Ardha Chandrasana / Half Moon Pose

Stand with your feet together. Stretch your arms over your head sideways like a Bird of Paradise raising its wings. Interlock fingers and make a nice tight grip. Release the index fingers. Straighten your arms completely, lock the elbows, press your arms against your ears, and stretch for the sky with everything you've got. You should look like a church steeple. Keep your head up, your chin up three inches away from your chest and your arms tight against your ears at all times. Inhale

Look at one point directly in front of you. Stretch your torso toward the ceiling as much as possible and, without bending your arms or legs, slowly bend directly to your right as much as possible. Keep your whole body facing front. Simultaneously, push your hips directly to the left max-i-mum, Feel the beautiful pull along the left side of the body. Fron the side your body is a straigt line making a perfect unbroken Half Moon. Breathing 80-20

Benefits

In Half Moon, you really begin to open up the whole skeletal system, including the spine, the neck, the ribs and the scapulate. Your entire body then opens up like a flower petal blooming.

Half Moon strengthens ever muscle in the body's core, especially in the abdomen, and flexes and strengthens the latissimus dorsi, oblique, deltoid and trapezius muscles. It increase the flexibility of the spine comprehensively, from the coccyx to the neck; promotes proper kidney functin, and helps to cure enlargement of the liver and spleen. Half Moon also firms and trims the waistline, hips, abdomen, buttocks and thighs. Give it a coupole of weeks and you will probably be able to take that belt in a notch or two. Bikram still owns the same pair of pants he wore 40 years ago and they still fit (28 inch waist) The same can happen for you.

---

Pranayama Standing Deep Breathing Pose	Pada Hastasana Hands-to-Feet Pose
All 26 Bikram Yoga Postures