Supta Matsyendrasana (Reclining Twist)

Supta Matsyendrasana is the reclining twist. Supta means lying down or reclined, and the rest of the name is borrowed from Matsyendra, the lord of the fishes, after whom the seated twist Ardha Matsyendrasana is named. You lie on your back, take the arms out to the sides, and let both bent knees drop to one side while the opposite shoulder stays heavy on the floor. In some schools a version of it is called Jathara Parivartanasana, and in most classes it is simply called the lying twist.

It is not a stretch you work at. Nothing in this pose is held by a muscle: the floor supports the spine along its whole length, the arms rest, and the knees rest on a cushion. That is the entire design, and it is why the pose can be held for two or three minutes when the seated twist cannot.

It is not a competition to get the knees to the floor either. Whether they reach depends on the length of the outer hip and the proportions of your own body, and it makes no difference at all to what the pose does. A cushion under the knees, so that the leg is resting rather than hanging, does far more for you than a knee touching the mat while the far shoulder lifts twenty centimetres into the air.

Where it belongs is at the end. In almost every class I teach it is the last pose before Savasana, and it is the natural closing pose of the bedtime sequence. It is also the twist to use instead of the seated one when a back has been complaining, which is the reason it appears here as a pose of its own rather than as a variation of something else.

This is the most useful thing on the page, so it gets its own section.

When the knees drop to the side and hang in the air, the muscles of the hip and the side of the trunk hold them there. A muscle that is holding cannot lengthen. So the student feels a pull, waits for it to change, and after ninety seconds it has not changed, and they conclude their hips are hopeless. Put a cushion under the knees and the leg has somewhere to rest. The muscle stops holding. Then, and only then, does it begin to release, and the change over two minutes is often surprising.

The same principle governs the far shoulder. If that shoulder has lifted off the floor, the spine has stopped rotating and the whole body has begun to roll onto its side. There is nothing wrong with lying on your side, but it is not a twist. Keep that shoulder heavy, take the knees less far, and raise the cushion until both things are true at once.

• Knees resting on something, always.
• Far shoulder heavy on the floor.
• Arms wide only if the shoulders are comfortable, otherwise lower.
• Head facing the ceiling unless turning it is genuinely easy.
• Two minutes a side, not thirty seconds.

Arranging a pose around what a body can rest in, rather than what it can reach, is the whole logic of the restorative practice described on the yin versus restorative page, and this pose is the clearest example of it in a general class.

Twisting is a movement the spine is built for and rarely gets, and restoring it usually feels excellent. The caution is about force rather than about rotation: a hard twist of a loaded lumbar spine is one of the positions an irritated disc likes least. The Cochrane review of twenty one trials and 2,223 participants in chronic low back pain found small improvements in back related function from yoga compared with no exercise, and found increased back pain to be the most commonly reported harm, with no serious side effects reported in any trial.

This pose is the answer to that caution rather than an example of it. The spine is not loaded, because you are lying on it. Nothing is levered, because the knees rest on a cushion. The range is whatever your body allows and no more. When somebody tells me their back is stiff but not painful, this is the first twist I give them, and when somebody's back is actually painful I give them the three breaths of hugging the knees and nothing else until a doctor has looked at them. Anyone in that position should read yoga for back pain before building any practice.

The other thing worth knowing is what long supported poses do generally. The restorative family has been tested on its own terms: in the PRYSMS randomised trial, 180 adults with the metabolic syndrome practised either restorative yoga or stretching over 48 weeks, using five main resting poses held for ten to fifteen minutes each with the eyes covered, and fasting glucose fell more in the yoga group than in the stretching group at twelve months, with no difference in blood pressure. It is a modest result and it is an honest one, and it is the reason I do not oversell what lying still does. What I will say from four decades of classes is that the students who keep a long supported twist and a proper rest at the end of their practice are the ones who keep practising.

This is a long hold pose and the clock matters more than the effort, because there is no effort.

Every day, if you like. There is no load on anything, so the only real limits are the ones in the warnings above. If you have five minutes at the end of a day and no inclination to do a practice, two minutes a side of this and a minute lying still is a perfectly respectable use of them, and better than nothing by a wide margin.

At the end. This pose closes a practice, after the standing poses, the backbends and the seated work are finished. It is particularly useful directly after a backbend such as Bhujangasana or Ustrasana, because it takes the lower back out of extension and into a neutral, unloaded rotation.

The counter pose, and what comes next, is simply lying still. Savasana for three to five minutes after this twist is the finish, and the twist is a good deal of the reason the rest works: the body has just been arranged asymmetrically twice and then allowed to settle level.

It also has a place in the evening on its own. Two minutes a side, then five minutes on your back with the eyes covered, is the shortest complete practice I would recommend to somebody who is not sleeping well. That is the shape of the bedtime sequence, and the practice to add to it if you want more is Yoga Nidra, which does the same job at greater length.

The pose it should not follow is an abdominal one done immediately before: coming out of Naukasana straight into a wide twist is asking a tired abdomen to control a rotation. Give it a minute of hugging the knees in between, which costs nothing.

Very few people need to leave this pose out, and a good number should change it.

• Sciatica or a disc problem with leg pain. Even a supported twist can pull on an irritated nerve. Keep the knees high on cushions so the rotation is tiny, or hug the knees in instead and see a doctor.
• Pregnancy after the first trimester. Lying flat on the back for long periods is not recommended. Use the side lying version with a bolster between the knees, and ask your doctor or midwife.
• Spinal surgery or a fusion. Ask your surgeon. Rotation is the movement most often restricted.
• Neck. Leave the head facing the ceiling. Cervical spondylosis is common, and a neck held at its limit for two minutes is a poor bargain. The same rule runs through yoga for neck and shoulder pain.
• Shoulders. Arms lower, or resting on the abdomen. Wide arms are a preference, not a requirement.
• Cannot get onto the floor. The chair twist gives a real rotation and takes thirty seconds. It is a genuine alternative and not a token one.

For anybody over forty who is starting again after some years away, this is one of the four or five poses I would build the first month around, and the reasoning is in yoga for beginners over 40. If you would like somebody to set your cushion height and check that your shoulder is staying down, come to a class, or start with a first class.