Dvi Pada Sirsasana


Dvi Pada Sirsasana or Both Feet Behind the Head pose is an advanced seated balancing asana in hatha yoga.

Etymology

The name of this pose, Sanskrit द्विपाद शीर्षासन dvi pāda śīrṣāsana comes from "dvi" meaning "two", "pada" meaning "foot", "sirsa" meaning "head", and "asana" meaning "posture" or "seat".
In the 19th century Sritattvanidhi, a pose named Aranyachatakasana, the Forest Sparrow Pose, is described and illustrated. It matches Light on Yoga's description of Dvi Pada Sirsasana.
In Sivananda Yoga, as described by Vishnudevananda Saraswati, a pose named "Dwipada Sirasan" is illustrated, but the pose shown resembles Yoganidrasana.

Description

In Dvi Pada Sirsasana, a balancing seated position, the feet are crossed behind the head and the hands are held in prayer position in front of the chest. B. K. S. Iyengar rates its difficulty as 24 out of 60, stating that balance in the pose is hard as there is a tendency to fall backwards. He suggests leaving the pose by lifting into Tittibhasana. In Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga, the pose is in the intermediate series, and it is both preceded and followed by Tittibhasana. The pose can be viewed as a variant of Kurmasana, and is said to be calming for practitioners able to achieve the extreme hip rotation involved.

Claims

Twentieth century advocates of some schools of yoga, such as B. K. S. Iyengar, made claims for the effects of yoga on specific organs, without adducing any evidence.
Iyengar claimed that this pose benefits the abdominal organs "quickly", and like Yoganidrasana "tones the kidneys, liver, spleen, intestines, gall bladder, prostates and the urine bladder", freeing them from disease with "continued practice". He claimed it "exercises the gonads" and rests "the nerves", storing "energy.. for better thinking and better work".