Akarna Dhanurasana
seated posture in hatha yoga
Akarna Dhanurasana (Sanskrit: आकर्ण धनुरासन; IAST: Ākarṇa Dhanurāsana), also called the Archer pose, Bow and Arrow pose, or Shooting Bow pose is an asana in hatha yoga and modern yoga as exercise. The posture resembles an archer about to release an arrow.
Etymology and origins
The name of the pose is from Sanskrit कर्ण Karṇa, "ear" with the prefix Ā, "towards" or "near". धनुर Dhanura means "bow" and आसन asana means "posture" or "seat". The name alludes to a myth in the Ramayana in which the infant Sita is able to lift Shiva's enormous bow, and when she reaches marriageable age, only Rama is able to wield it, and so become her husband.
The asana is described but not named in the 18th century hatha yoga text Haṭhābhyāsapaddhati. Its description of asana no. 51 runs "Grasping the toes of the feet with both hands, [the yogin] should touch the big toes, one at a time, on the ears."
The pose is shown as Dhanurāsana in the 19th century Sritattvanidhi. The manuscript uses the description from the Haṭhābhyāsapaddhati, giving it a name. The asana's modern name was created by B. K. S. Iyengar in his 1966 Light on Yoga.
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This entry incorporates text from “Akarna Dhanurasana” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.