September 2025

Cow Face

Gomukhasana

From our teaching team · Jen Villegas

Theme: Integration + Wholeness. Gomukhasana is a shape of opposites coming together: legs entwined below, arms reaching in opposite directions above. It's both grounding and expansive, and highlights the union at the heart of yoga — left and right, strength and surrender, effort and ease.

Practice safely

These guides are for general education and are not medical advice or a substitute for in-person instruction. Yoga is physical, and every body is different: practice at your own risk, move within your own limits, and stop if something hurts. Talk with your physician before starting any new physical practice, especially if you are pregnant, injured, or managing a health condition. The safest place to learn any of these poses is in the room with a teacher who can see you, and our teachers adjust for every level in every class.

Why this pose

  • A shape of opposites coming together: legs entwined below, arms reaching in opposite directions above.
  • It highlights the union at the heart of yoga: left and right, strength and surrender, effort and ease.
  • September is a back-to-routine time; this pose is about integration — pulling scattered parts of ourselves back together.

Key physical benefits

  • Opens shoulders, chest, and triceps.
  • Deep hip stretch targeting outer hips and piriformis.
  • Encourages better posture and lung capacity by lifting through the sternum.

Energetic / teaching angle

  • Union of opposites: encourage students to feel what happens when the body twists, binds, and balances tension with release.
  • Ground to grow: as the hips root down, the spine lengthens upward.
  • Wholeness in complexity: even when the pose feels awkward or asymmetrical, it invites steadiness and breath.

Ways to offer in class

  • Break it into pieces: seated hip stretch, eagle arms, strap-assisted shoulder bind.
  • Offer plenty of prep: thread-the-needle, cow face arms with strap, seated figure four.
  • Use the pose as a metaphor for gathering what feels "scattered" and holding it all at once.

Cue / poetic offering

"In Gomukhasana, the arms and legs seem to move in different directions, yet the whole body finds one steady seat. This is the practice: to hold contradiction and still find balance."

The best way to learn it is in the room.

Our teachers break down poses like this in every class, at every level. First class is $8.

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