Published May 13, 2026 at 12:23 pm
Yoga magazineQ archives The series is a curated collection of articles originally published in previous issues beginning in 1975. This article about Yoga on the Wall first appeared in the May-June 1981 issue of Yoga magazine.
Walls are a great prop for yoga because they are so popular. Of course, there are some disadvantages to using walls to practice yoga, but they are not serious. For one thing, footprints will eventually appear on your walls five feet above the floor. (This can be difficult to explain to guests or the owner.) Even though I’ve given up on keeping my walls clean, I make a point of washing my feet before practicing in other people’s homes. Not everyone views dirty footprints on the walls of their homes as a great sign of devotion.
How to use the wall in yoga
The wall can be used as a support to practice warm-ups as well as standing poses, twists and inversions.
Handstand
Students who have started practicing Headstand They will generally have difficulty maintaining their balance.
Practicing these poses while supporting a wall, as shown in Figure 1, prevents you from falling backwards. The wall should not become a crutch. As confidence increases, the fear of falling should be overcome and practiced in the middle of the room.
But even after a student can achieve balance, I feel that working on the wall from time to time still has benefits. I like to walk my heels a few inches up the wall after I get into position. This helps create an extension of the spine and reminds me of what the pose should feel like. We often think of a headstand as a pose in which all of the body’s weight rests on the head.
In fact, it can be a pose that stretches the body up toward the sky: shoulders lifted away from the ears, pelvis away from the ribs, and legs coming up out of the torso. When done this way, headstands are safer for the neck and more inspiring for the psyche.
Shoulder holder
Yoga students who find it difficult to Shoulder holder It can be helped by using a wall as shown in Figure 2.
The model first lay on the floor, then moved her legs up the wall. Pressing the balls of her feet into the wall, she then lifted her spine off the floor and placed her hands on her back until she reached this partial position. (Remember to place your hands on the back, not on the waist.) Some advantages of working this way are that the wall provides stability so it is easier to bring the elbows closer together, which helps straighten and extend the spine. Pressing the feet against the wall also gives the student strength through which he can straighten his rounded back and move the chest towards the chin.
Fluctuations
Volatility is a difficult situation. When we stand, we may lose our balance and fall. When we twist while sitting, our brains may send messages to our spine saying “stretch and rotate!” But the spine seems to have a mind of its own. Either way, the wall can be a friend in your time of need. Parivrta Trikonasana It can be practiced by either placing the chest (Figure 3) or back (Figure 4) against the wall.
By working in this way, balance and alignment are improved. To create maximum spinal twist, the model in Figure 3 focuses on bringing the underside of the torso (the left side of the chest in that photo) to the wall. In Figure 4, you’re working to bring the upper (again left) shoulder into contact with the wall. The effects of these two ways of working are slightly different from each other, but both are beneficial.
In seated twists, the hands are pressed against the wall to give the student leverage; By twisting away from a fixed point, the student is not tempted to rotate the spine in the air. The model demonstrates an exercise Marishyasana I In Figure 5. She is pressing hard with her right hand to help herself bend her torso toward the left. This method is especially useful for women who have recently given birth and are introducing twists into their fitness program.
Sitting positions
Walls can provide a variety of other useful supports for practicing postures as well. In positions where it is important but difficult to keep the back straight and perpendicular to the floor (eg Dandasana and Bada Konasana), try sitting with your back against the wall. See Figure 6, Bada Konasana. The poses can also be performed lying on the floor with the legs up against the wall, which will prevent the back from bending. Figure 7 gives an example of this way of working. A gentle stretch is given to the adductor muscles (inner thigh muscles) in a fairly comfortable position.
This exercise can be performed outside the context of daily yoga practice, where the student reads a book while stretching her muscles!
Navasana (discussed in this month’s Asana column) is a difficult buttock pose with weak abdominal muscles. Figure 8 shows how beginners can place their feet on the wall, to reduce pressure on this area and improve stability.
In the case of bending forward while sitting, many students tend to let their feet drop (big toes closer to the knees, little toes farther away) as shown in Figure 9. If these poses (Dandasana, Janu Sirsasana, Pashimutanasanaetc.) is performed with the soles of the feet pressed firmly against the wall, as shown in Figure 10, the action of the posture improves. If this seems like a minor point, consider the fact that these foot movements are largely controlled by the muscles of the legs.
The position of the legs, in turn, is determined by the degree of flexibility in and around the hip joint. You can see how a simple misalignment of the feet means that many other muscles that reach the hip joint may work unevenly as well. By correcting one problem, the yoga student begins to correct others as well. If you still find this idea a bit esoteric, try performing forward bends with your feet in position 9, then position 10, and let your body give you feedback on the difference. Practicing yoga gives us the opportunity to learn about how the human body works from the inside, instead of studying anatomy books. “For the yogi, the body is a laboratory, a field for constant experimentation and research,” says Mr. Iyengar.
(The author would like to thank BKS Iyengar, whose work forms the basis for many of the ideas presented in this article. And to thank her model, Pamela Wayne.)
