Anatomical Breakdown of Karandavasana

Karandavasana translates to Himalayan goose pose. It’s one of the two peak postures in the Ashtanga intermediate series. Many long-term Ashtanga practitioners consider it to be nearly impossible. So what makes this pose so challenging? And, is it really impossible? Read on to break down the anatomy and techniques of karandavasana.

Aspects of karandavasana

There are several key aspects that come together to create karandavasana. The base of karandavasana is a forearm balance. So if you had to put this posture in one category, I would call it an arm balance posture. This pose also includes a full lotus. So, it also goes in the category of poses that require significant external hip rotation. And, this pose is dynamic. So, you could include it in the small subcategory of postures that include moving within a shape as part of the pose itself. Karandavasana is not for beginners or dabblers. As a result of combining all of these different types of movement, it is complicated, making it difficult to achieve the full expression of the pose.

Anatomy of Karandavasana

The lotus

One reason karandavasana is so challenging is that it combines multiple anatomical pieces, each of which can be challenging on its own. It requires a full lotus without the use of your hands. Therefore your lotus should be easily accessible to you. For a reliable lotus, your hips need to comfortably do external rotation. Just a half lotus can challenge many practitioners’ bodies. That’s especially true if they also do other sports or activities that shorten and tighten the muscles around their hips, such as running and cycling. We’ve written extensively about lotus posture already but a quick recap of muscles that tend to get tight includes the gluteus minimus, gluteus medius, and the deep six lateral rotators of the hip.

Forearm balance

The second anatomical piece of karandavasana is everything happening in the shoulder girdle to do the forearm balance. Maintaining the forearm balance requires a balance of openness in the shoulder girdle with sufficient strength to maintain that as a base. Specifically, serratus anterior and latissimus dorsi do most of the stabilization of the shoulder girdle with some assistance from the deltoids. Then, we have our abdominals stabilizing our spine when we’re upside down.

Dynamic movement

The third anatomical piece of karandavasana comes up in the dynamic aspect of the pose. After we establish our forearm balance and bring our legs into a lotus, we flex at our hip joints to draw our lotus in toward our abdomen. When we lower our legs, it’s primarily controlled by our pelvis moving first and foremost. That action also requires an eccentric contraction of our erector spinae muscles. This eccentric contraction resists the pull of gravity on the way down. Then we have to engage our erector spinae to bring the pelvis back up and extend the spine when we uncurl our lotus and lift that lotus back up after holding it there for five breaths.

Techniques

Unless you’re coming to your yoga practice with a gymnastics background, you aren’t likely to do karandavasana fully on your first try. There’s a reason it’s considered a peak posture in the Ashtanga intermediate series. It’s complicated and just plain hard. For that reason, the first part of the technique for karandavasana is really an approach, rather than a specific technique: break it down into pieces.

Practice your lotus

The first step is to work on your lotus. You need a consistent, comfortable lotus pose to do karandavasana. I emphasize that your lotus needs to be consistent and comfortable because, of course, you need to be able to find a lotus position upside down and without using your hands. If your lotus is still tenuous when you’re right side up, then you’re not ready to take it into karandavasana yet. Instead, consider doing more lotus preparation work.

Train your upside-down lotus

Once you have an established lotus on the ground, the next step is to figure out how to create your lotus upside down and without your hands. A helpful way to practice this initially is in a regular headstand. If you’re considering karandavasana at all, then you’re likely a more advanced practitioner. You’ve probably been doing headstand for many years and are comfortable and steady in your headstand. That makes it a good place to experiment.

Practice your headstand lotus

Set up your headstand as you usually would, and then see what happens when you try to create a lotus with your legs without coming out of the headstand. It can be helpful to reach the left leg slightly away and behind you to open up the hip crease as much as possible on that leg before you try to wriggle your right foot in there to start your lotus. For others, folding part way at the hips eases the tension in the front of the hips and allows them to bring the first foot in deeper. You can follow that by using a more rapid movement to bring the second foot in. The velocity of movement actually helps build up some force that you might normally use your hands for.

Once you’ve found your upside-down lotus in headstand, your next step is to explore the action of folding at the waist and lowering, then raising your lotus. Don’t try to get all the way to your arms. Just explore what’s necessary to lower and lift your legs. Although it appears that it is your lotus doing the work of lowering down, as we mentioned earlier, the real work is to initiate and control the hard part of the movement from your pelvis.

Put the pieces together

Your last step is to put all the pieces together. (I haven’t mentioned the forearm balance because as the base of this posture, you shouldn’t attempt karandavasana until your forearm balance is pretty consistent.)

To put all the pieces together, first come up into your forearm balance. Then, as you practiced in headstand, let your left leg and hip open at the hip crease and fall behind you a bit to make more space to get the right foot into place. Then, bring your left leg over the top of your right to complete your lotus. Doing this quickly can help. It may also be helpful to fold slightly at the waist. It’s important to keep your shoulder girdle engaged the whole time you are assembling your lotus, so that you don’t collapse toward the floor with your upper body.

Options for working karandavasana

The action of lowering your lotus down to the backs of your arms, holding it there without collapsing, and then lifting it back up is the hardest part of this pose for most practitioners. There are several different ways you can approach training your body to get stronger and more able to do that series of actions.

Step one is to fold only your lotus in toward your torso without releasing your pelvis. In other words, fold your lotus as far as you can while resisting movement from your pelvis and lower back. This helps keep everything in alignment with your center of gravity and the foundation created by your forearms. From this point, resist gravity as you try to lower everything toward the back of your arms. This movement should feel like it is being resisted from your lower back. Most people make the mistake of mixing the hip joint folding and the lowering together too soon, so separate those pieces initially.

You can practice lowering only part way and stopping before gravity has taken over and you’re falling. In other words, stop at the point where you can still lift yourself back up to a forearm balance and your knees are pointing up. Try lowering to that point and then immediately lifting back up, repeating this several times. To mix it up, you can try lowering to that same part-way point, then holding for five breaths there, and then lifting back up. And, of course, you should practice lowering all the way to the backs of your arms with as much control as possible. Experiment with trying to lift back up immediately after touching down, and try holding for five breaths and then try to lift back up.

Cautions

Be attentive to your knees when moving in and out of lotus in this pose. There’s a lot going on in this posture for you to track at the same time. The arm balancing aspect adds a certain level of precariousness to assembling the lotus that you wouldn’t necessarily have if you were putting your lotus together using your hands while seated on the ground. If you’re experiencing tension around one or both knees, or something about the lotus isn’t working, go slow with it. It’s ideal to have a teacher around to support the balance aspect of this pose while you’re first learning it so that you can give more attention to how the other aspects of the pose feel while you’re putting it all together.