This underrated backbend is all about strength and stability

In Yoga diaryIn the Archives series, we share a curated collection of articles originally published in back issues dating back to 1975. These stories offer a glimpse into how yoga has been interpreted, written about, and practiced over the years. This article first appeared in Yoga diary in 2003. Find more of our archives here.

Locust Pose (Salabhasana) falls into the category of strengthening poses that serve as a useful foil for some of yoga’s more noble contortions. This reliable workhorse cultivates strong hip and back muscles, revitalizes the fire in the belly, and also promotes a pleasurable sense of expansion into the big, bright world beyond. It prepares the spine for deeper backbends, offers a wealth of variations to keep us challenged and curious along the way, and offers the opportunity to practice the fine art of getting strong without getting hard.

My young niece Lucy says this pose looks less like a grasshopper and more like a Viking ship. (She’s on to something here, as some yoga traditions call this form Boat Pose or Navasana.) To me, moving to Locust feels like flying. I see myself as a cliff diver in Acapulco, leaping up and out in a satisfying swan dive that reaches to the horizon. In this pose we have the opportunity to defy not only gravity, but also those persistent fears that conspire to keep us small. At least for a few beautiful moments, we are called to be bold and expansive. There’s no hiding during Salabhasana’s swan dive!

How to practice grasshopper pose

Locust is a beginner backbend that cultivates strong and resilient back muscles, making it excellent preparation for more advanced poses that require strength and stability in the spine. Lie on your stomach, hands by your sides, with your head comfortably on the floor. Breathe calmly and easily. Send a wave of energy from your deep abdomen through your legs to push them a few inches off the floor, while simultaneously lifting your upper body. Extend fully through the arms and legs and shape the spine into a long and graceful arc, resting the weight of the body on your abdomen. Breathe calmly and keep your mind cool and open. After a few breathing cycles, slowly float back to the ground.

If you’re not quite ready to fully perform the pose, try breaking it down, starting with the legs.

Unraveling the legs

Sit on your stomach, with your legs extended and your head resting comfortably on the floor, with your face turned down or to the side. Let your back body be wide and unobstructed as you surrender to the pull of gravity’s embrace.

Let everything unravel about you layer by layer, from the outside to the core. Exhale completely and greet the earth beneath you with a sweet sigh of relief. The softer your body becomes, the more fully you will feel the tidal ebb and flow of breath flowing within you and pressing outward. Do you feel your back waistband rise as you inhale and fall as you exhale? Do you also feel your hips and shoulders swaying gently? Let the breathing be deep and calm, inviting every cell of your body to settle into its rhythmic cadence.

Let’s begin exploring the Locust Pose, limb by limb, making sure we maintain a spatial quality while initiating movement from the core. Draw your mind’s eye to your stomach and from there draw a line through your right hip, knee and heel.

Invite your energy to move gently along that path – like electricity running along power lines – and slide your right leg away from the center of your body. Your leg should feel easy and elastic as it slides away from your core.

Hold this extension for a few breaths and then release your leg into the neutral position. Repeat the action a few more times on your right side, finally allowing the thigh to rise a few inches off the ground once you reach your maximum extension. Keep the leg long and straight, with the back knee full and lively.

Relax the right leg on the floor and relax, returning to the steady pulse of your breathing. Compare your legs.

Does your right leg feel a little brighter and more alive? Maybe even a little longer than the left? Repeat the action with your left leg. Remember that this pose is more about extension than height, so resist the temptation to bend the legs or contort the hips just to create the illusion of lift. Keep the front of the thigh, knee and foot pointed toward the floor.

And also keep the pelvis straight on the floor so that a small cat sleeping on your hips doesn’t fall to either side.

Once you’ve taken some time to play with this action on each of your legs, turn up the heat a bit by lifting both legs at the same time while resting the upper body gently on the floor. Let the legs float a comfortable hip distance apart. Draw small energy tentacles from the abdomen through the toes and beyond, sliding your legs out, up and away, so that they feel long and endless. To avoid tightening your lower back, reach your tail toward your heels instead of toward the sky.

Here’s an opportunity to take a nap during your practice while your body absorbs the goodness of the movements you just practiced. Just lie down on the ground and notice the changes this Locust variant has brought about.

You’ll probably feel a happy buzz in your hips and hamstrings. You may also feel heat building up in the center of your body; a welcome gift in the middle of winter. Sit in the support of the ground and the nourishing quality of the breath. If there is any tension in your lower back, move your hips back and forth to relieve it.

Pick up your arms

When you feel called and well-rested, you’re ready to explore the upper half of Locust, keeping your feet on the ground as you extend your arms into space. Remember that you want to move from your core rather than from the limbs so that the spine can be washed in the excitement of the pose. This means lifting the spine first and letting the arms follow like kite tails, rather than lifting the hands and asking the rest of the body to drag along.

Send energy from your abdomen up through your spine to lift the chest, shoulders and head off the ground, keeping the chin gently tucked in and the back of the neck long. Send another wave of movement from your heart through the arms to pull the hands off the ground and back to your feet.

Let your shoulder blades slide down your back and let your heart shoot forward and up. Stay here for a moment, breathe calmly and also notice how your chest moves up when you inhale and moves down when you exhale. Don’t let these waves freeze, let them rise with joy. Try this a few more times, keeping both the neck and lower back long and unobstructed.

The full pose

After another easy descent (another nap) you may want to combine the bottom and top halves of the pose, leaving only the lower abdomen on the ground while the rest of you swim in space. First, be completely soft, tune into your breathing and resist the urge to get hard in anticipation of the challenge ahead.

Draw your awareness into your deep belly, the energetic source of this pose. Slide the thighs back and up and the heart forward and up. Let the rest of the body follow suit, extending from the center as far as you can reach. Fill your back body with floating, sky-bound helium. Let the body undulate slightly as you suck on the cool currents of the breath. Keep your brain and eyes soft and kind. Reach out boldly in all directions.

When you feel your gentle and spacious swan dive giving way to fatigue, float back to earth. Rest quietly and sink back into the refreshing rhythms of breathing. The hard work is over and you are left to bask in the afterglow of the pose.

Even though you’re back on solid ground, part of you still pops up and floats out in all directions. You’re relaxing at home while soft and shiny pieces of you sail off into the far reaches of the world.

Variations in the grasshopper pose

Slight variations on the traditional Locust can make the pose more accessible or more demanding, depending on your practice preferences.

Grasshopper variation 1

Less demanding than the full pose, this variation challenges the body in a diagonal line, addressing imbalances in the hips and spine. While resting quietly with the upper arms near your ears, imagine an internal line from your abdomen through the left arm and right leg. Stretch outward along this diagonal in both directions, sweeping the arm and leg up and away from the center of your body.

Let the head rise gently. Keep the floating ribs and pelvis square on the floor so your abdomen remains stable, and gently root the opposite arm and opposite leg into the floor to compensate for the diagonal movement.

Radiate fully through your left arm and right leg. Release the pose and repeat, lifting the opposite arm and leg.

Grasshopper variant 2

This demanding variation is an excellent preparation for more advanced backbends such as Dhanurasana (bow pose).

Start with hands on the floor near the ribs, elbows pointing toward your feet. Bend the legs at a right angle so that the feet float directly above the knees. Extend the thighs and knees toward the sky while simultaneously sliding the chest forward and off the ground. Reach your arms toward your shins and pull your shoulder blades toward your hips. Keep the lower back long, the weight of the body on the lower abdomen and the legs and knees hip-width apart.

Breathe comfortably.