Fab Abs

Strengthen your core and improve your posture.

By Richard Rosen

Though it sounds impressive in Sanskrit, Urdhva Prasarita Padasana rendered in English becomes the decidedly clunky "Raised Stretched-Out Foot Pose." The name is much ado about a fairly simple exercise that has deep benefits, but most teachers just call it by its initials. UPP involves nothing more than lying on your back and swinging your extended legs through a slightly less than 90-degree arc, from perpendicular to the floor to nearly—but not quite—parallel, and back again. This simple movement strengthens a muscle that passes through the very core of your body, which aids your posture, your movement, and even (because this muscle is in close proximity to the back of the diaphragm) the way you breathe. In Light on Yoga B.K.S. Iyengar says UPP is "wonderful for reducing fat round the abdomen, strengthens the lumbar region of the back, and tones the abdominal organs."

The pose has a well-deserved reputation as an abdominal strengthener, but we aren't talking about the rectus abdominus, the long, flat muscle that shores up the belly between the pubis and ribs, which bodybuilder types, like California's governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, transform into cosmetically flashy six-pack abs. But UPP's real benefit is to a pair of deeper abdominal muscles, the psoas, which Ida Rolf, the originator of Structural Integration (popularly known as Rolfing), deemed "one of the most significant muscles of the body."

Each psoas lies just behind the abdominal organs and is more difficult to access than the rectus abdominus. It runs a circuitous route: It attaches on the front of the lumbar spine (lower back), then runs along the inner surface of the pelvis and over the pubis to attach to the inner surface of the thigh bone (femur), at a bony knob called the lesser trochanter. Rolf says that the psoas, outwardly a powerful hip flexor, plays an important role in general body structure, in posture and movement, and even in digestion and elimination.

Puppet Practice

The root of UPP's movement is deep inside the torso where the psoas attaches to the lumbar spine. I find it useful to imagine that the psoas is a puppet string, originating on my inner thigh (lesser trochanter). The puppeteer (what good are puppet strings without a puppeteer?) is sitting on my lumbar spine and holding the other end. She can pull on or release it, depending on whether she's raising or lowering my leg.

Lie on your back, knees bent, feet on the floor with your heels about a foot away from your buttocks. Focus on your right lesser trochanter. From here, in your imagination, follow the course of your puppet-string psoas through the pelvis and up to the lumbar spine, where your puppeteer is holding its free end.

As she pulls on the string, exhale and watch your right foot lift effortlessly off the floor and your right thigh close in toward your belly. (For now, keep your knee bent.) Pause when the hip is fully flexed, and inhale. As the puppeteer releases the string, exhale and lightly float your foot back toward the floor. But wait! Just as your tippy-toes brush the floor, pause to inhale. On the exhalation, the puppeteer will pull again, and your foot will rise up. Continue this up-and-down swinging for at least a minute. Pause at the conclusion of each movement to inhale; lift or drop your foot only on an exhalation. When finished, return your right foot to the floor and repeat with your left leg.

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