Flying Pigeon Pose: My Secret Trick to Lift Your Back Leg

I've watched a lot of students struggle with flying pigeon, and almost every single one of them gets stuck in the exact same spot. They set up the figure-four shape, they get the shin on to the arms, they lean forward, and they manage to get airborne....

...but when they try to release the back leg it stays glued to the front one like someone zip tied their limbs together.

So they're flying (yay!) but stuck in that tucked little ball, willing their back leg to straighten out behind them, and getting nothing.

Sound familiar?

If so, I want to let you in on something. This has nothing to do with not being strong enough, or not engaging your core, or your hamstrings being too tight. It's the order of operations you've been taught.

The most common way to teach this pose has usually been to get students into that little ball position and then to cue something akin to "and now lift your back leg". 

But that final piece happens to be one of the hardest parts of the pose, and asking someone to do it while also balancing, while also gripping their front foot into their triceps like their life depends on it, whilst also breathing is A LOT.

So today I want to show you a sneaky little alternative way into this pose that takes most of that difficulty off the table, and will have you flying that back leg before you can say Eka Pada Galavasana (that's Flying Pigeon pose in Sanskrit). 

Why You're Stuck in a Ball

Let's look at what you're actually asking your body to do when you try to shoot that leg back from the tucked position.

You're balancing on your hands (for possibly the first time), your front shin is mashed into your arms, your hands are working overtime to keep you from making out with your mat, and on top of all that you want your hamstrings and glutes to defy gravity and yeet a fully bent leg out into space. From a total stop. With zero momentum. While everything else is screaming. Of course it doesn't go anywhere!

You've asked your back leg to do the hardest job in the pose, and then buried it under five other hard jobs.

But what if the leg were already long and already back there, just waiting, before you ever tried to balance?

The Setup That Does the Heavy Lifting for You

This is the trick I teach now, and honestly it feels a bit like cheating. It isn't. But it feels like it.

1. Get into your figure-four with your shin pressing into your upper arms, your front foot flexed around your triceps and your hands gripping the mat.
2. Now, before you attempt anything else, slide your back leg straight behind you toward the rear of your mat.
   Don't lift it! Just slide it long across the floor. Your leg is now already pretty much in its flight position (ta-da!!), already straight, already pointed exactly where it needs to go...just on the floor for the moment. You haven't asked your hamstring to yeet anything. You've secretly set the whole thing up while gravity wasn't looking.
3. Shift forward to stack your elbows over your wrists - remember to look forward, not down at the floor (the floor is not where you're going).
4. Then keep shifting forward and see if you can feel your back leg getting light!
5. Once the toes pop up off the ground, squeeze that booty and think about slowly lifting the leg up away from the ground.  

(Psst....if you want a little extra height to play with while you try this, blocks under your hands are your new BFF. Check out my blog post on using blocks for arm balances!)

That's the whole thing! The forward shift lifts the leg FOR you.

You're not muscling anything skyward, you're just shifting your weight and letting physics hand you the pose.

I WILL say that the one thing that will make this transition possibly MORE challenging than the original version is super tight outer hips. Doing a serious outer hip warmup is going to be crucial for this, otherwise your front foot will slide right off your arm once your back leg moves back. DO NOT skimp on the warmup! It's literally the difference between "nope!" and "ooooh, I get it!!"

Putting It All Together

Flying pigeon doesn't have to be a wrestling match with a leg that won't unfold.

Slide the flying leg back first and you've changed the entire problem. Instead of begging a bent leg to extend out of a tucked ball, you let a forward weight shift float a leg that's already long and ready.

The back leg flies because everything finally lines up, not because you threw it into the air.

If you want more game-changing arm balance tips like this one, my signature program, Yogi Flight School, is exactly what you need! Check out all the details of Yogi Flight School here!

 

Want to see all of this in action?

Check out my YouTube video where I break all of this (and more) down!