Can't Lift Your Hips in Eight Angle Pose? Try This Alternative Entry

You've seen people do eight angle pose (Astavakrasana). You've watched the tutorials. You've tried leaning forward like your life depends on it. And your hips refuse to leave the floor.

At some point, you start to wonder whether everyone else has some secret supply of upper-body strength that you missed out on. Or maybe your core isn't strong enough. Or perhaps you need to do approximately 47,001 more Chaturangas before your body will consider cooperating.

Or maybe, just maybe, you're putting a whole lot of effort into a setup that isn't giving you much to work with.

With arm balances, trying harder isn't always the answer. Sometimes you need to change what you're trying harder with.

Let me show you an alternative way into eight angle pose that might help.

Stop trying to lift before you've set yourself up.

There are several ways to get into eight angle pose, and I'm not about to tell you that everyone needs to use this particular entry. If your current method works, fabulous. You do you, boo.

But if you've been repeatedly attempting to lift your hips and getting absolutely nowhere, it might be worth changing the order in which you do things.

Instead of trying to launch yourself off the floor and THEN get all of your limbs into position, this entry gives you time to organize the important bits first. You can check where your legs are, get your arms into position, and make sure your thighs are doing what you need them to do.

All while your butt is still safely on the ground. Which, given the current situation, is probably a good thing.

The reason I like this approach is that you can actually see what's happening. If something isn't in the right place, you can fix it before adding the extra complication of trying to balance your entire body weight onto your hands.

Getting your arm where it needs to go.

Start seated, hook your ankles together, and shift onto your favorite butt cheek. From there, thread the opposite arm between your legs and underneath the knee of the "top" leg.

Depending on your proportions and how much room you've got to work with, this might require a bit of wiggling. That's fine. Take your time and find a position where you can get your arm underneath that knee.

One thing worth mentioning: eight angle pose involves a fairly substantial twist, and if that part is giving you grief, it's worth looking at separately rather than assuming the whole problem is your arm balance technique.

I've written more about the twist in twisting arm balances here.

The piece that can make or break your lift.

Once your arm is underneath your knee, place your hands on the mat in a Chaturanga shape. 

Then look at your top thigh - is it sitting on top of your arm?

And I mean on top. Not hovering somewhere beside it. Not slipping off the edge. Not in the general vicinity of your arm, which is all very nice but isn't going to help us much here.

You want your thigh positioned on top of your arm because you're going to use that contact to help lift your hips. If your thigh isn't in the right place, you can lean forward until the cows come home and still struggle to get the lift you're after.

So before you do anything else, check that thigh. Get it sitting on top of your arm, and make sure your arms are in a Chaturanga position.

Now you can try lifting.

Now comes the important part: you need to PUSH your top thigh down into your arm. This is what helps you lift your hips. Your thigh pushes down, your arm pushes back, and that pressure gives you the leverage you need to get your butt off the floor.

So don't just lean forward and hope for the best. Actively press that thigh down into your arm as you tip forward. The push is what helps lift your hips.

You might need to experiment with exactly where your thigh sits on your arm to get that push working effectively. If your thigh is slipping off to the side, or you're not really pressing down into your arm, you're missing an important piece of the puzzle.

And if you've been leaning forward with the determination of someone trying to reach the last cookie on the top shelf, wondering why your butt is still on the floor, try focusing on that push instead. Give your thigh something to push against!

Okay, so what if your hips STILL won't lift?

Before you declare eight angle pose your mortal enemy, go back to your setup and check a few things.

→ Are your ankles hooked together?
→ Are you sitting on that beloved butt cheek?
→ Is your arm threaded between your legs and underneath the bent knee?
→ Are your arms in your Chaturanga shape?
→ Is your thigh sitting on top of your arm?

These might seem like fairly obvious things to check. But when you're concentrating on getting your hips off the floor, it's surprisingly easy to overlook one of them. You're thinking about the lift, so you keep trying to lift, even though the problem might be something you could fix without lifting anything at all.

And if you've checked all of those things and you're still struggling, try putting a block under each hand. The extra height can give you more room to work with as you lift, so it's worth experimenting with. 

Want some help figuring out arm balances?

If you're reading this and thinking, "Great, but how am I supposed to know whether my thigh is in the right place, or whether I'm actually doing any of this correctly?", that's the kind of thing we work on inside Yogi Flight School.

Our signature, specialized arm balance and inversions program breaks arm balances down into their component parts, explains what you're trying to do and why, and gives you ways to practice the skills involved. So instead of collecting a list of poses you're apparently supposed to be able to do, you can start understanding how to get into them.

Because there's a big difference between being told to lean forward and understanding what needs to happen for that lean to help you lift.

If you are already a YFS student, the breakdown for this pose is in Module 3. Watch it and be sure to pop in to the coaching community so we can take a look and give you tips!

Want to watch the entry instead?

Watch the video below and I'll walk you through the whole thing, from hooking your ankles to getting those hips off the floor.

And if your bum is still on the floor afterwards, please don't write yourself off just yet. Check your setup, change one thing, and give it another try. The floor has had its moment. Let's see if we can give it some competition.