Mermaid Yoga Pose from low lunge is a great modification for King Pigeon – aka Eka Pada Rajakapotasana.
This pose is a very deep shoulder, chest, groin, hip flexor, and quadriceps opener. It hits all of the muscles strained by sitting.
Keep reading to learn how to prep your body for mermaid yoga pose from a low lunge with classes, tips, and the asana breakdown with Clara Roberts-Oss!
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Review the tutorial with Clara Roberts-Oss
I wanted to break down a variation of the mermaid pose in lunge versus doing it in pigeon pose. This variation from lunge is a great way to lead up towards king pigeon. From the lunge pose, I find it can be more accessible for people’s bodies because it’s not as deep of a hip opener and a lot easier on the knees.
That being said, it also can be too much on the knees. I recommend some padding underneath your back knee. I’ve got this little chip block, so it’s soft. You can use a blanket; you can use whatever you have around. I always recommend starting with a strap, regardless of whether or not you need it.
You’ll grab a strap. You can also always use a bathrobe, regular belt, or exercise band. Ideally, the band is thick, meaning that it will support you.
I love this pose because it is a very deep shoulder, psoas, groin, and chest opener.
It’s an asymmetrical backbend and a hip opener.
It hits everything I find our bodies need from all the sitting. Backbends are so good for that. Given our lifestyle these days, they’re so therapeutic for our bodies.
I’m going to come on to hands and knees. I will step my right knee onto the padding and step my left foot forward into a lunge.
I don’t generally teach this pose in a one-hour class, but I wanted to break it down for you.
If you start to feel compression in your lower back, you’ll want to keep your torso forward and down. I’m bending quite deep into the front knee so that, ideally, I’m not on the kneecap of my back knee. I’m kind of where my knee and my thigh meet. That being said, I sometimes find when I bend the back knee, regardless of whether or not I’m on the, like, on the thigh, I can still feel a little bit too much pressure on my knee, which is why I have padding underneath there.
From here, you may want to stay upright. Or you can take the cow-face arms option with the strap. Hold onto the strap and lift the chest. So here’s the mermaid pose from lunge.
This shape means I need to have many openings in my groin. If you know that your groin is tight, you want to do a bit of groin opening before you work towards this pose, either in your home practice or the sequence.
Coming out of it, I like to neutralize the spine, which means not going right back into down dog. I place my hands on either side of the front foot, curl the back toes under, lift the back knee off the ground, and then hug the inner thighs towards each other. I just lengthen the spine forward, and I take about five breaths here, so the spine is neutral.
Another way to come out of the mermaid pose from lunge is to have your students or yourself come onto hands and knees. Claw mat with finger pads, and imagine you’re dragging your palms back and your knees forward. This just softly engages your abdominals, which will widen your back.
Just breathe here, and then your toes curled under. Then you can sit back on the heels or tops of feet on the ground and sit back just ideally, especially because that backbends quite deep, come to a neutral spine for at least 5 to 8 breaths to allow the body to come back to the middle before you go to the other side.
I like teaching this. Whenever I do an asymmetrical backbend, I want to end with a symmetrical backbend.
Because this pose is asymmetrical, we want to tie it all together by doing one full backbend. What we did today in the mermaid pose is essentially a bow pose, so we did that bow pose but with a big strap and loop.
You can do any backbend, bridge, wheel, or bow pose. You’re fully primed for what we call Dwipada Dandasana, which is wheel pose, and then you put your forearms on the ground like you would in a headstand.
If this were an advanced class, like the one I teach, where I teach two-and-a-half-hour practice, we would do Dvipada Dandasana, not in a one-hour class. When I do big backbends like this asymmetrically, I do a couple of symmetrical backbends to tie it all together.
I would use a supported backbend if the energy level is not there for a deep, symmetrical backbend. In a supported backend, we would take a supported bridge pose or supported fish pose so that you are resting in the backbend but allowing the body to settle in so that the left and right sides come back to balance.
The hamstrings and core need to be strengthened. Today, we did that by starting in that chair pose where I had your hands behind you, arching and rounding the spine, a funny variation of cat-cow.
It’s also a wonderful way of strengthening your back muscles because they have to engage from going down to coming up. So I’m already lighting them up to get ready to backbend.
We also strengthened the chest by doing those Chaturangas to strengthen the core and just to bring awareness into the front body. Especially for those of us who are very open, if you’re coming into backbends, it can really compress the lower back.
I also wanted to strengthen the front body, which is only sometimes what people think of right off the bat when doing backbends. To counter the backbends, we did cow face. We did an intense hip opener, and I wanted us to stay more upright. Then, I countered the opening of the chest by closing the chest with the eagle arms.
Then we released, and we bowed forward. Forward folds are traditionally what people think of doing to counter backbends. I’m not super big on deep forward folds after backbends just because you’re taking the spine in the opposite direction, and depending on where it is, it can strain your back.
We did mild or supported forward folds. That’s why I asked you or offered the block underneath the forehead. It helps to create that rounding shape without going too deep into the lower back.
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