Boat Pose

Paripurna Navasana

Boat Pose is a seated balancing pose that looks easy, but actually requires a great deal of balance, strength, and focus to do correctly.

Common Name: Boat Pose
Sanskrit Name: Paripurna Navasana (par-ee-POOR-nah nah-VAHS-anna)
Level: Intermediate
Pose Type: Seated, Balancing, Core Pose
Target Areas: Core, Spine, Hip Flexors

Boat Pose aka Paripurna Navasana is a seated core pose that strengthens the abs, hip flexors, and spine. It improves balance and posture, and is trickier than it appears! It is important to keep the spine long and the chest shining forward, while also balancing on the sitbones.

Boat Pose Steps

Step 1

Start in a seated position on your mat. Bend your knees and place the bottoms of your feet on the mat.

Step 2

Ground down through your sit bones. You may need to scoot your glutes out from under your sit bones to give you more grounding.

Step 3

Place your hands lightly behind your knees, lengthen up through the spine, and start to slowly lift your feet off the mat.

Step 4

Continue lifting the feet until your shins are parallel to the earth. If you feel balanced here, you can let go of the grip on your knees and reach the arms forward.

Step 5

You can stay here, or if you want to go into the full pose, you can start to straighten out the legs, until you are creating a V-shape with your torso and legs. Continue drawing the chest forward and dropping the shoulders away from your ears. Gaze softly forward or upward.

Step 6

Make sure you are not rounding in the spine. If you find yourself doing so, lower the legs to the point where you can keep your spine straight.

Modifications

If you are tight in the hips and hamstrings, keep your shins parallel to the ground rather than going into the full pose.
If you feel unbalanced, continue supporting your knees with your hands rather than extending the arms forward.
If you experience pain in the sitbones, you can sit on a blanket for extra padding, but make sure not to fold the blanket excessively, so that you can continue grounding down and balancing properly.