American astronauts Jack Fischer and Peggy Whitson performed yoga in the International Space Station (ISS).

These pictures were shared by them on Jack’s twitter account. It was also said that doing yoga in space is much easier than doing yoga on earth! Some yoga postures require a lot of flexibility and muscular strength to perform them. These asanas become difficult to be performed on earth due to the force of gravity acting on us. But that’s not the case in space. This makes the experience quite different. The most difficult asanas can be done with ease in space! The two astronauts proved it right by performing yoga in space and claiming that it is easier to perform yoga poses without gravity.

The posture they performed was the ‘Half Lotus Toe Balance’ or ‘Padangustha Padma Utkatasana’. This is a very difficult posture to perform as this requires much of your flexibility and energy. One has to balance the entire weight of one’s body onto toes of one foot only. And to make the asana hard, one has to perform it in sitting position with one’s back straight! The gravity makes it difficult to balance our body during the asana.

Indian astronaut Rakesh Sharma had also performed three yoga postures when he was sent to space. He had to do three yoga exercises for some time for five days, one for 25 times, second for 35 minutes and the third for one hour! This was a part of research to study the effect of space on various bodily functions.