My favorite standing forward bend

I like doing standing forward bends. For the whole time I have been doing yoga -- 14 years, I think -- I have much, much preferred uttanasana (standing forward bend) to pachimottanasana (seated forward bend). You are essentially doing the same stretch, but for me it is much more comfortable. The two main advantages that come to mind are (a) in uttanasana, you've got gravity pulling your torso towards the floor, which helps elongate the spine, and (b) because the weight of your torso is not pushing your pelvis into the floor, it's easier to rotate the top of the pelvis forward, thereby lengthening the backs of the legs, which is what you're trying to do in both of these poses.

And in fact, I think (a), the weight of the body also pulls at the pelvis encouraging the rotation that you're trying to do. Of course it's possible to do the same rotation in pachimottanasana, but it's just not as natural, not as easy.

Now, to my favorite version of the standing forward bend. Anyone who's taken my class a few times has probably done this with me. In this version, you stand in tadasana (mountain pose) with your heels 8-16 inches away from a wall, with good alignment in feed and legs. Then you lean your butt back onto the wall. Then, you come to a flat back, tryiing to get as much stretch as possible in the legs, before you round and stretch the back. And then, in this position, you bring hands to the wall, and push off just a half-inch or so and try to move your sit bones up the wall as far as you can. This tilts your pelvis forward even more, bringing as much stretch as possible into the legs. Then you go ahead and round the back, and relax into this pose.

One thing that's interesting about this variation, is that with your legs out like this you're effectively doing the standing forward bend with your feet somewhat pointed. (How pointed depends on how far away from the wall your feet are. This is a choice you have to make when you're doing the pose.) By pointing the feet, your relaxing the calf muscles, which in a leg flexion position like pachimottansana pull on the hamstrings, making the stretch harder.

This is one of the ways in which I'm somewhat of a yoga heretic -- I totally believe in doing hamstring stretch with toes pointed as well as with feet flexed. I don't just think that one's "easier", I think they're different, I think they stretch the hamstrings differently. I always encourage people to experiment with this.

I was doing this variation of pachimottanasana today, thinking about what makes it so great. One of the best things, i realized, is that since you're leaning your weight into the wall, you don't have to work to keep your balance. You're just kind of falling into the wall. So in this position you can relax all the muscles of your legs and torso much more than you can if you need to maintain your balance. It's a nice, gentle, slow forward bend, and I often hold this for quite a while, maybe two or three minutes.

Give it a try, let me know if you like it.