Variations on Half Moon Pose
a form of ardha chandrasana for almost everyone
“There is no such thing as work-life balance — it is all life. The balance has to be within you.”
-Sadhguru
Balance
It’s unfortunate the number of people who are turned off by yoga because they think they’re not flexible enough to do it. Whenever people express this worry to me, I tell them that not doing yoga because they’re not flexible is like not wanting to study a subject because they don’t know anything about it…
And anyways, yoga is more than just flexibility! If anything, the most important thing is flexibility of mind to modify our yoga poses to suit our needs. How can we look at a particular yoga pose and find a way that almost anyone can practice it no matter what their flexibility and experience with yoga?
Let’s explore how we can do that with Half Moon pose, a.k.a. Ardha Chandrasana. This pose offers us the chance to practice balance, and it takes some flexibility in certain areas.
Perspective: alignment and variations
sometimes finding balance means taking the same shape to the floor in a supine form of ardha chandrasana
In Half Moon pose, we turn sideways. We reach for the ground and the sky at the same time as we balance on one foot. It’s one of those very expansive poses that helps us embody the idea of taking up space. It’s also a pose of staying grounded so that we can, in an energetic sense, defy gravity.
When the legs are straight, the bottom hand is on the ground and the top hand is reaching victoriously toward the sky, Half Moon is a beautiful pose to any onlooker and… sometimes the variation I just described is difficult or uncomfortable for some people. Fortunately, there is more than one way to do Half Moon pose and the important thing is that it feels good in your body. It might still be challenging, but it should feel feasible and safe for your joints and muscles.
I used to parrot some of my early yoga teachers and say something like, “You can use a block under your hand if needed, or practice against the wall. But if you want to do the full pose…” Hold on — what is the full pose? After all these years of practice and teaching, I’ve realized the full pose is how your individual body can do the pose now, not some picture-perfect image you might see on Instagram. Each version of the pose is the full pose for that person!
Whatever your personal version of Ardha Chandrasana you practice, this is where props might come into play to help you find comfort and ease. Using props does not mean you cannot go fully into a pose; it just means you are listening to your body and respect it enough to add support when needed. Last year I wrote a post on the benefits of using yoga props and how they can support us in going more deeply into a pose. Here’s a little bit of my own forgotten wisdom from that post:
“A door can be a yoga prop; a kitchen counter, a wagon, a chair, even some toys can be props. Use your imagination. Know that you don’t have to buy all the fancy yoga paraphernalia or even set up your mat and practice for a full hour. One moment supported in a pose at the wall or kitchen counter might not feel profound the way an hour-long yoga session does, but I’d like to suggest that brief yoga moments like these practiced every day can help you go deeper into your life and practice in a way that is more integrated.”
Your body will thank you for using props when you need them, and it can also be fun! If you’re not sure how to use props or how to modify your alignments, here’s a little video to get you started.
Variations I mention in the video:
start in star pose, set up for trikonasana and tip to the side (let bottom hand dangle if needed)
yoga block under bottom hand
bottom hand on counter, chair, wall or back of the couch
raised foot to the wall
instead of bottom foot to ground, practice with bottom knee to ground
back of body to the wall
supine (option to use strap around the ‘would-be standing’ foot)
Our senses and balance
We all need stimulation. Sometimes yoga gets billed as a way to decrease stimulation and relax our nervous system, and while we all need that from time to time, we also need healthy forms of stimulation. What does that look like in a yoga practice?
You may have heard of our five senses (sight, taste, tough, hearing, and smell), but did you know we have more than that? When it comes to balance poses, we use two other senses: proprioception and our vestibular system. These two senses bring us a sense of active engagement and stimulation and if we feed these two senses regularly, we can learn to be more relaxed in our balance poses!
Here’s a fun way to challenge your vestibular system in Half Moon pose: change the position of your head! You can look up, down, straight forward, or even shift which way you look over and over. Not only will you get a nice little stretch in the neck, you’ll stimulate and challenge your vestibular system.
Here’s a fun way to get more in touch with your proprioception in Half Moon pose: practice with your raised foot against a wall. Push that sole of that foot into the wall and the added pressure in the joints of that leg will activate your proprioception and also provide a stabilizing force. You can also practice the pose with the entire back of your body against the wall for balance support and to help keep your top leg and hip from collapsing forward.
These ways of experimenting and playing around with Half Moon pose can be so refreshing and feel so good in the body! I’m all for letting go of rigid alignment rules and allowing ourselves some wiggle room to go outside the traditional pose. Why not? It’s true that having good alignment can help prevent injuries, but sometimes poses get taught in a way that does not suit all bodies. Sometimes we can get fixated on the traditional shape of a pose and get injured when we don’t listen to our bodies.
Above all, keep the breath moving, the face and shoulders relaxed, and release tension anywhere in your body that doesn’t need to engage to hold you up in Half Moon pose. There, you go, some ways to practice Ardha Chandrasana no matter how easy or difficult you find it. Ardha Chandrasana and other balancing poses are great for activating our proprioception and vestibular systems, and tailoring it to suit our bodies so that we can stay comfortable and calm is well worth the effort. Let yourself approach it with an attitude of curiosity and play; that is the ultimate level of flexibility as we let go of rigid ideas of what yoga is, and what Half Moon pose, or any pose, should look like.
Here is the link to beautiful yoga poem that provided the inspiration for this post. Thank you,
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