Balasana (Child's Pose)

Balasana, Child's Pose, is a kneeling forward fold in which the torso rests over the thighs and the forehead rests on the floor. Bala means child, and the shape is the one a small child falls asleep in without being taught. It is the resting pose of a hatha class, and its job is not to stretch you but to let you stop.

That is the part most people get wrong. It is not a hip opener you are meant to sink deeper into every week, and there is nothing to achieve in it. If you are working in Balasana, you are not in Balasana; you are in a forward bend that happens to look like one.

It is also not the same thing as Paschimottanasana, the seated forward bend, which loads the hamstrings and the lower back and is a working pose. Balasana takes the weight of the head off the neck and the weight of the torso off the spine altogether. That is why it is the pose I use when somebody's back has just objected to something, and why it is the first thing I teach on day one of a beginners' course, before any pose that could go wrong.

In a class you will hear it called the rest position, shishuasana, or simply child. It sits in the middle of the ten minute morning routine and again at the end of the bedtime sequence, doing a different job each time.

Three things decide whether this pose rests you or annoys you, and all three are settled with props rather than with effort.

• The seat and the heels. If your seat does not reach your heels, do not chase it. Put a folded blanket, or two, between the calves and the thighs and sit on that. The stretch you are giving up is not the point of the pose.
• The knees. Knees together compresses the belly and shortens the breath. Knees to the width of the mat, with the big toes still touching, gives the torso somewhere to go. Painful knees want a rolled towel behind them, in the crease, which reduces how far the joint has to fold.
• The forehead. It must rest on something. Floor, blanket, block, or your own stacked fists. A head held in the air keeps the neck muscles on for the entire hold, and a student who does that for two minutes gets up with a stiffer neck than they lay down with. If this is you, the same principle is worked through on the yoga for neck and shoulder pain page.

The tops of the feet should be flat on the floor with the toes pointing back. If that hurts, put a rolled towel under the ankles. Kneeling itself is worked at more thoroughly in Vajrasana, which is the sitting version of the same knee and ankle position and is the one to practise if this shape is the obstacle.

Fold the front of the body shut and the breath has to go somewhere else. In Balasana it goes into the back of the ribs, and you can feel it: the back widens against the air behind you on every inhalation. Most students meet their own back breathing here for the first time, which is why I put a minute of it before any breathing practice with a beginners' group.

Let the exhalation get slightly longer than the inhalation without counting or forcing. Six or eight breaths of that is enough to change how somebody feels. It is the same mechanism that Bhramari uses more deliberately with sound, and the reason both are on the yoga for anxiety page.

If the breath feels cramped rather than deep, the knees are too close together or the belly is being squashed. Widen the knees. Nothing about this pose should be tight.

Balasana is the one pose where the honest answer is: as long as it stays comfortable, and no longer. Because there is almost no load in it, the limit is your knees and your ankles rather than your effort. Anyone can use it at any point in a practice without asking permission.

Twice a day is fine. Six times a day is fine. It is one of the few poses that has no sensible daily maximum, and the only real caution is not to keep the knees folded so long that the feet lose sensation.

It has three uses, and they are different jobs.

1. As the counter to a backbend. After Bhujangasana the lower back has been extended, and forty seconds of Balasana returns it to neutral before the next thing. Doing this is what stops the small ache that beginners get in the lower back after a class with backbends in it.
2. As the rest inside a standing or a flowing practice. This is its use in the seven day beginner plan, where it appears between the working poses so that a body new to all this can catch up.
3. As the pose you take when something feels wrong. The standing instruction in my class is that anybody, at any moment, may come down into Balasana without asking and without explaining. Nobody has ever abused it.

It is also the natural rest after Adho Mukha Svanasana, which names it as its own counter pose, and it is the pose I put after Marjariasana at the end of a spine warm up. In the bedtime sequence it comes late, held long and supported, where its job is to slow you down rather than to counter anything.

Almost nobody has to leave this pose out, but a good number of people have to change it.

• Knees. A knee injury, a meniscus problem or a replacement is the one genuine obstacle. Try a folded blanket in the knee crease first. If it still hurts, lie on your back and hug the knees towards the chest, which gives the lower back the same release with no knee bend at all.
• Pregnancy. Wide knees only, and only for as long as it is comfortable. Later on, fold over a bolster or use the chair version.
• The head below the heart. Glaucoma, a recent eye operation, uncontrolled high blood pressure or a middle ear problem all argue for keeping the head higher. Stack blocks under the forehead, or fold forward over a table from a chair.
• A stiff back rather than a sore one. If you are over forty and coming back to movement after years away, this pose and the beginners over forty approach are the sensible starting point, in that order.

For a back that hurts today rather than one that is merely stiff, read yoga for back pain before you build a practice around any single pose. If you would rather be watched while you learn where the blanket goes, that is what his classes are for, and the first one is free.