Navasana: Modify Your Boat Pose

A strong core is essential to so many aspects of our daily lives. Tending to our core muscles—the abdominals and back muscles—is core (so to speak) to our yoga asana practice. Yoga’s most iconic abdominal strengthener, Boat Pose (Navasana), can be extremely challenging, and often contraindicated for people just starting out in asana practice. For that reason, a modified version of Navasana can be a great way to wade into core strengthening.

Benefits of Core Strengthening

Here are some of the benefits of strengthening your core:

• Promotes healthy posture
• Improves balance and coordination
• Stabilizes the body, so that injuries such as sprains and strains are less likely
• Reduces back pain
• Promotes deeper breathing
• Makes everyday activities such as lifting, rising up from the floor more effortless

When we think of the core, our minds often go right to the abdominals. However, our back muscles are also essential players in core strength. While Navasana is mainly an abdominal-strengthening pose, it also has a secondary benefit of strengthening the back muscles as well. In addition, as a balancing pose, it helps us build our balancing skills.

Why Modify Navasana?

Unlike the photo at the top of this post, the traditional form of Navasana is practiced with straight legs. This version of the pose poses several challenges. First, straightening the legs in Navasana requires stretchy hamstrings. A practitioner with tight hamstrings will invariably have to flex their lumbar spine to an extreme. Second, the extra leverage straight legs exert on the body can cause strain.

The third challenge applies mostly to men. The center of gravity for a female body is lower than it is for a male body. For most women, the center of gravity is in the pelvis; for men it’s in the low back. This means that the leverage straight legs exert on the body will make it really difficult for men to find stability in Navasana, especially if it’s coupled with tight hamstrings.

A couple paragraphs ago, I mentioned lumbar spinal flexion (convex curve) in Navasana. While it’s not healthy to flex the spine to an extreme in Navasana, a little bit of flexion, so that the lumbar spine is straight, is okay. In fact, that small bit of flexion will enable the abdominals to engage a bit more than if we’re trying to maintain our lumbar (concave) curve. In order to maintain a concave curve, we have to balance on the front edges of our ischial tuberosities (aka “sitting bones”). Have you ever tried that? In my experience, it’s not at all conducive to balancing.

How to Practice Navasana

1. Gather your props: a Yoga Mat is all that’s necessary.
2. Start in a seated position in the center of your mat.
3. Bend your knees and place the soles of your feet on your mat.
4. Place your hands behind you on the floor so that your torso leans back at a diagonal.
5. With your hands still on the floor, lift your legs. Bend your knees so that your shins are parallel to the floor. Your weight should be in your glutes. Avoid trying to balancing on the forward edge of your ischial tuberosities.
6. Take a breath or two in this position. This pose can be a helpful prelude to practicing Navasana. It engages the abdominals without producing any back strain.
7. If you feel ready, lift your arms up and extend them straight forward at shoulder level. Your palms can face your legs, or face up or down, depending on what feels best for you.
8. Take 3 to 5, or more, deep breaths here.
9. Then release the pose and rest with your feet on the floor, hands behind you on the floor. Repeat if you like.

About Charlotte Bell

Charlotte Bell discovered yoga in 1982 and began teaching in 1986. Charlotte is the author of Mindful Yoga, Mindful Life: A Guide for Everyday Practice and Yoga for Meditators, both published by Rodmell Press. Her third book is titled Hip-Healthy Asana: The Yoga Practitioner’s Guide to Protecting the Hips and Avoiding SI Joint Pain (Shambhala Publications). She writes a monthly column for CATALYST Magazine and serves as editor for Yoga U Online. Charlotte is a founding board member for GreenTREE Yoga, a non-profit that brings yoga to underserved populations. A lifelong musician, Charlotte plays oboe and English horn in the Salt Lake Symphony and folk sextet Red Rock Rondo, whose DVD won two Emmy awards.