Uttanasana (Standing Forward Bend)

Uttanasana is a standing forward bend. Ut means intense and tan means to stretch, so the name promises an intense stretch, and the back of the legs delivers it. It is the third and the tenth position of Surya Namaskar, and it is one of the few poses almost every beginner has already attempted, usually at school, usually badly.

The version most people carry from school is: legs locked, back rounded, fingers grabbing at the toes, face going red. That version stretches nothing useful and loads the lumbar spine in flexion, which is the position discs like least.

The version taught here bends the knees as much as it takes to get the belly onto the thighs, keeps the spine long, and lets time and gravity do the work. Over a year the knees straighten on their own. If they never fully straighten, you still have all the benefit, because the benefit was never in the shape.

Where the palms go flat to the floor beside the feet the same pose is often called Padahastasana, hand under foot pose, and in many Surya Namaskar traditions that is the name used.

Stand up and put your hands on the bony ridges at the front of your pelvis. Now bend forward. If those ridges tip forward and the crease deepens at the top of the thigh, you are hinging from the hip. If your middle back rounds first and the pelvis stays where it is, you are folding from the waist.

Almost everybody folds from the waist, because a stiff hamstring will not allow the pelvis to tip and the spine obliges instead. The remedy is not to try harder. It is to bend the knees, which slackens the hamstring, lets the pelvis tip, and lets the spine stay long.

• Bend the knees until the belly can rest on the thighs.
• Fold, keeping the front of the torso long.
• Then, slowly, begin to send the sitting bones up and the knees towards straight, stopping the instant the lower back rounds.

This is the same hinge you should use to lift a bucket, a child or a suitcase. Learning it here is one of the few things a yoga class gives you that transfers directly and immediately into an ordinary day. It is also the foundation of everything on the yoga for back pain page.

Tight hamstrings do not respond to force. They respond to repetition and to time under a mild stretch, and they respond very badly to being yanked.

What works, in my experience of watching people fail at this for four decades:

1. Little and often beats long and heroic. Thirty seconds twice a day changes a hamstring. Four minutes once a week does not.
2. Alternate the half lift and the fold. Six cycles of inhale to a flat back, exhale to fold, does more than one static minute, because the muscle contracts and then releases.
3. Move the weight forward. Sitting back into the heels lets the hamstring stay shortened while the calf takes the strain.
4. Expect months. A hamstring shortened by thirty years of chairs takes a season to change, not a fortnight.

One warning. If the stretch is felt as a sharp line right up at the sitting bone rather than as a broad pull in the belly of the muscle, back off. That is where hamstring tendons get irritated, and it is slow to heal.

Inside Surya Namaskar you meet this pose twice per half round, at position three going out and position ten coming back, both times on an exhalation.

Two practical points that make a real difference.

Bend the knees on the way down. You are about to step one leg back into a lunge. With straight legs you have to hop or lurch to do it. With bent knees the step is smooth and the lower back is not involved.

Come up slowly at position eleven. The head has been down, the sequence has warmed you, and standing up quickly is the classic cause of the dizzy moment beginners get in their fourth or fifth round. Bend the knees, hang the arms, inhale, and rise over three seconds.

Its counter movement is Urdhva Hastasana, which arrives on the very next inhale and takes the spine the opposite way.

There is a group of people for whom hanging upside down from the hips is a bad idea, and they are not rare.

• Raised blood pressure. The head below the heart raises pressure in the head. Fold to a chair seat, torso above hip height.
• Glaucoma or any raised eye pressure. Same instruction, and worth asking your ophthalmologist about all inversions, including this modest one.
• Acute back pain or a known disc problem. Loaded spinal flexion is the aggravating position. Hands on a chair with a flat back is safe and still useful.
• Pregnancy. Feet wide, hands on blocks or a chair, no compression of the abdomen.
• Vertigo. Any change of head height can set it off. Chair version, eyes open, slow.

Nothing is lost by using a chair. The hip hinge, the hamstring lengthening and the long spine are all there. What is missing is the head being low, which for these students is the part to leave out.

Inside the sun salutation, one exhalation. On its own, thirty seconds to a minute, once or twice.

A sensible month:

• Week one: chair version, flat back, thirty seconds, twice a day.
• Week two: free standing with the knees well bent, thirty seconds, hands on blocks.
• Week three: six cycles of half lift and fold, then hold for forty seconds.
• Week four: one minute in the rag doll version at the end of the day.

Do not chase the floor. I have taught students who touched their palms flat to the floor in the first week and could not hinge from a hip to save their life, and students who never got past their shins and moved beautifully. The floor is a coincidence of proportion and hamstring length, not an achievement.

Bent knees on every row. The pose is a spine release that people insist on treating as a hamstring test.

Come up slowly and with a long spine. Standing up quickly from a forward fold is the commonest cause of dizziness in a class.

Outside the sun salutation, the standing forward bend does most of its work as a transition and as a way of finding out what the hamstrings are going to allow today.

It is in the ten minute morning routine, taken with soft knees, because first thing in the morning the back of the legs is at its least willing. It appears on the standing days of the seven day beginner plan, and a half version of it, hands on a desk and the back long, is the one in the desk sequence that people actually do at work.

Bend the knees. It is the single instruction that turns this pose from a hamstring argument into a spine release, and no useful part of it is lost by doing so.

The pose it leads into is Ashwa Sanchalanasana on the way down and Adho Mukha Svanasana shortly afterwards, so a fold that has been rushed is felt three positions later. Warm up with Marjariasana rather than going straight into it cold, and take Balasana if the lower back objects. It is also the pose most likely to make somebody dizzy on the way up, which matters if you have high blood pressure and is the reason yoga for beginners over 40 asks for a slow return to standing. Finish any practice containing it in Savasana, and if the hamstrings are the whole story for you, a class is where that gets untangled.