Compass Pose in Yoga: What’s going on here?

Two of the most challenging aspects of this posture are hamstring and side body flexibility. Stretching of the side body is often overlooked in yoga, and when it comes time to try this posture, you may find you are stiff where you didn’t even know it. Let’s talk about how to get into the pose first.

Performing Compass Pose

Start seated with your legs in a butterfly position. Keep your left leg in the half butterfly and pick up your right leg as if you were cradling a baby.

1. Keep the right hip externally rotated as you snake the right hand down to the ground on the inside of the leg for support.
2. Continue holding onto the right foot with your left hand, pinky finger pointed up to the sky.
3. Ground your left sitting bone into the mat as you begin to extend your right leg. You may come off of your right sitting bone and that is okay.
4. Try to look underneath the right arm when the leg is fully extended, bending the top arm slightly to pull the leg closer to your head.

So there is a lot going on here! Even just getting into the pose is a task in and of itself. So what muscles do we need to focus on? We will talk about that next.First, you need to make sure that your core and spine are strengthened in order to hold this posture. Your transverse abdominus and erector spinae do most of the work through the gentle twist of the spine here.

The adductors also play a role in the extension of the leg, with the adductor magnus and gracilis being stretched the most. Finally, the muscles in the side body that are lengthening include the quadratus lumborum, latissimus dorsi, and oblique muscles.

How can we improve our side body stretching? Continue reading to find out!

~Lightness~

1. Start in a kneeling position, like you would for Camel Pose.
2. Laterally flex the body to one side, placing your hand on the ground and reaching the opposite arm up and overhead. This is our starting Target position.
3. Then, rotate the torso slightly downward toward the floor. This is your Leverage position.
4. Rotate your torso back into true lateral flexion, increasing the stretch by moving closer to the floor through your side body.
5. Repeat 5 times on each side.

Remember that there are always steps to advancing a posture or stretch. Stick with the method and you will see lasting results that continue guide you, even when you feel lost. Come back next week to see how we can continue improving our Compass Pose.

Be sure to try our Side Bending Programs below:

You may also be interested in

Don’t see what you want? Need help selecting a program? Want to buy more than one program? We can put together a one step checkout for you with all the programs that you wish to buy so you don’t need to keep clicking the buy now button over and over again and can checkout one time with all the programs you need.
We’re here for you! Just send us an email to info@easyflexibility.com describing your goals and we will help select the right program for you!