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Reclining Bound Angle/Goddess Pose
Also Known as Supta Baddha Konasana
About the pose
This is a reclining asana. It is a body restorative pose and is of intermediate difficulty. Great care needs to be taken by using sufficient props to avoid injury or to aggravate one while performing the asana.
Benefits of Supta Baddha Konasana
* The pose helps stretch the muscles of the inner thighs, knees, and groins.
* It also relieves symptoms of menopause, menstruation, stress, and mild depression.
* As you do the asana, it stimulates your heart by boosting up blood circulation.
* The kidneys, ovaries, prostate gland, and urinary bladder are all stimulated and work much better.
How to do reclining bound angle goddess pose or supta baddha konasana?
Step 1 - Sit down with your legs bent at the knees and your feet touching each other. Keep your arms and hands one on each side and a little askance of your back with the palms supported on the floor.
Also place a firm prop behind your back in such a way that if you bring your back backwards from the sitting pose you are in, it will properly support the weight of your back neck and head. The prop itself can be placed with its one end supported firmly on a block of wood that in turn remains firmly in place as it receives support from the wall behind it.
Step 2 - Now with your weight of your back receiving support from your arms and palms well supported on the floor, gradually bring your back towards the back till it rests on the above prop. Your neck and head should also receive firm support from the prop. The prop needs to be placed so that it makes a small angle with the floor. With this ensured, when your back is resting on the prop, you are almost supine on the floor.
Step 3 - Now your hands can be freed from the weight of your back that they had been supporting. Use them now to grip your outermost thighs and try to bring them closer to your torso. What this will result in is that your knees will start moving away from the sides of your torso.
Thereafter, slide your hands along your inner thighs from the knees up to your groins so that it will seem as if your groins are sinking back into your pelvis. Now push the points of your hips together.
This will result in the narrowing of the front of your pelvis while it widens at the back. At this point bring up your arms and lay those outwards with the backs of the palms resting on the floor to make an angle of about 45 degrees with the sides of your torso.
Step 4 - When you are in this pose you will find that your knees tend to rest outward and touch the floor. Simultaneously, there will be a tendency for your inner thighs and groins to get stretched.
However, if your groins are too tight, the opposite effect will be there pushing down your knees will result in the hardening of your groins, back and your belly muscles. Therefore, it will be better for you to imagine your knees to be floating up towards the ceiling and try to grind in your groins into your pelvis. This will cause your knees to drop down to the floor.
Step 5 - Beginners can remain in this pose for a minute. With practice you can gradually increase your staying time from 1 to 5 minutes. To release the pose, use your hands to press your thighs together and then roll over onto one side. Finally bring up yourself away from the floor.
More about Supta Baddha Konasana
It is recommended that beginners use whatever props or blankets are required to support their heads and backs. It will also be helpful if you can think of simply being in this pose rather than doing something dynamic.
A word of caution
Mothers who have recently given birth naturally to babies need to avoid doing this exercise till their pelvic muscles have regained their originally tightness. Individuals who have a knee, hip, shoulder, or groin injury should as far as possible also avoid doing this asana. If at all you are still confident of doing it under expert supervision with a knee injury, use a bolster under your knees, which then should not be brought down too far.
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