Fish Pose - Matsyasana

This pose is one of the easy poses of the back-bed type asanas. You are to lie down on your yoga mat, flat on your back. There after try t lift the entire spinal cord. Ensure that the hips and the back side of the head remain touching the ground. This would result in a body posture known as Fish Pose of Matyasana.

This pose helps in opening the abdomen muscles. As you can see from the image, the hip part of our body is touching the ground, but the entire portion of the spinal cord is fully lifted upward. It helps in reducing the mid back spinal pain, too.

The pectoral muscles are stretched in full while we do fish pose. This would provide good exercises to the neck, breasts, and the chest. By http://theholisticcare.com [CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Dwapada Urdhwa Ardh Matyasana

This asana can be done with one variation. After positioning the whole body as epshown above, you should lift your legs upward. Keep both the legs straight and the paws straight in the direction of the wall, and not to the sky. As our body is requred to use both the legs and keep it upward, this pose is named as Dwapada (two legs) Urdhwa (Up) Ardh Matsyasana. [Image courtesy By Marcocarvalho (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons]

Precautions

While doing this posture, or postures similar to this one, a yoga exercise doer should keep some important factors in mind. These factors are relating to the health. If you are suffering from low pressure or high pressure of blood, you should take doctor’s advice before doing such poses. In any other physical difficulties, it should be done in the presence and guidance of a trained yoga teacher.