Is Pigeon pose the best hip stretch? The quick answer: it depends on how you do it. Somebody told me recently on Instagram that I was blessed with open hips. Ha! If only they’d seen me when I first started practicing. My hips were so tight I needed not just one block, but block towers under my legs to come into almost any seated pose. So yes, twenty years later I am blessed with open hips, but only after doing the work to get them.

That said, each of us has unique anatomy so the way my hips open may not be the way yours open. What I hear a lot is something like, “I’ve been practicing for years and I still haven’t increased my flexibility. Likely this is due to the lack of technique – muscle engagements, and joint articulations that result in increased flexibility or range of motion.

WHY ALIGNMENT ACTUALLY MATTERS

In today’s video, I’ll show you a way of making Half Pigeon Pose the best hip stretch by using a block. Not only will this approach help to make this pose more accessible, but it will highlight your muscular patterns.

This is important; the reason alignment and technique matter is not because there is a right or wrong way to do a pose – that’s a completely fictitious concept because it requires that we define a context for what right and wrong means when it comes to making shapes. There is no agreed-upon idea of right and wrong and so there can be no right alignment. However, alignment matters within the context of increasing body awareness and efficacy when striving to increase flexibility.