Child’s Pose: Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Kneel on the floor. Touch your big toes together and sit on your heels, then separate your knees about as wide as your hips.

2. Exhale and lay your torso down between your thighs. Broaden your sacrum across the back of your pelvis and narrow your hip points toward the navel, so that they nestle down onto the inner thighs. Lengthen your tailbone away from the back of the pelvis while you lift the base of your skull away from the back of your neck.

3. Lay your hands on the floor alongside your torso, palms up, and release the fronts of your shoulders toward the floor. Feel how the weight of the front shoulders pulls the shoulder blades wide across your back.

4. Child pose is a resting pose. Stay anywhere from 30 seconds to a few minutes. Beginners can also use child pose to get a taste of a deep forward bend, where the torso rests on the thighs. Stay in the pose from 1 to 3 minutes. To come up, first lengthen the front torso, and then with an inhalation lift from the tailbone as it presses down and into the pelvis.

The Benefits of Child’s Pose:

Releases tension in the back, shoulders and chest

Recommended if you have dizziness or fatigue

Helps alleviate stress and anxiety

Flexes the body’s internal organs and keeps them supple

It lengthens and stretches the spine

Relieves neck and lower back pain when performed with the head and torso supported

It gently stretches the hips, thighs and ankles

Normalizes circulation throughout the body

It stretches muscles, tendons and ligaments in the knee

Calms the mind and body

Encourages strong and steady breathing