exhale, you're going to move to the opposite side. You're going to bring your left palm down in line with the knee, about a forearm away from you. Right arm goes up — you're sending the hip forward, not back. Chest is open, and once you're comfortable here, once again you're going to keep moving your arm across over the head, and you see this beautiful line from my right fingertip all the way down to my right toes, opening up the sides of the body, and you're going to stay here and breathe. One — so if you notice, the previous movement, the leg swings that we did, is preparing you for this crunch and opening up on the same side. Two, and three, slowly — you can look down first, bring your arm back to position, inhale and come back to center. Exhale, bring your palms to the waist, bend your right knee and come back into Vajrasana.

Now in Parighasana, a lot of the weight goes onto the knee, so if you have severe knee issues, if you have any discomfort, you can always roll up a blanket, or you can hold the position for a shorter duration and do one variation at a time. Now we're going to go into another variation of Parighasana, which is a seated variation, which is a little bit more challenging and also works a lot on your hips. So for this, we're going to start first with the legs stretched forward. From here, you're going to bend your left knee — you're working on the right side, since you started opening up on the right side, so we'll continue. You're going to bend the left knee so that your heel comes outside of the hip. Now we have to make sure that your ankle is not left loose this way — this position puts a lot of pressure on the inside of your knee. So you want to keep the toe pointed, heel outside of the hip, your hip in line with your knee. This is your starting position; this is also the starting position for Trianga Mukhaikapada Paschimottanasana. Now for Parighasana, you want to move your right leg completely 90 degrees to the right side, and you're going to open your left knee as well as much as you can — so you see this beautiful hip opening here, your heel stays close to the groin.

Now we're going to go into a lateral bend. You have two options. One, you place your right palm on the right leg, inhale and lift your left arm up, and as you exhale, start sliding your hand down slowly, bit by bit, till you can reach your toes, and we can stop right here and breathe. Make sure the toes are lifted up, looking up at the ceiling, and we can stay here for a few breaths — we feel a nice, beautiful stretch inside of the hips. And once you're done, you're going to inhale and slowly come back to center, exhale and bring your hands down.

Once you start getting very comfortable, we're going to try and do a full bend. So for this, you're going to first flip your right palm up, take an inhale, and as you exhale, slide the right hand down — I'm going to hold on to the inner edge of my foot. Now keep the chest open. Inhale and lift the left arm up, and as you exhale, take your arm all the way across and see if you can grab the outer edge of the right foot with your left hand. Now once you have that, your intention, or your direction of movement, is to open the chest as much as possible. Stay there, breathe — one, two, keep the lower belly drawn in, pelvic floor engaged, so that there is no strain in the groin or hip flexors. Two, three, inhale, lift your left arm up, take an exhale there. Slowly release, inhale and come back to center; as you exhale, release your hands and bring your legs back together.

Now we've done Parighasana in the kneeling position and the seated position on the right side. You have to repeat all of the drills towards the left, and then practice it on the left side as well. Parighasana is a wonderful posture, and like I said, you can do a lot of variations and modifications — you can go into a side plank, you can go into wild thing, and a lot of other postures as well through Parighasana. So I really hope you found this video useful, and you were able to understand how to safely move into Parighasana, the two variations, kneeling and seated. Thank you.