ne of the most elegant yoga poses out there and also the most vulnerable, Dancer’s Pose acts as both a hip opener as well as balancing pose. Dancer’s Pose is considered an intermediate pose due to the difficulty balancing and opposing extensions but it can be a great pose to boost confidence and develop gracefulness within your practice.
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What is Dancer’s Pose?
This yoga pose improves your balance, strengthens your legs, leverages your core, and opens your hips.
Dancer’s Pose, known in Sanskrit as Natarajasana, is a deep backbend that takes patience, concentration, and perseverance. The position is named after Shiva Nataraja, King of the Dance, a Hindu divinity who finds happiness amid devastation. Dance Pose, like its namesake, represents attaining inner peace.
What is Dancer’s Pose good for?
You might be wondering about the benefits of this beautiful yoga pose. Well, a dancer’s pose significantly improves balance, mental focus, and postural and body awareness, but mostly, it gives you the ability to detect your body’s position and movement in space.
Doing this pose in your practice can help you feel more energized, reduce tiredness, and develop confidence over time (because of the pose’s challenging stance and the satisfaction of achieving the pose).
The dancer’s pose stretches your chest and shoulders while strengthening your core and back muscles. It helps maintain the front of your hip flexor, your thighs and hamstrings, your shin, and the ankle of the standing leg. It strengthens your glutes and back of your thighs, as well as your quadriceps… all of these parts of your body are stretched in the Dancer’s Pose.
The dancer’s pose improves your balance and flexibility while challenging your patience as you extend your way into the full pose. In addition to this being an excellent balancing pose, Dancer’s Pose is a hip opener that challenges your vulnerability as you extend upward and outward.
How do you do Dancer’s Pose?
Getting into Dancer’s Pose can be done with these steps:
- Stand upright with both feet together
- Bring one knee in towards your chest
- Reach down with your hand same side as your raised knee and grab the outside of your foot
- Simultaneously extend your free hand upwards out out with palm in yet slightly angle up and your held foot and leg backward
Beginner’s tip:
When lifting the leg many beginners tend to cramp in the back of the thigh. To avoid cramping, keep the ankle of your raised foot flexed.
