An Easy Guide to Child’s Pose, or Balasana
Work your yoga practice with our easy guides to great yoga poses.Child’s Pose, or Balasana, is a great yoga pose for beginners or for any yogi who wants to stretch, relax and just breathe.
Child’s Pose, or Balasana, is a great yoga pose for beginners or for any yogi who wants to stretch, relax and just breathe. This pose is good to use as a calming break between more difficult asanas.
Child's Pose is a great restorative yoga pose - rest here whenever you need to.
While you're curled up, returning to basecamp, you'll also be stretching and lengthening your hamstrings, back and shoulders.
Watch a clip for this yoga pose
How to do Child’s Pose, or Balasana, in easy steps
Step 1:
Begin on your hands and knees.
Step 2:
Exhale and move your buttocks towards your feet, resting on your heels, your upper body sinking into the floor.
Step 3:
Lengthen - tailbone towards your toes and head away from your shoulders.
Step 4:
If comfortable, bring your forehead to the floor. Otherwise, rest your forehead on a block or bolster.
Step 5:
Bring your hands back - rest them next to the feet, palms up.
Step 6:
Let your upper back broaden. Relax and soften the lower back.
Step 7:
Allow all tension in your shoulders, arms, and neck to drain away.
Stay in the pose as long as comfortable, breathe softly.
Step 9:
Release the pose by rising slowly. Come back to kneeling or return to your hands and knees.
Yoga pose category: Kneeling
Level: 1
Child’s Pose is simple, easy, and is most likely one of the first yoga poses beginners will come across. Still, its important to remember that everyone has different levels of flexibility, so don’t worry if you can’t bend forward very far on first practice. Take your time, and trust that with practice, you will be able to stretch and bend further than before.
Sanskrit words meaning:
Bala - child
Asana – pose
Yoga pose health benefits:
Like all yoga poses, Child’s Pose has many health benefits. Use it to help with the following health conditions:
- Stress
- Neck pain
- Fatigue
- Anxiety
- Back pain
Yoga pose contraindications:
Don’t practice Child’s Pose if you have any of the following health conditions:
- Leg or foot cramp
- Pregnancy
- Knee injury
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Lucy Edge
is a yoga advocate and writer with three yoga books to her name, including the beloved travel memoir Yoga School Dropout. She writes regularly for the national press, has authored over 150 guides to types of yoga and yoga poses, discovered nearly 250 proven health benefits of yoga through her painstaking classification of 300 clinical studies, and collected more than 500 personal testimonials to the real life benefits of yoga. She is also the creator of our yoga shop – YogaClicks.Store – handpicking yoga brands that are beautifully made by yogis committed to environmental and social sustainability.
