Warrior 3 or Virabhadrasana 3
Translation: Warrior 3 Pose
From Tadasana lean the upper body forward while raising one leg back and up.
Take the hands out sideways instead of straight in front as shown if you are
just learning balance or balancing is difficult.
Push through the heels, toes or ball points of the feet. Pushing though the
toes may be the best option because the energy of the force through the toes
helps in raising the leg a little more but the ball points of the toes will also
create a lift through the leg.
Align the hips horizontally. The raised leg has to be rotated inward to
achieve a horizontal alignment. It is hard to maintain balance when doing this.
The strength of the big toe on the supporting leg can prevent loss of balance
when the inward rotation is applied.
Feel a stretch from the toes of the raised leg to the fingers in front of you.
It takes many years to get a very straight feeling of energy through the body.
The shoulders and legs have to be flexible quite flexible.
Look forward for stability or down to stretch the spine even longer. Gazing
back at your foot as a self check can be quite revealing. It is also hard to
balance so make sure you are advanced before you attempt it in practice.
Benefits
Both legs are strengthened in this pose. The hamstrings (the biceps femoris, semitendinosus and
the semimembranosus) are stretched in the supporting leg and strengthened
in the raised leg. The gluteal muscles are stretched on on leg and strengthened
on the other. This causes them to be raised on one side.
Some leg adductors are involved in the inward rotation of the hip. these are
, the pectineus, adductor
brevis and adductor longus, the gracilis and adductor magnus. shoulders are stretched and the arms are strengthened.
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