|
This is one of the many twisted body poses. The whole idea behind the pose is to provide suppleness to the spine of a young healthy Yoga participant. On the mental plane too, the pose helps a practitioner to better resolve the knots in life and reduce stress.
The Half Lord of the Fishes Pose is also known as Ardha Matsyendrasana. The pose is performed by twisting halfway your upper trunk towards one side while remaining in the seated position. It is a pose involving a level of intermediate level difficulty.
Performing the Ardha Matsyendrasana is most beneficial for your health. If you are a healthy individual, doing the asana provides you wide-ranging manifold physical and mental health benefits. It first of all creates suppleness in the spine and nerves. It exercises the upper half of the lungs and makes you calm especially when your breathing is restricted.
It invigorates your digestive system and helps in the stimulation of digestive juices in the stomach. It makes the liver, the pancreas, and other internal organs work more efficiently. It opens out the hips. It redistributes the tension in the back and neck muscles, tones the nerves, and thereby effects stress reduction. It also helps to make you mentally tougher to deal with the twists in your life by arousing the Kundalini power.
How to perform the Half Lord of the Fishes Pose?
Sit on the floor with your legs stretched out in front of you. Next, first fold up the right leg at the knee so as to form an angle at the knee that is pointing straight ahead in the direction in which you are looking while being in the seated position.
Now fold your left leg at the knee so that your left ankle is lying on the floor parallel to your buttocks with the left ball of the feet touching the right thigh on its rear. This is to be done so that the left ankle is totally within the periphery of the angle formed by the right leg's angle made at the knee. What you need to do next is to move your right heel over across to the left side of the left leg's thigh.
Before you do this, you should keep both palms touching the floor on their respective sides behind your spine to provide balance to your upper torso. Your spine needs to remain straight and your shoulders must be kept relaxed while you perform the movement of your right heel across to the left side of your left thigh.
Next raise your left palm off the floor where it is resting behind the spine on the left side of your torso. The right palm needs to remain resting on the floor all throughout the exercise to provide much needed balance to your upper trunk. Bring the left arm over to the front and make the elbow rest on the leftward sloping right knee. Thereafter twist your upper torso from the belly upwards so your neck automatically looks sideways towards your right.
In this pose, your spine is half twisted towards your right side. Finally take a breath. On exhalation, twist your upper torso a little more towards the right, so it causes the exhaled air to come out with more force because of better compression in the upper half of your lungs.
Repeat the whole exercise to provide a half twist of the spine towards the left side. Remember, all the actions are repeated, but in this case left is replaced by right and vice versa.
Although, performing the pose may appear difficult to beginners, but once you get the hang of it, it is easy to grasp. However, a word of caution is necessary. The exercise is not meant for persons with injured or bad backs. Pregnant women should also avoid the exercise altogether or do it under strict medical and expert guidance. The exercise also has a number of advanced variations that you will come to love with practice.
|