Twenty superposes that carry maximum benefit with minimum risk

The term superfood is usually used to describe nutrient-rich food that is especially beneficial for our health and well-being. Certain yoga poses can be described as “superposes” because they also carry incredible “nutritional value” for our bodies.

What makes a pose a “superpose”? Surprisingly, it is not the difficulty or intricacy of body part arrangement, or even the strength or uber-stretchiness that one needs to exhibit to do them. In fact, most superposes are quite simple. What makes them powerful is their incredible diversity. The purpose of any yoga pose is to carry maximum benefit for YOUR body with minimum risk.

A superpose is a pose that:

1. Can deliver the benefits for many different body parts at the same time (“benefit-dense”)
2. Is accessible to most students
3. Can be modified easily to emphasize the effect for a particular area
4. Can be adapted easily to accommodate different body shapes, physical abilities, student preferences, and so on.

Below is a list of poses that I consider to be “superposes” because they are benefit-dense, accessible to most students, and offer multiple options. They are arranged in five groups of four and represent a gradual progression from the most foundational to the more challenging. If you choose to build your yoga practice on those instead of chasing after the fancy exotic ones, you will end up having a rich, satisfying, and “nutrient-dense” yoga practice.

See Also

Ten things to do to benefit your well-being when you are home-bound

You can find all those adaptations in a book. This book covers various adaptations of 20 superposes and our reasons for doing them. It is meant to inspire your curiosity and creativity and facilitate a new type of thinking about yoga poses.

Learn more

These pose adaptations (and many others) are included in Sequence Wiz yoga sequence builder. You can easily arrange them in a yoga sequence and even modify any pose image on the spot!

Learn more