August 07, 2019 at 11:50AM by CWC
Ready to open up your hips? Watch how to do pigeon pose the right way, here.
There are yoga poses I dread in my practice (I’m lookin’ at you, chair pose), and there are others that I can’t wait for the instructor to call out. As a runner with ultra-tight hips that stay sore 24/7, pigeon pose has become one that my body feels like it needs to untangle some of the tension that my long runs bring on.
So, you can find me jumping into the hip-opener just about as quickly as the instructor calls it out. But according to yoga pro Tess Koening, how you get into the stretch is half the battle. The most common mistake she sees comes from not starting in the correct previous pose to set yourself up for success (find out which one by clicking the video above). Instead, she notices that a ton of people enter the pose “from the ground up.” This can put undue stress on your knees and it collapses your core without really opening up the hips or stretching anything. Womp womp.
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“The thing about pigeon pose is that it’s a hip opener, not a knee stretch,” says Koening. “It might touch other parts of your body, but you really want to make it about your hips.” After all, the hips are pretty much mandatory in so many of the activities that we do every day from sitting at our desks at work to walking our 10,000 steps. Getting into pigeon pose the right way can mean the difference between hip pain and mobility, and we can all meet at the mat for that.
Now here’s a full-on morning yoga routine to start your day off right with. And this is how often you should do yoga to really reap all of its benefits.
Author Rachel Lapidos | Well and Good
Selected by CWC
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