Health Benefits of Utkatasana - How to Do It & Precautions

Utkatasana, Chair Pose, is a low squatting yoga asana. This asana helps to bring all your body parts together to create a powerful posture while strengthening and building heat in your body. It has multiple benefits when it comes to strengthening the muscles of your legs and other lower body parts. While it might be a painful position, it is an effective way of maintaining physical fitness and toned body parts.

Are you willing to learn about the health benefits of Utkatasana? Then, you are in the right place. This article will give you a complete overview.

The word Utkatasana is a Sanskrit term. Here, “utkata” means fierce, while "asana" denotes position. This signifies that this yoga asana is powerful, intense, and requires hard work. It is called the chair pose since it requires you to mimic the position of sitting in a chair without actually sitting.

It is a form of squatting but demands one to maintain a more rigorous posture. This position can kill your leg and thigh muscles, but a little determination will help you hold the pose longer. With the help of this yoga asana, you can strengthen your core muscles and lower body parts. Moreover, it is also capable of promoting creativity and mental strength.

Now, you must be curious to know about the advantages of Utkatasana. As much as this yoga asana can be challenging, it has multiple health benefits. Here are some of the benefits you will reap by practising this pose.

1. Improves Posture

In the current world of a busy lifestyle, it is common to damage posture and spinal alignment. A poor posture has a chance of causing backache, cervical problems, slipped disc, etc. Practising this yoga asana can be beneficial to recover from the same. It rectifies and corrects your body posture, as you need to stand with an erect spine in this position. This way, you can improve your breathing and show off your actual height.

2. Tones Leg Muscles

Tired and painful legs can be a severe liability when you have to wake up and go to work. In this case, Utkatasana can be the perfect answer to such issues. Constant walking and physical activities often cause worn-out legs. The reasons include poor blood circulation, varicose veins, strain, etc. With the chair position, you can handle this issue. It works on the leg muscles, improving circulation and strength in these areas.

3. Strengthens the Core

Having a solid core muscle can be essential for improving the overall posture and energy. As this yoga asana requires you to squat in a sitting position, it works on your core muscles. The more time you can hold this position, the stronger your core becomes, with improved endurance. This can help improve your posture and enhance your overall physical capabilities and endurance.

4. Improves Body Balance and Mobility

Maintaining body balance for a long time ensures extended mobility and prevention of falls and injuries while ageing. It is as essential as other physical requirements, like strength, endurance and flexibility. For example, when you squat for a long time in the chair position, your body gets used to this challenging position. Slowly, it starts adjusting, and the body balance improves gradually. Moreover, strong core and leg muscles also prevent falls and injuries with better balance.

5. Relieves Back Pain

Having back pain is quite common, particularly with the current environment of remote working techniques. It is extremely painful to work with such pain. Practising Utkatasana can help relieve back pain. It works on your back and spine, improving blood circulation and endurance in these areas.

6. Strengthens the Ankles

Ankles are usually the most sensitive part of the legs and can be sprained easily. Pain or weakness in the ankles can disrupt walking and mobility in individuals. Utkatasana can help strengthen the ankle areas, relieving the pain and stress in this area. It reduces any risks of injuries in the ankles among athletes.

7. Strengthens Thighs and Hips

Utkatasana aims at handling the lower body part of an individual, including the thigh and hip muscles. Your hip and thigh muscles can improve their circulation and endurance when you practice this position for a significant period. This way, you can avoid chronic health conditions like splints.

8. Stimulates Heart Functions

It is known that the heart has a significant role in controlling most of the essential physical functions. Utkatasana can stimulate the parts of your heart, diaphragm, and abdominal organs besides the lower body muscles. It increases your heart rate while you perform the position, enhancing your respiration by allowing more oxygen intake. It also helps to pump extra nutrients to various muscles and enhance the levels of lactic acid in your body. This way, this yoga position improves and maintains your heart health.

9. Helps Treat Flat Foot

A flat foot can be a severe health issue in most cases, which reduces mobility at an older age and increases the risks of falls and injuries. However, one can handle this condition easily with Utkatasana. This position can reduce the common symptoms of flat feet, thereby handling the pain you are likely to feel in the legs, hips or ankles because of it. It also improves mobility, which is usually impaired with flat feet.

