Learn cow face pose (Gomukhasana) properly: stack your knees, join your hands with a strap and protect knees and shoulders when hips and shoulders are stiff.
How do you get into cow face pose when neither knees nor hands cooperate? The honest answer: you practice legs and arms separately, both with props. Gomukhasana ("cow face pose") combines two things that challenge the body differently: the legs are stacked, the hands hook behind the back. It looks complicated and is, as long as hips and shoulders are stiff. But with a block and a strap it becomes doable.
The pose is worthwhile because it opens two areas that are often closed in everyday life: the outer hip from long sitting and the shoulders from the phone and the desk. That is practice experience. It also works as a test, because it shows you honestly which side is stiffer.
For the pose itself there is no study I could cite. What counts are findings on the joints it demands. Among an estimated 63,280 yoga injuries in US emergency departments, the shoulder accounted for 9.0%, and the knee was the most common among leg injuries (9.4%) [1]. And yoga practitioners in a review of nine studies had a higher risk of meniscus injuries than non-practitioners [2]. For you that means: hips and shoulders open with time, not with pressure.
Sit on the block, legs in front of you. The seat must be high enough that the hips do not tip backward. Slide your seat to the edge.
Bend both knees, place one knee over the other and draw the heels toward the opposite hips. The knees lie one on top of the other like a cross. If that is too much, stay with a loose variation: one knee above the other, the feet further in front of the body. Make sure both sit bones carry equal weight.
Milestone: You sit for 1 minute with stacked knees, without a sting in the knee and without sitting crooked.
Raise the right arm, bend the elbow and let the hand sink between the shoulder blades. Bring the left arm from below behind the back. Throw the strap over the upper hand, grab it with the lower and walk your fingers toward it. You may also leave the hands free and practice only the arms.
Stay five to eight calm breaths, chest open, neck long. Then switch sides and swap leg and arm position.
Milestone to move on: You hold the pose for 30 seconds per side, the hands join loosely and the shoulders stay down.
The posture demands two sensitive joints. In the review article on yoga injuries, shoulders and knees are among the problem areas [3]. A pull in hip and shoulder is normal, a stab in the knee or tingling in the arm is not. As with every crossed seated posture, the transfer note from lab studies on cross-legged sitting applies: crossed legs lengthen the piriformis (deep buttock muscle) by about 12% compared with normal sitting [5]. Whether cow face demands even more has not been measured. Never force the hands together and release the knee at once if it complains. Static stretching increases flexibility measurably in the long term, but without hurry [4]. This guide explains and motivates; it does not replace supervised training.
Practice the arms alone, at the wall. Stand with your back against the wall, bring the arms into position and let the wall keep back and head upright. This is a practice trick: you separate the shoulder from the hip and see whether your shoulder or your seat is the problem. Repeat on several days before you join your hands while sitting.
With a strap. Throw it over the upper hand, grab it with the lower and walk your fingers toward it. The strap does not replace progress, but it protects the shoulder from pressure. Forcing is not an option.
Mostly because the hip does not rotate outward far enough and the knee has to compensate. Sit higher, let the upper knee rest on a block and stack loosely. With stabbing pain you release the posture.
Yes, if you practice legs and arms separately. Start with a block under your seat, stacked knees and free hands. When the arms join later, use the strap.
That is normal. Hip and shoulder are rarely equally mobile, and the sides feel different in cow face. Practice both equally long, use more props on the stiffer side and do not compare yourself with the other.
Buttocks and outer hip in the legs, in the arms the shoulder (top) and chest side (bottom). I found no studies on the pose itself, only on stretching in general: static stretching increased flexibility in the long term [4].
Head-to-Knee Pose (Janu Sirsasana): Folding From the Hip, Not the Back