Reclining Hip Opening Postures to Reduce Stress in the Outer Hips and Lower Back

These are some variations you can do while lying on your back to open your hips and help reduce stress in your outer hips and lower back. Because you are lying on your back it makes it easier to protect your knees as you open the outer hips. Some of what you are releasing is the tension in the external hip rotator muscles like the piriformis or the obturator internus and externus. There are a lot of muscles in that area that attach from the pelvic structure to the outer thigh. When these muscles are stressed or tight it can cause some tension in the lower back. Reducing this tension by stretching the outer hip muscles can help relieve some of this tension.

The four photos that are variations of reclining ankle to knee go from softer and easier to more intense and deeper. There are also four photos of a reclining variation of Cow Faced (gomukhasana) pose that progress in a similar manner from move basic to more challenging.

==

In this first photo it is hard to see that my hands are holding my right leg so that my hands are in between the back of my calf and the back of my thigh.



==

In this second pose I am a little deeper as I am holding the knee. This gives me a little more leverage to open deeper.



==

In the third photo I am holding the back of my heel from the outer edge of the foot. The leg position starts to look a lot like the seated pose without the ground there to force you deeper than ought to have gone.



==

In the fourth photo I have simply taken the pose a little deeper.



==

The fifth photo is the first variation of Reclining Cow Face. It is gentle I am only holding softly near the knees.



==

The sixth photo, which is the second Reclining Cow Face, is almost the same as the previous photo. The main difference are that my hands are a little farther away from my knees and I am trying to rotate my shins a little more to open the hips a little more deeply.



==

In the seventh photo I am holding my shins right near my feel and going considerably deeper than I went in the previous variation.



==

And in the eighth photo I am still doing reclining Cow Faced Pose, but I am holding the back of my heels to help protect my knees while opening my hips far more deeply that in any of the other photos presented here.



Go to: Cow Faced Pose: Gomukhasana: A Seated Hip Opening Pose to Reduce Tension in the Outer Hip and Lower Back
Go to: Ankle to Knee Pose: A Seated Hip Opening Pose to Stretch from the Outer Hip into the Lower Back