My fellow yoga teacher, Taylor, recently asked,
“What is your take on Legs Up the Wall Pose? Articles and teachers say that it reverses the blood flow and makes your heart have to work a bit harder because it is pushing blood up your legs instead of down. It is supposed to be the MOST restorative yoga pose. Doing it will stop you from aging, remove wrinkles from your face, make you immune to disease and you will NEVER die. Thoughts?”
“What is your take on Legs Up the Wall Pose? Articles and teachers say that it reverses the blood flow and makes your heart have to work a bit harder because it is pushing blood up your legs instead of down. It is supposed to be the MOST restorative yoga pose. Doing it will stop you from aging, remove wrinkles from your face, make you immune to disease and you will NEVER die. Thoughts?”
There is a LOT of information out there about yoga and yoga poses, and it can get really overwhelming to figure out what to believe. The only thing we can do from a scientific point of view is rely on information that has shown to be true through experiments. Even then we still can be wrong because science changes and gets updated too! But to the question… I think the key here is “restorative”. Restorative poses are to help you relax and rejuvenate, so to make the heart work harder is counter-intuitive. In fact, raising the legs actually helps blood get back to the heart more easily due to help from gravity. This is actually often used to help patients with heart failure to reduce the swelling in their legs, so it wouldn’t make sense that raising their legs makes their hearts work harder! More blood returning to the heart lets the heart work less to keep up the same blood pressure. Additionally, there has been medical research showing that passively raising someone’s legs does not increase activity of the heart. You can find that article here. Also, putting the body in a relaxing position such as laying down lets the blood pressure decrease because the body now does not need as fast of a blood supply to all of the working muscles. This decreases the demand on the heart too. As for reversing blood flow, that simply DOES NOT happen. Our blood only flows in one direction, from the heart out to the arteries then back to the heart through the veins.
So again, all of these factors lead back to how Viparita Karani (Legs-up-the-wall pose) becomes restorative. The muscles don’t work as hard. The heart doesn’t work as heart. As a result, the mind is less stressed, so everything gets to relax. As for being the most restorative pose, I’m not sure how you would measure that, but with the above facts, it’s probably in the running. For everything else (wrinkles, immunity, immortality), better blood flow can likely provide benefits for all of that, but there would be many other factors involved. I hope that’s helpful. Thanks for the question!
Namasté
So again, all of these factors lead back to how Viparita Karani (Legs-up-the-wall pose) becomes restorative. The muscles don’t work as hard. The heart doesn’t work as heart. As a result, the mind is less stressed, so everything gets to relax. As for being the most restorative pose, I’m not sure how you would measure that, but with the above facts, it’s probably in the running. For everything else (wrinkles, immunity, immortality), better blood flow can likely provide benefits for all of that, but there would be many other factors involved. I hope that’s helpful. Thanks for the question!
Namasté
Loving the yoga knowledge? Subscribe to stay updated!
Image from yogajournal.com
RSS Feed