Throughout your practice in yoga, you become familiar with warrior pose. In fact, there are three different warrior poses that each make you feel confident, bold and strong.

Not many people stop to think about the story behind the poses that they are doing. Of all the yoga poses I discussed earlier, I made sure to emphasize their benefits, but today I want to do something a little different and give you the benefits and a brief history about the warrior poses.

Warrior I Pose

Warrior I pose requires that you stand tall and strong with your feet apart and your arms firmly reaching up to lengthen your belly, your waist, and open up your chest.

This pose is great for strengthening your glutes and hamstrings and because you are expanding your chest in this position, it allows you to balance your heart chakra and energize your body.

Warrior II Pose

Warrior II pose is very similar to Warrior I, except you are reaching your arms outward instead of upward. Something that the warrior poses have in common in terms of benefits is that they all require concentration and force you to ground your body.

Just as Warrior I pose strengthens your legs and opens up your chest, Warrior II pose does the same and also builds up a lot of strength in your arms.

Warrior III Pose

Out of the three warrior poses, this one may be the most complicated. With this pose, you are shifting all of your weight into one leg and reaching your arms forward, over your head.

Warrior III pose can improve your posture, tone your entire body, and of course improve your balance and flexibility.

Once you have done this pose with one leg, try and switch the weight to your other leg afterwards.

History of the Warrior Poses

Now that I have shared some benefits of the three warrior poses, let’s get into the history behind them.

The story of the warrior poses feature two characters, Shiva, a hindu deity, and his wife Shakti who are madly in love. The only issue is that Daksha, Shiva’s father does not approve of their marriage.

When Daksha decides to hold a large gathering, he uninvites both Shiva and Shakti and when Shakti, who is very upset, confronts her father about this, he insults her marriage with Shiva resulting in Shakti deciding to end her life so that she would no longer be able to face her father anymore.

Shiva is so incredibly upset and angered by his wife’s passing that he rips a lock of his hair out, throws it on the ground, resulting in a large hero to emerge called Virabhadra. Shiva tells Virabhadra to kill the guest at the gathering, including Daksha, Shakti’s father.

Virabhadra does this and cuts off Daksha’s head.

It is said that the three warrior poses each represent the poses of Virabhadra as he transforms into a warrior. Warrior I pose represents Virabhadra transforming upwards out of the ground from the lock of hair, Warrior II pose represents Virabhadra taking out his sword to slice off the head of Daksha, and Warrior III pose represents Virabhadra placing Daksha’s head on a stake.

Now that you have a bit of historical context on the warrior poses, I hope you will keep this powerful story in mind the next time you practice them!