Sitting is not the healthiest position for the human body. The amount of time we spend in chairs in the modern age is inconvenient for our tightening hip flexors, freezing inner thighs, and overworked hamstrings. All these groups get short and weak when we spend too much time at our desks. However, Easy Pose or Sukhasana can help you reorient your body to healthy sitting. For a posture that strengthens a weak back, Easy Pose can really help you open up.

Sukhasana can help you get a strong back, stretch your ankles and knees, and open your hips and groins. The spinal alignment that comes with your straight posture can also help you stay calm. Learn about this pose’s benefits and how to perform it by reading below.

 

Benefits of Easy Pose

Maybe you work at a desk all day counting numbers or arbitrating advertising deals. Maybe you’re a marketer or you write health blogs for a living. Regardless of what you do, so many of us are locked into chairs and this affects our posture, which affects our health. Lengthening and straightening your spine in Easy Pose is one of its most potent benefits.

By opening the space between vertebrae, you can improve your posture, which makes your muscles load more efficiently and healthily. This action can also help you calm down, normalizing blood flow to your head and throughout your body.

In a purely physical sense, Easy Pose can also make your back stronger, an effect which will increase as you use this pose to sit more healthily. You’ll get a stretch in your ankles and knees as well as your inner and outer thighs begin to open up. Softening and stretching your groins and adductors can help you relieve tension in your hips and take the load off your hip flexors.

All these effects benefit people who live sedentary lifestyles or who sit for a living. Since that’s most of us these days, sitting tall in Easy Pose can help you keep up your posture throughout your busy week.

 

How to Do the Pose

In Staff Pose, cross your legs with your right shin in front of your left. Your knees should be directly over your feet. On the ground, your weight should be directly on your sits bones with a neutral pelvis. What does that mean? Here’s what I tell people: imagine your pelvis is a bucket full of water. Neutral is the position where no water tips out from the front or back (it’s the healthiest position for your pelvis to be!).

When you’ve found this position, place your hands on your knees and use the weight of your arms to stretch and lengthen your spine. Pull your sacrum towards the front of your hips while holding your spine in a straight, lifted position. Turn your palms up as you draw your arms into the side of your body. At the same time, lift your chest and securely plant your sits bones.

Both acts together should open and straighten you even more, letting your spine get as long as possible. Level your head over your hips and keep your chin straight and level, with a soft gaze that emphasizes the neutrality of this position.

You can remain here for a few breaths or a few minutes. Just remember to exhale out of the pose and re-cross your legs in the opposite order.

 

The Takeaway

Easy Pose was made to take it easy. It allows you to lengthen your spine and open your hips in the way in which they were designed. This helps you get acquainted with “how” you should be sitting every day. For those of us that sit for a living or for one reason or another find that our lives have become sedentary, Easy Pose could be a back-saver.