Downward Facing Dog Pose: Adho Mukha Svanasana

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Benefits

  • Elongates and releases tension from your spine
  • Stretches your hamstrings, calves, arches, and hands
  • Strengthens your arms, shoulders, and back
  • Improves mobility of your digestive system
  • Relieves back pain, headaches, insomnia and fatique
  • Helps relieve the symptoms of menopause
  • Downward-Facing Dog is a mild inversion that calms the nervous system and helps relieve stress

Downward Facing Dog Pose: Adho Mukha Svanasana

Cautions

  • Wrist problems like carpal tunnel syndrome or arthritis
  • High blood pressure
  • Eye or inner ear infection
  • Avoid this pose in late-term pregnancy

Steps

Adho Mukha Svanasana (AH-doh MOO-kah shvah-NAHS-anna)

adho = downward
mukha = face
svana = dog

  1. Come onto your hands and knees with your plams just forward of the shoulders.
  2. Spread your fingers with your index finger forward, knees unders your hips and toes tucked.
  3. Inhale and lift your knees away from the floor as sit-bones reach towards the ceailing.
  4. At first, keep the knees slightly bent and the heels lifted away from the floor.
  5. Exhale and elongate up through your tailbone moving the abdomen towards the heels.
  6. Your heels lower and your legs lengthen without strain to the hamstrings or a pull on the pelvis. 
  7. Roll your upper thighs inward slightly and roll the heels outward slightly.
  8. Maintain light pressure on the bases of your index fingers.
  9. Widen the shoulder blades and feel them move towards your tailbone.
  10. Keep a long neck with your head comfortable in line with the arms.
  11. Your elbow and knee joints should not be locked.
  12. Emphasize length in the spine as you keep even weight on the hands and feet.  For beginners, a slight softness can be kept in the knees, and the heels do not have to touch the floor.
  13. Hold for several breaths, then exit to a new pose or come down to rest in child's pose or thunderbolt pose.

Modifications

  • Ease pressure on your wrists by placing a wedge under your palms or performing the pose on your elbows.
  • Elevate hands on blocks or on the seat of a chair to release and open your shoulders.

Videos With This Pose in Them

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