Halfmoon Pose
Who:
You
What posture?
Half Moon
Where is the primary focus?
The long side of your body.
Feet and heels press down.
Contract thighs and glutes.
Engage abs.
Tighten arms.
Where does the posture provide maximum benefits?
Spine, legs, abs, arms
When and where could I feel the stretch?
Along the longer side of the torso and hips. With a lot of work, the shorter side of your torso too.
Why should I do this posture?
It stretches both sides of your spine, builds strength in your legs and arms, and aids in concentration.
How can I improve?
Focus on strength instead of depth, and work on going straight over instead of backward or forward.
Half Moon is a foundational posture in the series. After the side bends that we focus on here, the forward bend and back bend move your spine in four directions setting you up for more movement as class progresses.
When I started doing this posture I was obsessed with how far over I could go. It took me years to understand that if I worked on going up and over it created more stretch and made me work much harder.
The quickest way to maximize the stretch is to move your hips to the side early and keep pushing them to the side. The earlier you start pushing the more effective this posture is, once you have stretched your spine to your maximum it is so much harder to get your hips to move.
Hands and arms require a lot of effort in this posture as well, what doesn’t in this class? Much of the work with your hands is mental work. I can make my palms stay together tightly but as my mind wanders so do my palms. When I’m working hard with my hips, abs, and torso sometimes it seems like it’s too much to also have to squeeze my hands together. It’s those layers of concentration and effort that makes the class so challenging and beneficial.
All of us need to work on keeping the stretch over to the side in a straight line. So many of us put a back bend in it, it’s easy to make that happen simply by pulling our arms back as the instructions say. In every part of class, the instructions are a starting point, if you pull back too far your entire upper body moves back. It’s a ton of work through your abs and lower body to keep your ankles, hips, shoulders, and arms in one line from the side. Try standing against a wall and doing Half Moon; heels, hips, shoulders, and hands should all barely be touching the wall. You can try it lying on the floor as well.
With all the postures, as with everything, it’s work to find the balance between doing what we know and looking at it with beginner’s eyes. The goodness lies within not being so ingrained in our practice that we do it the same way each class at all costs. What if we learn a new way of doing a pose that is more effective, creates more stretch, more engagement, and more benefits?