This is reality. When we try something for the first time, it doesn’t go well. The same case is in the crow pose of yoga, where making an arm balance is not always successful on the very first attempt. This makes crow yoga very challenging for the body and the ego. Kakasana (Crow Pose) is one of the first poses among arm balances that students try to do. In the beginning, it seems impossible to get into this pose until you don’t try to practice and achieve it. This pose gives you a challenge in your practice to encourage your flexibility and strength.
Actually, crane and crow are two different yoga poses, but most people use these poses as modifications of one another. You practice Bakasana (Crane Pose) by straightening your arms and tucking your knees close to your underarms. But on the other hand, you perform Kakasana (Crow Pose) by flexing your hands and placing your knees on your upper arms.
To adopt this crow pose in yoga, you need to trigger your belly muscles, apply pressure on your hands, engage your shoulder blades, draw your legs in the midline, and above all these steps, you have to have complete trust in yourself. This pose builds a connection between your hands and knees, belly and spine, and mind and body.
Crow pose benefit you in strengthening arms, wrist, abdominal muscles and a stretch in your upper body and groin. The best thing in practice this pose is the confidence that you get while facing and managing your fears. The basics of the crow pose are:
Pose type: Arm Balancing
Target Region: Upper body
In Sanskrit: it is called Kakasana
Crow Pose Benefits:
This challenging pose stretches your glutes (buttocks), your back, wrist flexors and improves focus. It also strengthens your upper back, core, hip flexors, hamstrings, sternum muscles, upper back, forearms, shoulders, and wrist extensors (back of your wrist).
Mental Benefits:
The arm balance known as “Crow Pose” appears more terrifying than it actually is. It encourages you to concentrate on lifting rather than falling. You must overcome your fear of falling to the floor as you are bearing your weight on your hands. While lifting in the air, the crow pose improves core strength and sharpens the mind-body connection.
This pose improves your balance of holding a pose and practicing challenging poses. Crow posing motivates you to accept your fears and encourages you to fly.
Physical Benefits:
Kakasana is an incredibly full-body practice. It engages your core muscles and hands, as well as empowers your wrist flexors, legs, and upper back. Holding the pose by pressing your knees towards the back of your arm and lifting your body parts gives more physical benefits.
Crow Pose also stretches the core muscles and expands the hips. The position promotes the flexibility and elasticity of the vertebrae while stretching the back muscles and reducing acidity and heartburn.
Spiritual Benefits:
This crow posture encourages mindfulness and present-moment focus. This position is a representation of justice and endurance. It fortifies the sacral chakra, also called second chakra.
Crow Pose eventually helps us to reconnect with our feelings, emotions, and creative energy.
How to Do Crow Pose? Step-by-Step Guide
- Start by squatting and widely separating your knees. Your feet can be apart or combined.
- Set your hands on the floor and make a 6-8 inch difference between your hands and feet. You can wider your hands if you feel tightness in your shoulders.
- Raise your hips high while coming to the ball of your feet. Bring your knees closer to your upper arms.
- Lean forward to ensure that your shoulders line up between your knees.
- Firmly touch the tops of your forearms with your knees and balance them on your triceps to get into Cow Pose. For Crane Pose, tuck the knees into your armpit.
- Keep pushing your torso forward until your elbows load over your wrists and you notice a change in your center of gravity.
- Raise your heels with a force toward your hips. Develop a balance of your knees on triceps or grip your outer shoulder with your knees.
- Straighten your arms and bring your feet and buttocks closer together to practice crane pose.
- Hold the stance for 7 to 10 breaths, and then gradually lower your feet to the mat.
Most Common Mistakes of Crow Pose:
Do not allow your elbows to protrude outward to either side when you are in the pose. Maintain their alignment with your wrists and shoulders. Otherwise, you’ll be putting too much pressure on the wrists’ outsides, which could hurt them. By firmly pressing your fingertips into the ground and ensuring your elbows are over your wrists, you can help avoid this.
Avoid resting your legs on your hands, and raise your knees as high in your arms as possible. Ensure that you are not depending on your hips to hold the legs, but do it with your core muscles.
Keep looking out toward the horizon. Do not lower your head to look down. Otherwise, you’ll fall forward as a result of this and become unbalanced.
The most challenging aspect of the position is determining how much weight to shift onto your arms so that your feet raise but you don’t flop forward. Regularly practicing at home can give you a sense of how it feels to use the proper technique.
Beginner’s Instructions of Doing Crow Pose:
- Warm up your body, especially your wrists, before going to this pose.
- If you’re a beginner, you can try this pose by raising your hips high away from your heels rather than tucking your buttocks and heels together.
- To lift your feet off the ground, draw your groin into your pelvis and push your triceps and shoulders against the shins.
- As you know, this is an arm balancing pose, but core strength works here greatly. As you have stronger abs, most of the work comes from these. You will avoid loading too much of your weight on the back of your arms.
- Move slowly and don’t allow yourself to quickly propel forward to make balance. This can lead to any injury.
- Pressing your arms to the ground and pushing your knees into your arms will make you stable and strong.
- If you are afraid of falling, it can be quite difficult to get into a crane or crow. Use a blanket or cushion on the floor under your head to get rid of your fear of falling.
- If you are pregnant, have carpal tunnel syndrome, or have a wrist injury, avoid this pose.
Variations on Crow Pose:
Crow pose in yoga has variations to ease you. If you are tired, you can place your shin on the back of your upper arms, flexing the elbows and resting the body weight on the forearms.
Raise your hips higher; that will help you to use gravity while moving forward on your arms. You can also place a block under your feet to take off, which will help you to get into a pose easily.