Top 5 Excellent Benefits of Padahastasana Hand Under Foot Pose

When you get deeply attached to yoga on a daily basis, you come across a variety of poses that are simply amazing. Padahastasana is one such pose which will challenge you as doing it requires a combination of greatly flexible back, abdomen, and legs. However, being a regular practitioner of Padahastasana or the Hand Under Foot Pose has its own perks that you can realize within weeks of starting. This asana is so popular among the yogis that even Prime Minister of India tweeted in its praise and wrote, “Making Padahastasana a regular part of your lives will make your body healthier and your mind calmer. What more can one ask for!”

Interesting facts about Padahastasana

Literally speaking, Padahastasana comes from the Sanskrit where three words namely Pada (meaning ‘foot’), Hasta (meaning ‘hand’), and Asana (meaning ‘posture’) combine to give it a complete meaning. Interestingly, this posture provides immense strength to the muscles of the limbs and is considered a perfect exercise for the overall fitness.

Before getting started with Hand Under Foot Pose

Seeing the typical nature of this pose, you should achieve a good degree of proficiency over all the basic asanas before start practicing Padahastasana. Even when you are pretty much into yoga, make sure to do a few asanas before it to keep your back from getting injured. You can practice this asana five hours after a meal on an empty stomach.

Keep distance from this asana if you are suffering from health problems that include slip disc, ulcers, cardiac issues, or hypertension. Apart from this, do remember to learn poses like Adho Mukha Svanasana, Paschimottanasana, Janu Sirsasana, and Supta Padangusthasana before exploring the benefits of Padahastasana.

Follow these steps carefully for performing the Hand Under Foot Pose:

Step 1: First of all, stand on the yoga mat in a relaxed and upright pose keeping both hands loose at the sides.

Step 2: Now, slowly start lifting your hands straight up by allowing the palms to stay close to each other.

Step 3: Exhale while bending slowly at the waist. Keep bending until your hands touch the toes. Make sure that your chin touches your knees properly in this bending process.

Step 4: Once you are comfortably bent, try to slide the fingers under your toes and be in this pose for a few seconds. Take a deep breath.

Step 5: Now gradually try to leave your toes and try to stand up by unbending from the hips and exhaling slowly.

You can choose to perform these five steps daily to ensure numerous health benefits of Hand Under Foot Pose.

Padahastasana practice for various reasons:

• Strength to Muscles: In order to function smoothly on a daily basis, you need strong muscles. Particularly, in current times, when you rely heavily on the outside food, building strong muscles could become a challenging task. But doing Padahastasana regularly can prove a boon and pretty soon you can feel the strength in your thigh muscles, calves, and buttocks.
• Power to Abdomen: When you bend during this pose, your stomach muscles get pressed. This pressing helps in removing the extra fat from the region and eventually tones your abdomen.
• Improvement in Posture: The Hand Under Foot Pose is also found to play a key role in correcting your posture whether you are standing or walking. This sudden balance in the personality comes due to the ability to keep your feet and hands grounded, despite the pain.
• Flexibility in Bending: These days your chances of suffering from a back pain remain higher due to a fast-paced lifestyle. Here also, this yoga asana saves you from feeling the sudden jerk in the back region even if you are bending quite frequently.
• Controlling Stress Level: This asana helps in circulation of blood from the head to the toe of your body rather smoothly. It results in a better functioning of your vital organs like heart and brain making it easier for you to deal with stress.

Despite looking a little difficult, the Hand Under Foot Pose is a good bet to enhance the longevity of the muscles. It all depends on you and how far you can stretch yourself to derive the benefits of Padahastasana. Just make sure to perform it after taking proper guidance.

This could turn out to be your partner for a lifetime!