Intense Side Stretch (Pyramid Pose)

Hello everyone, welcome to Yoga & You. I am Niranjani. In this video, we will learn how to practice Pārśvottānāsana. Pārśvottānāsana translates to side intense stretch posture. It is also called as the Pyramid posture, which aims to balance the body's energy. Now, let's get started moving on to the practice.

Let's come to Tadasana, keeping your knees and your feet together, your fingers and your toes active, your neck and spine in one line, your knees soft, your core engaged. Now, from here, let's place our hands on our waist and let's bring our legs apart, three feet wide apart. If you are finding it difficult, you can keep it slightly closer, your big toe and heel in one line, both your toes pointing forward and knees soft.

Now, slowly from here, let's turn our left foot out towards 90 degrees and turn in your right foot 30 or 45 degrees. Now from here, let's turn our body completely towards our left side facing our left leg. Now from here, there are many variations for this posture. You can either interlock your fingers behind, or you can catch hold of your elbows, or you can raise your arms up and join your palms. In whichever variation you feel comfortable, on exhale, bending forward from your hips laterally. Let's go for a forward fold towards our left side, dropping both your palms down, dropping your head down, chin in between your collarbone. Let's stay here for a few breaths, breathe, and then slowly dismounting in the same way, we'll slowly come up back to center, exhale slowly placing your hands on your waist, turning your body completely forward, your left foot in, your right foot facing forward, and now we'll repeat the same on the other side.

Now, this time turning my right foot towards my right side 90 degrees, your left foot in 30 or 45 degrees, this time turning your body completely towards your right side, again raising your arms up or interlocking your fingers. In this side, I'm going to interlock my fingers and show the variation. On exhale, slowly bending forward from your hips, exhale, let's go down slowly bringing your chin in between your collarbone, raising your arms up. If you're finding it difficult, no worries, we can catch hold of our elbows. Let's stay here, breathe again slowly, and then coming back to center, placing your hands on your waist, turning your body completely forward, your right foot in, your left foot facing forward, and then from here carefully coming back to Tadasana and relax.

In case if you're finding it difficult to do the final posture, we're going to do a modified version using the blocks. Now from here, turning your body completely towards your left side, on exhale bending halfway forward, you can slowly drop your palms one by one on the block. You can stay here, hold the posture for a few breaths, and then with practice, once you're comfortable in this variation, you can change the position of the block by going down a little bit deeper, staying here for a few breaths, and then slowly dismounting the same way, slowly placing your hands back on your waist, coming back to center, and then turning your body completely forward, and then we'll come back to Tadasana and relax.

Now moving on to the benefits of Pārśvottānāsana, practicing this posture helps us to increase flexibility in our thighs and our hamstrings, it helps to activate our abdominal organs and it also helps to calm our mind, it helps with the blood circulation throughout our whole body, it reduces any sort of stiffness in our elbows, shoulder, wrist and arms and it also helps for migraine and tension headache.

Now moving on to the limitations of Pārśvottānāsana, people who have undergone any heart surgery, high BP or any abdominal surgery should avoid this posture and people who have any hip issue, knee, ankle or shoulder issues should practice under guidance, hope this helps, thank you.