Enliven Revolved Half Moon Pose With a Chair

Revolved Half Moon Pose (Parivrtta Ardha Chandrasana) is not an easy posture. It requires balance, mobility, stability, concentration, and more. 

Despite its challenges (or perhaps because of them), Revolved Half Moon Pose offers a plethora of benefits. It builds strength and stability as well as flexibility in your standing leg and your lifted leg. It mobilizes your spinal column and invites openness in your heart. It strengthens your balance and coordination and helps you to better establish proprioception in space.

All of its many benefits don’t help to make the posture any easier, though. But what can help to make Revolved Half-Moon Pose more accessible is props! A wall, a chair, a blanket, and a block can help to stabilize and secure your Parivrtta Ardha Chandrasana so that you can find stability, strength, and mobility in this challenging shape.

Play With These 2 Revolved Half Moon Pose Variations to Find Greater Stability and Mobility

• Sanskrit Name: Parivrtta Ardha Chandrasana
• Level: Intermediate
• Type: Balancing, Twist, Strengthening, Core
• Anatomy: Arms, Shoulders, Core, Glutes, Hamstrings, Hips, Psoas, Quadriceps
• Position: Standing

The following variations will help to enliven this posture for you so that you’re better able to control the subtle movements and activations of the shape within your body. For these variations, you will need some wall space, a folding chair, a blanket, and perhaps a block.

Revolved Half Moon Pose Variation 1

1. Set your mat up so that the short edge of it is touching a wall.
2. Come to stand in the middle of your mat with your back facing the wall.
3. Place your chair on your left side toward the top quarter of your mat with the seat facing away from your mat.
4. Have a block within arm’s reach on your right side toward the top quarter of your mat.
5. Draw your hands to your hips and root down into your feet. Press into the mounds beneath your big toes and pinky toes and into the heels of your feet.
6. Focus your eyes on one, still point on the floor in front of you.
7. Activate your core by three-dimensionally hugging in around your whole waistline and firm in around your center.
8. Pour your weight into your left leg and rise to the ball of your right foot.
9. When you feel stable, lift your right foot off the floor and reach your right foot back toward the wall behind you. Allow your torso to naturally lean forward toward parallel to the floor to counterbalance the weight of your leg behind you.
10. Press your right foot into the wall and lift your foot as high as you can until you reach roughly the height of your hips. Kick your foot against the wall firmly.
11. Elongate the crown of your head toward the top of your mat to counter your foot pressing into the wall behind you.
12. Lower your right hand to a block or the floor and release your left hand onto the backrest of your chair.
13. Root down into both hands and your left leg and slowly spiral your torso to face toward the left side of your mat.
14. Use the wall behind you and the chair beside you as leverage to gently twist your torso toward your left. Spin your right lung to align under your left.
15. Turn your gaze in any direction that feels comfortable for your neck. You can stay looking at the floor, you can look toward the left, or you can look toward the sky.
16. Continue to kick back through your right heel, root down into your left heel, and spiral your torso for a few long, deep breaths.
17. When you’re ready, slowly release and repeat on the opposite side.

Revolved Half Moon (Parivrtta Ardha Chandrasana) Variation 2

1. Set your mat up so that the short edge of it is touching a wall.
2. Come to stand in the middle of your mat with your back facing the wall.
3. Place your chair directly in front of you on your mat with the seat facing away from you.
4. Fold a blanket and place it over the chair’s backrest for cushioning.
5. Have a block within arm’s reach on your right side toward the top quarter of your mat.
6. Draw your hands to your hips and root down into your feet. Press into the mounds beneath your big toes and pinky toes and into the heels of your feet.
7. Focus your eyes on one, and still point on the floor in front of your chair.
8. Activate your core by three-dimensionally hugging in around your whole waistline and firm in around your center.
9. Pour your weight into your left leg and rise to the ball of your right foot.
10. When you feel stable, lift your right foot off the floor and reach your right foot back toward the wall behind you. Allow your torso to naturally lean forward toward parallel to the floor to counterbalance the weight of your leg behind you until your pelvis rests over the blanket on the backrest of your chair.
11. Press your right foot into the wall and lift your foot as high as you can until you reach roughly the height of your hips. Kick back firmly through your foot against the wall.
12. Elongate the crown of your head toward the top of your mat to counter your foot pressing into the wall behind you.
13. Lower your right hand to a block or the floor and release your left hand onto the seat of your chair in front of you.
14. Lengthen your whole back body and root down firmly into both hands as you press your pelvis into the chair.
15. Twist your torso to face toward the left side of your mat and draw your left hand to your left hip. If it feels appropriate, stretch your left arm toward the sky.
16. Use the wall behind you and the chair beneath you as leverage to gently twist your torso toward your left. Spin your right lung to face toward the left side of your mat.
17. Turn your gaze in any direction that feels comfortable for your neck. You can stay looking at the floor, you can look toward the left, or you can look toward the sky.
18. Continue to kick back through your right heel, root down into your left heel and pelvis, and spiral your torso for a few long, deep breaths.
19. When you’re ready, slowly release and repeat on the opposite side.

Play With Yoga Props to Enliven Your Parivrtta Ardha Chandrasana

As a very intricate and complicated pose, Parivrtta Ardha Chandrasana is challenging for most practitioners. But because it offers so many amazing benefits, it’s not a posture that you want to just skip.

Instead, make Revolved Half Moon Pose more accessible and isolate the actions needed to practice the pose with the use of props. Props not only make it easier to sustain the pose, but they also offer insightful feedback and tactile resistance to enliven and enlighten the posture for you.

**Images and pose variations- courtesy of David Jacobs