Utthita Parsvakonasana: Extended Side Angle Pose

This entry was posted on May 23, 2018 by Charlotte Bell.

Utthita Parsvakonasana

Wide-legged standing poses—think Triangle and the Warrior poses—are the foundation to a balanced yoga practice. They cultivate strength, stability, balance, flexibility and expansion, all at once. Standing poses strengthen the legs and the core, and nurture the back. In the process, they encourage expansion, making them a great antidote to sitting at a computer, in a car or even in meditation.

Utthita Parsvakonasana (Extended Side Angle Pose) is a favorite among my students. It promotes steadiness by strengthening our connection to the ground and strengthening our ankles, knees and thighs. In particular the upper side of the body not only lengthens—in a very satisfying way—but also achieves continuity, as long as you practice with continuity, rather than extreme flexibility, in mind. B.K.S. Iyengar claims it expands the lungs and tones the heart muscles.

How to Practice Parsvakonasana

  1. Gather your props: a yoga mat and a yoga block.
  2. Stand on your mat with your feet approximately a leg length (one of your own legs) apart and your inner feet parallel. Rotate your entire right leg out 90 degrees and your entire left leg, including the pelvis, inward about 30 to 45 degrees. Adjust the inner rotation of the leg and pelvis until your left foot feels strongly rooted.
  3. Now extend your arms out to the sides at shoulder level, turning your palms down. Make sure you’re not hunching your shoulders.
  4. Bend your right knee into a 90-degree angle, tracking it straight out so that it ends up directly over your ankle. If your knee is extended past your ankle, widen your stance.
  5. Ground your left foot even more strongly as you extend your torso out over your right thigh. Place your right forearm on your right thigh. Now extend your left arm up alongside your head, palm face down, adjusting the angle until you can feel your arm extending from your waist, not simply from your shoulder joint.
  6. Feed the left side of your pelvis down into your left foot and grow your left waist out of the pelvis so that you feel a continuous line extension along the entire left side of your body.
  7. Breathe fully. Imagine expanding your breath from your belly out in all directions into all your limbs. Notice if you are leaning into your right elbow, collapsing it into your right thigh. Instead, press your forearm and elbow into your thigh to help you rotate your ribcage open.
  8. Take five to ten deep breaths. Return to standing and rest with your feet parallel for a few breaths before repeating on the other side.

Practicing with Integrity

While you may see photos of people practicing Parsvakonasana with their heads turned toward their upper arm, I rarely do this. It is too easy to compress your neck by practicing this way. I prefer to look straight forward so that my neck and head follow the natural trajectory of my spine.

Another option is to place your right hand on a block or on the floor on the little toe side of your foot. Only do this if your breathing remains as free as it did when your elbow was on your thigh. The freedom of the breath is always more important than the form of your pose—always.

In Western yoga, we often think that using a block or leaving your elbow on your thigh is sissy yoga compared to placing your hand on the floor. Not true. While I held fast to this belief in my younger, more ego-driven days, I realize now that yoga asana practice is about creating a vessel that allows us to expand, not contract, the breath. Expanding the breath expands our energy; contracting the breath depletes our energy.

Our breath can only expand when we practice for alignment integrity rather than for the most extreme manifestation of a pose. Think continuity in Parsvakonasana, especially continuity along the upper side of the body, and think stability and grounding in the lower side. Balance deep, strong rooting with expansion.

Updated article from February 5, 2014.

About Charlotte Bell
Charlotte Bell discovered yoga in 1982 and began teaching in 1986. Charlotte is the author of Mindful Yoga, Mindful Life: A Guide for Everyday Practice and Yoga for Meditators, both published by Rodmell Press. Her third book is titled Hip-Healthy Asana: The Yoga Practitioner’s Guide to Protecting the Hips and Avoiding SI Joint Pain (Shambhala Publications). She writes a monthly column for CATALYST Magazine and serves as editor for Yoga U Online. Charlotte is a founding board member for GreenTREE Yoga, a non-profit that brings yoga to underserved populations. A lifelong musician, Charlotte plays oboe and English horn in the Salt Lake Symphony and folk sextet Red Rock Rondo, whose DVD won two Emmy awards in 2010.

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