Ardha Uttanasana: Halfway Lift
more than a transitional yoga pose!
Skelly doing Ardha Uttanasana sans props!
Why Ardha Uttanasana is good for Yoga Mamas
Who doesn’t look down too much (at their phones, desks, babies, the crumbs on the floor that we know we should sweep up)? Who doesn’t hunch their shoulders at least some of the time? Who doesn’t need a little hamstring stretch after a long day sitting or standing, or just generally functioning in the world?
Ardha Uttanasana is such a great pose to counteract these habitual postures we can develop. It helps us open up our chests, release our hamstrings, and bring us some uplifting energy. It’s not just for mamas, either — most of us could use a little Halfway Lift, as it is sometimes called.
This pose is so overlooked because it’s usually not a place we’re told to linger! In a typical yoga class, it’s part of Surya Namaskar (Sun Salutation) and we pass through it as quickly as we would through a single step on a walk of hundreds of steps. It’s really used as a set up for opening the chest before we jump or step back to plank pose.
I’m gonna break the rules here, though (if passing only briefly through Ardha Uttanasana could even be considered a rule in yoga). I’m going to bring you into Ardha Uttanasana, a.k.a. Halfway Lift, and invite you to stay a few moments.
A pose in itself
Ardha Uttanasana gets translated in a few different ways: Halfway Lift, Upward Forward Fold, Half Intense Stretch, Standing Half Forward Bend. Are we bending, folding, lifting? What’s going on here??
First, let’s zone in on the main action of the pose: that hinge at the hips. It’s a forward fold, in other words, we’re in hip flexion. That means the spine stays lengthened instead of rounding forward or collapsing as we go into the forward fold. Since I’m a mom of small children and my life is immersed in play, I thought that our friend Skelly could demo some of the variations I’ll show in the video further down below!
hands on the shins if the ground feels a little far away and you don’t have blocks
hands on the back of a chair, couch, or against the wall if you don’t want to fold very far forward
Which brings us to props…
“Props allow you to experience the pose in YOUR body, just as you are, as we start to cultivate strength and mobility….When you give your body the support that it needs, you will benefit more from the yoga poses, as you are cultivating more ease and acceptance in the body and mind. Finding the balance of strength and ease is the goal. Props allow you to practice the “ease” part so that you can focus on the strength (and balance) part.”
-Janine Agoglia, Why Using Yoga Props is an Act of Self Love
Sometimes we strive too hard to touch the toes or the ground in Halfway Lift; we exert too much effort reaching toward something instead of focusing on the foundation we are reaching from (the hips!).
The focus is at the hinge of the hip — the toes don’t have much to do with it, and touching the ground is definitely not the point. Oh, how many times you’ll be able to use that hip hinge in your parenting! Don’t we do a version of Halfway Lift as we pick up toys or grab the toddler who’s running away? Raising kids is such a physical venture and having a good sense of hip hinge while keeping the spine lengthened is the key to keeping our backs healthy and strong. Think: the core is stable, the legs are working. That’s the essence of Ardha Uttanasana.
So without further ado, let’s try it together. I’ll show you some variations, and don’t worry about adding some wiggles. It keeps you from getting too rigid as you hold this pose that we almost never linger in.
Another Perspective - Play with it!
About a month ago I went to the Yoga Summit right here in Chicago and attended a workshop by Manny Garcia called Anatomy + Sequencing: The Shoulder Complex. At one point, Manny mentioned something I think he called “post it poses,” and explained that if you draw a yoga pose on a post it and then rotate it you can see that the body shape of the pose makes different yoga poses depending on how you position it. I was psyched to hear him say that because I’d pointed that out to students over the years but never had a term for it. Post it pose sounds good to me! Thanks, Manny:)
So let’s try with Skelly. Here are a couple of forms of Ardha Uttanasana, rotated:
You see that hip hinge in these ‘rotated’ versions of Ardha Uttanasana? Try it! The different orientation to gravity turns these variations into different poses altogether. Here’s to adding more playfulness and creative perspective to our yoga practices!
Beyond the Bones
I hope you found this post helpful and interesting! There truly is more than just one way to do a pose. In the spirit of Halloween, I find visualizing the position of our bones to be an effective way to find that comfortable sweet spot in a yoga pose.
But beyond the bones, I wanted to share yet another beautiful poem by
that goes more than skin deep. It’s a sort of homage to Halfway Lift. Before she gives us the poem, she reflects:“You know that moment or that movement between one thing and another?
It seems like transition, but it is also the thing in itself…
like that walk to the store, the lake, or to where ever you need to go and suddenly the walk itself is the place you inhabit. The lift of your leg becomes the moment you are present with more than the step you are about to take, more than your destination.”
I couldn’t have verbalized the feeling of Ardha Chandrasana better than that. Read the whole post and the poem here. Thank you, Corie Feiner, for so much poetic yoga inspiration!
Also, I highly recommend the post I linked to above by
about using yoga props and self love. Here is the link to it again; this can be so game changing if you’re struggling to find that sweet spot in Ardha Uttanasana, or any yoga pose, for that matter.More resources
If you’d like to read more about this wonderful yoga pose, here are some links to articles about it:
https://www.ekhartyoga.com/resources/yoga-poses/half-standing-forward-bend
https://www.yogabasics.com/asana/upward-forward-fold/
Did you enjoy this post? Know someone else who would? Share the love!
Thanks so much for sharing! I really appreciate it:)
Thanks for the mention, Jacquie! I love the idea of "post-it" poses. I often reference the relate pose but we "moved the floor." Like with Camel and Bridge, Triangle and Half Moon, etc. I love thinking about the poses in this way. Great essay exploration!