बद्ध कोणासन
Baddha Konasana — Butterfly Pose
baddha = bound, koṇa = angle — the bound-angle seat
Soles together, knees wide, and the hips open like slow wings.
In the simplest words
Sit down, stick the bottoms of your feet together, and hold them like a book. Now let your knees flap slowly up and down. You're a butterfly! Slow flaps, happy hips.
What it is
Sit, bring the soles of the feet together, and let the knees fall outward: the legs make the diamond every child makes instinctively, so its nickname everywhere is the butterfly. The hips release through time, not force: minutes rather than seconds, and small flaps of the knees warm the way in. Its classical cousin, bhadrasana, is praised in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika as a destroyer of diseases (I.53–54; I.55–56 in some editions); it undoes the folded-chair shape hips spend all day in, so desk workers have good reason to sit in it.
Before you practise: health first
Knee pain means support the thighs on cushions, and never bounce hard. With groin injury keep heels farther out; in late pregnancy sit tall against a wall and skip the forward fold.
Getting into it
Sit tall on the front edge of a folded blanket.
Bend the knees and bring the soles of the feet together, heels comfortably close to the body.
Hold the feet or ankles; grow tall through the spine.
Let the knees sink by their own weight; flutter them lightly first if the hips feel cold.
To deepen, hinge slightly forward with a LONG spine; never round down onto the feet.
The breath
Exhales sink the knees a feather at a time; the breath does what pushing cannot.
What it is kept for
Hip and inner-thigh release, easier cross-legged sitting, rest for desk-folded legs.