10. Improves Mental Wellbeing

Yoga asanas affect both physical and mental health conditions, and Utkatasana is no exception in this regard. Practising it regularly can reduce stress and energise your mind by bringing in the sense of motivation and positivity. It can develop peace of mind, which helps you focus on your work. Moreover, it can activate the Svadhisthana chakra below the navel, a centre of ease and enjoyment. It can result in mental wellness and enhanced creativity.

11. Stretches the Shoulders

With the chair pose, you can stretch your hands and shoulder muscles. Shoulders are essential when it comes to activities related to the hands. Lifting heavy objects can be challenging with shoulder pain or weakness. This asana allows you to stretch your hands and shoulders while increasing the flexibility of these muscles. Flexible shoulders can also keep your joints and ligaments safe from injuries.

Now that you know the pros of Utkatasana, you should know the ways to perform this asana. The following steps will help you in this process. 

Step 1: Stand straight in the group keeping a few inches of gap between the feet. It should be slightly more than the width of the waist, ideally.

Step 2: Take a deep breath while lifting both arms in the air. They should be straight and aligned to your body. 

Step 3: Next, start bending the knees while inhaling and exhaling. Keep your upper body vertical to the floor.

Step 4: Keep your thighs parallel to the floor. Hold this position for at least 20-30 seconds. 

Step 5: If your knees and thighs start paining, retract to the original position, and continue after some time.

Utkatasana can be a challenging yoga position, especially for beginners. Hence, the following tips can help avoid the issues.

• In the beginning, you can straighten your arms at the shoulder level, keeping them parallel to the floor. This is likely to reduce the challenges of raising them over the head.
• If your knees get closer unconsciously, you can avoid it by placing a yoga block between the lower thighs.
• You can take a photograph in this position to check your alignment or show it to a friend and ask his/her opinions regarding the same.
• If you are trying to increase the intensity, you can clasp the palms of your hands on the top of your head.
• You should keep the time for holding the pose lower initially and increase it gradually with time. This will help you avoid pain in your body.
• You can also gaze upwards to see your hands, making this asana more challenging with time.

While Utkatasana is highly beneficial for physical and mental fitness, it is essential to be aware of some of its precautions and contraindications to avoid making mistakes. Here are some of these.

• If you are a beginner, take the process slowly. Performing it quickly and increasing the intensity can cause significant leg pain, resulting in knee injuries.
• Perform this yoga asana for only 20-30 seconds initially. Then, keep increasing the time limit as you get used to this position.
• Try to perform this yoga asana on an empty stomach or after at least four hours of a meal. Serving it on a full stomach can cause nausea and indigestion.
• You should avoid this yoga asana if you suffer from shoulder pain or injury, as it will exert pressure on those muscles. However, you can attempt this asana without raising your hands over the head if you have minor shoulder pain. Instead, keep them close to your chest.
• People suffering from feet, knees, thighs, spine injuries, etc., should also avoid attempting this asana.
• You should avoid this asana if you suffer from low blood pressure, arthritis in the knees or ligament problems. It might increase the complications of your condition.
• Pregnant women should modify the chair pose to avoid any risks.

There can be some modifications to make this yoga asana easier for beginners. Here are some of them that you can follow.

• You can perform this pose by touching a wall so that your upper body gets sufficient support to hold your back and spine straight. This will be effective if you have back pain or spinal problems.
• You can insert a yoga brick between your knees to hold this position with better convenience. In addition, it will be effective if you suffer from knee joint pain.
• Placing a rolled-up mat under your heels will reduce ankle dorsiflexion, bringing more ease to this position. You can do this if you have painful ankles.
• You can perform this pose against a wall to avoid putting extra pressure on the knees and ankles. However, it will be effective if you have pain in the knees.

Thus, as you can see, there are multiple health benefits of Utkatasana. It is a way of squatting to mimic the position of sitting in a chair. As you can see in this article, this position can strengthen your legs, thigh muscles and ankles. However, you should be aware of its precautions and negative consequences.