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You’re perched on one foot in Warrior 3 (Virabhadrasana III) or Half Moon (Ardha Chandrasana) and your instructor cues you to “microbend your standing knee.” Ever obedient, you do. Your standing foot and ankle wobble like loopy, you virtually lose your steadiness, and also you immediately really feel much less secure. Does that imply “bend your knee” in yoga steadiness poses is an unhelpful cue? Under no circumstances.
Why You Need to Bend Your Knees in Yoga Stability Poses
Standing yoga steadiness poses are difficult. By their nature, they pressure you to create your individual inner assist, which suggests faltering and even perhaps failing. That, in flip, calls for bodily and psychological effort to assist preserve your steadiness.
However your physique and thoughts are geared towards effectivity. They’ll at all times take shortcuts to scale back effort. Standing with straight legs and locked knees is an instance of a shortcut that, over time, turns into a behavior. When your legs are straight and your muscle tissue are relaxed, the ligaments in the back of your knee are pressured to take care of your posture.
Should you’re standing for a very long time, reminiscent of in a line on the retailer or whilst you’re within the kitchen, locked knees do save vitality—not solely the bodily effort of partaking your leg muscle tissue however the psychological vitality you’ll expend to mindfully transfer out of your default place.
However in your mat, your behavior of locked knees might cease you from enhancing your stability. If you’re teetering and it’s taking all of your effort to stay upright on one foot, the stacked bones of a passively straight leg can present the phantasm of stability. Nevertheless in case your eyes or your consideration wander, the slightest shift in your middle of gravity could cause that phantasm to crumble. Relaxed muscle tissue can take too lengthy to get up in response to the necessity for motion, and the following factor you recognize you’ve toppled out of the pose.
It Takes a Little Observe to Stability
A barely bent standing knee may really feel much less secure, however it forces your leg and hip muscle tissue to stay engaged to offer the construction you are feeling you lack. If, or quite when, your middle of gravity is perturbed, you’ve already engaged the muscle tissue that you must discover a secure and central place once more.
To be extra prepared for the inevitable journeys, slips and wobbles you encounter in yoga (and in life), that you must educate your physique and thoughts a brand new behavior—to shift effort out of your leg and hip joints to your leg and hip muscle tissue.
Like all cue, the usefulness of taking a slight bend in your knee throughout balancing yoga poses relies upon, partially, on its intention. On this case, it’s not that can assist you FEEL extra secure however that can assist you BECOME extra secure.
