Balasana: Steps and Benefits of Child’s Pose on Hips, Thighs, & Ankles

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February 18, 2022

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Balasana is a basic yoga asana that is easy yet beneficial. It is the perfect yoga for beginners who have just started practicing the discipline and want to learn the basics. Balasana, when translated to English, means Child's Pose. The name is apt as this asana you will need you to position yourself like a fetus in a mother’s womb. A few other common names of Balasana Yoga are Garbhasana and Shashankasana.The main focus of Balasana is to stretch your body and regulate your breath without causing any discomfort. You can do this yoga when you need a break from doing other yoga poses that require you to exert yourself, such as weight loss yoga. The key aim of this asana is to regulate your breath so consistently that it becomes therapeutic to your body. You can learn Balasana yoga in any yoga class. All you have to do is look for “yoga classes near me” and book your next slot. You will also find plenty of offline and online yoga classes that teach Parsva Balasana, kids yoga, and other beginner, intermediate, and advanced-level yoga poses. However, if you want to know more about this yoga before actually trying it in a yoga class, read on:

How to do Balasana?

Performing Balasana is very easy. In fact, it is one of those yoga asanas that are taught to beginners in yoga classes. Here is how you can do Balasana step by step:

Spread a mat or towel and kneel on it.
Sit on your heels, touch your big toes to each other, and then separate your knees to a hips-wide width.
Take a deep breath, exhale, and place down your torso in between the thighs.
Make your sacrum spread across your pelvis back.
While lifting the base of the skull apart from the back of your neck, stretch the tailbone away from the back of your pelvis.
Place down your torso on the mat and lay your hands down with your palms up.
Push your shoulders towards the mat. You can experience the pull of shoulder blades while doing this.

Duration

Balasana is very easy to do hence you can perform it for longer than other other advanced-level asanas. You start from 30 seconds and go up to a few minutes. The pose when you bend forward and your torso rests on your thighs can last for 1-3 minutes.

Benefits of Doing Balasana

As this asana is simple and popular among biginners and experts aline, the list of the Balasana benefits is quite long. Here are the top 10 benefits of Child's Pose:

Improves Your Digestion: The first benefit that you will experience after performing child's pose regularly is the improvement in your digestion. When your stomach rests on your upper thighs, your internal organs get gently massaged, ultimately helping in improving digestion. When you take deep breaths in balasana pose, your abdomen moves towards the leg and then get back to their original position. This repetitive motion strengthens your intestinal tract along with maintaining the acidity in the stomach. You can enjoy healthy recipes after doing child pose asana to reap maximum benefits from this pose.
Helps in Relaxing the Mind: While doing the Balasana, the spot between your eyebrows—called the third eye in yoga⁠—restes on the yoga mat. This produces a soothing effect on your brain. When you fold your body forward and close your eyes, a signal is sent to your brain that everything around you is safe and calm. Whenever you start to have a swirl of uncontrolled thoughts in your mind, do child pose yoga and you will experience an instant calmness in your mind.
Gives Energy: This restorative yoga asana is actually done in the interval of other asanas. When you do the Balasana pose, your whole body gets relaxed and you start to recharge your mind and the body.
Strengthening of Your Lower Back: The modern lifestyle demanda that we sit at the desk for long hours. This can cause compression in your lower back. It usually is the result of added body weight on our lower back instead of engaging our lower abdominal muscles. When you perform Balasana, you flow your legs backward and that reverses the splaying of the tailbone. This reversal can siginifcantly reduce your lower back pain.
Strengthens the tendons and ligaments: When you perform Balasana, you gently stretch and strengthen the tendons and ligaments of various joints. Weaker tendons and ligaments can give rise to a number of health problems. However, by doing this yoga, you can prevent ligament problems.
Maintains Health of Your Posterior: Along with just the lower back, our sedentary lifestyle also deteriorates the health of our hips. When we sit on chairs for long periods of time, the muscles around the hips become stiff, making us prone to hip injuries in the future. But Balasana can protect our hip health. The asana separates the knees to make our stomach rest between them. This stretch and pose gives a nice stretch to our hips. You will experience the improvement in the health of the muscles near the hips area once you start practicing Balasana regularly.
Helps Releasing the Tension: When we feel tired after a long day’s work the Child Pose yoga can come to the rescue. It helps release all your body’s tension. And when you take a deep breath, your nervous system receives a signal that the environment around you is calm.
Improves Blood Circulation: , An improvement in blood circulation is one of the lesser-known Balasana benefits. Although the body movements in the asana are slow, the stretch and pose still push you toward having an increased blood flow.
Leads to Better Sleep: As the yoga child pose provides instant relaxation of the mind and body, it promotes better sleep too. Your tension gets released and the mind gets relaxed.
Improves Movement And Flexibility: When you do Balasana Yoga pose, you stretch your shoulder and ankle muscles. These stretches lead to an improvement in movement and flexibility. With better flexibility, you also get prevent potential injuries too.

Precautions to Be Taken While Practising Balasana Yoga Pose

It is true that Balasana is very easy to master and has no side effects. However, you should also not take extended child pose lightly and do it with precision. Here are certain points of caution that you should know as you perform the Balasana yoga pose:

When you first begin, you may find the pose uncomfortable. Try a soft pillow.
If you are having certain medical conditions such as knee injuries or diarrhea, you should avoid doing Balasana.
Refrain from doing balasana yoga pose if you are suffering from hypertension or high blood pressure.
Avoid doing Balasana if you are pregnant. Start doing it post-partum after consulting with a medical expert.

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