tiger pose

(photo by Stone Wang, Unsplash)

tiger pose

I really like the this pose, and it's variations. As one of the Hathena poses, it has many benefits. And from Dr Swami Gitananda, who first taught me about this, when I was young:

• Hathenas are forcing techniques used to produce a particular effect on the body
• these forcing techniques are to pressure various nerves in the body corresponding to the part of the lungs to be expanded, reconditioned or rejuvenated. As in these postures here
• Chatus Pada, the four footed postures, are those named after birds, animals, fish, insects, and they make up the majority of the classical Hathasanas
• these Chatus Pada poses, rather than more advanced poses and practices, are the best to be used by children before puberty. And children, of course, do them fast. I have always been somewhat aghast at people wanting their children to practice yoga just as they themselves do it. Children have different needs. And these Chatus Pada poses, honestly they make children's growth rather beautiful: their bodies, nerves, muscles, breathing capacity, ease of movement, develop in a very lovely manner

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There are so many ways to do tiger pose. This is the most basic. On all fours, inhale to cat lift (head and bottom upwards, abdomen down) at the same time raising your right leg high behind you. Exhaling, bend your right knee towards your head as below. Pull the navel towards the ceiling. Do this three times with each leg. 

tiger breath

Less well known is doing tiger pose as a pranayama. Start by: 

• inhale as you bend your knee forward and tuck your head under
• exhale as you lift your head and raise your leg up high behind you

How  does this differ from tiger pose? In tiger pose we are expanding the lungs as we inhale, and exhaling very throughly. This helps so much with breathing capacity.

In tiger breath, we are strengthening each side of the lungs as we bring the knee forwards, and this is therefore a great pranayama (breathing exercise) for those with breathing difficulties such as asthma. 

use tiger pose instead of a harder pose


I know that these days it's all about doing downward dog, as below, with one leg high up in the air behind us, but as a yoga teacher I can tell you that this is not always possible. For many reasons: lack of strength or stamina; high blood pressure; serious eye maladies; joint issues. For any of these reasons, we can do tiger pose instead. Either on all fours simply raising one leg up behind us, on the in breath. Or, when one is going from downdog with one leg raised high into a head to knee situation where we do this as we rock forwards curving our spine coming up high on the back foot, as below, instead we can do the tiger pose as drawn above.