This is Not Your Typical Balancing Pose in Yoga. Here's What You Need to Know.

"Akarna Dhanurasana is a pose of focused attention. "Karna" means the ear and the prefix "a" means near or toward. Since "dhanu" means bow, the image is of an archer pulling back a bowstring. Besides flexibility in the hip joints and vertebral column, the pose demands good balance. Beginning and intermediate students can both benefit from Akarna Dhanurasana. It can relieve back fatigue after vigorous asanas, stretch the hamstrings (back thigh muscles) of the straight leg, and open the hip joint of the bent leg."

"What You Need to Know About This Pose Like any asana, this one reflects poise between opposite forces. The mind must be balanced between the forward reach of the front arm and the backward movement of the bent arm pulling the leg up and back. Physically, the pose requires abdominal strength; mentally, it takes one-pointed concentration ( ekagrata), which is a crucial lesson of yoga."

"According to The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, gathering one's self inward to examine the relationship between movement and stillness is asana, the concentrated examination of breath is , while the detached examination of the effect of the senses upon the mind is pratyahara. These are part of Patanjali's eight steps of yoga, and each requires increasing discipline to observe and channel one's energy."

Akarna Dhanurasana evokes an archer and requires hip and spinal flexibility plus good balance. The pose benefits beginning and intermediate students by relieving back fatigue after vigorous practice, stretching the straight-leg hamstrings, and opening the bent-leg hip joint. The posture demands abdominal strength and sustained one-pointed concentration (ekagrata), balancing a forward-reaching arm with a backward pull of the bent arm. Classical yoga frames asana as inward gathering to examine movement and stillness, with subsequent practices involving concentrated breath examination and withdrawal of the senses (pratyahara). Body stillness supports mental stillness and vice versa.

Read at Yoga Journal