Wide-Legged Forward Bend

Hi, welcome to Yoga & You, I am Sanjana Prasad. Today we are going to be practicing Prasarita Padottanasana. Prasarita means extended, Pada means feet, and Uttanasana is an intense stretch.

This is a wide-leg intense forward fold and is a great posture for you to do to improve the mobility and strength around your ankles, the hamstrings, the legs, and hips. It helps to lengthen the spine, and the variations of the posture also release tension around your shoulders. It is a wonderful posture to transition into headstand, tripod headstand, and also prepares you for Samakonasana, which is your middle split. Prasarita Padottanasana can be practiced after you prepare with Padangusthasana, Padahastasana, and some dynamic warm-up for your hamstrings to just open them out.

Today we are going to be using blocks to support us in our practice, so let's get on the mat and begin.

We are going to start at the top of the mat in Samasthiti. From here you are going to turn to this side, so take a step back with your right foot, and it is going to be a wide stance. So how do you measure the distance for this posture? You are going to turn your foot out, make sure the heels are in one line, and you are going to lunge and check if your knee is in line with the ankle and you are able to get this thigh parallel to the floor, 90 degrees to the floor. And now from here you are going to straighten the leg and let's turn both feet forward again, just make sure the heels are in one line.

When you are standing, make sure your lower belly is drawn in. It is important to keep the core active and you are not arching your back. Make sure the tailbone is tucked under, roll the shoulders back, and let's start with the palms on the waist. Elbows closer to each other, inhale and slightly lift the chest up.

Now as you exhale, keeping the knees soft, not locking the knees, keep it easy - exhale and bend forward halfway down, and you are going to bring your fingertips down towards the floor. Now here itself, if you are finding it difficult to get to the floor, you are going to bring in your blocks. You can take the blocks, keep them in front of you parallel to each other, and place your palms on the blocks. We want to focus on keeping the spine long - the spine is the focus here. So you can always increase the height of the block if you feel like your back is starting to round. If you feel like there is a lot of tension around the shoulders, increase the height of the block and work on lengthening the spine.

And if you notice, equal weight on your right foot and left foot - you are not tilting to one side, and neither are you tilting back or too much forward. Equal weight, you are very centered here. Once you start to get comfortable and are able to maintain the length of the spine, you can gradually reduce the height of the block and keep going lower and lower.

Once you are able to get your fingertips on the floor, as you inhale you are going to lengthen your spine, create more space between your vertebrae. Now as you exhale, once you are comfortable here, think about sending your belly towards your thigh, rotating from the hip, and start to walk your palms back so that the palms come in line with your toes.

This is the first variation, Prasarita Padottanasana. Inhale, exhale, start rotating from the hip, knees soft, lengthening, draw your lower abdomen in. Keep exhaling and see if eventually your forehead, the top of your head, comes down in line with your hands. You can stay here for a few breaths, just observing that opening in your hamstrings and the lower back - every exhale, a little bit more rotation, keep tilting forward, no tension around your head. Exhale, inhale, inhale - once again you are going to lengthen the spine, look forward, exhale, and you are going to take your palms to the waist.

We are going to try the second variation, be without the use of the hands. Exhale, bring the elbows together, lengthen forward - here you don't have your hands to support you, you lengthen from the lower back and release the head down as far as comfortable for you. Breathe, a few breaths here, make sure the weight isn't shifting back or side to side - center, knees soft. Every exhale, you lengthen deeper in your posture - two and three. Inhale, lengthen the spine again.

Exhale, take your arms behind your back and interlock your fingers, keep some space between your palms, open up the chest. As you exhale, sending the chest down towards your thighs, allow your arms to drop behind the head as much as you can - so here you are working on your shoulder mobility as well. Breathe, one, two - we have a tendency here to kind of lock in towards our neck, allowing the shoulders to shrug up - make sure there's no tension there, extend and go forward, three. While your other alignment cues remain the same, two, and one. Inhale, slowly come up, exhale, release your fingers.

Three-finger grip on the big toe - index, middle, and thumb, both sides. Once again, inhale, lengthen up, exhale, draw the lower belly in, extend forward keeping the knees soft, go all the way to the mat. Here you are not going to move the elbows this way underneath, but slightly outwards, and send the chest towards the thigh, head down. Breathe, see if you can gaze at the ceiling in between the legs. Breathe, breathe, breathe through the knee, and one. Inhale and slowly come up, exhale, first take your palms to the lower back, inhale, lift up, exhale, release your hands slowly, bend one knee, and step back into Samasthiti.

For those of you who don't have access to the blocks and are not able to keep the knees straight when you're folding forward, you can always keep the knees soft to reduce the intensity of the posture on your hamstrings or the lower back. If your arm variations are too complicated for you right now, don't worry about it - start practicing Prasarita Padottanasana, that is your starting point, and as you get comfortable with that you can move on to the other variations. Practicing all four postures at one go is quite an advanced practice, so to make it easier you can always break up the practice - practice them as individual postures or as pairs. I really hope this practice was helpful and you enjoyed it. Thank you.