Cobra PosePose Reference
Camera angles
Cobra Pose lies face down with the legs long and the hips grounded while straight arms raise the upper body into a deep back bend, head tipped back.
Tags: yogalyingproneback bendfull body
How to draw the Cobra Pose pose
three-quarter view 
side view 
back view 
high-angle view
Everything below the navel stays on the floor: the legs extend together behind, the tops of the feet press down, and the front of the pelvis keeps contact. Above that line the hands sit under the shoulders and the elbows straighten, raising the ribcage high so the spine bends strongly from the lower back. The head continues the arc by tipping back to look up, reaching about 66 cm on the mannequin. Treat this as the high, straight-arm version of the cobra pose rather than the low, bent-elbow form often taught to beginners.
From the side view on the figure's left, a long horizontal leg line meets a steep, bowed upper body, and each arm acts as a near-vertical strut between floor and shoulder. The front view is the opposite exercise: head and shoulders dominate while the legs vanish behind the pelvis in strong foreshortening. From behind you see the soles, the back of the pelvis and the raised shoulders framed by two straight arms. The high angle turns the body into a diagonal with the arms splayed, useful for top-down floor layouts.
More on angles and common mistakes
If the hips lift off the floor, the shape turns into upward-facing dog, a different yoga pose, so keep the pelvis flat. Shoulders hunched up to the ears and legs drifting apart are the next most common slips. Also avoid a neck cranked far back above a lower back that stays flat; the bend should travel up the whole spine. The wooden figure's torso blocks are rigid, so blend the transitions between them.
Beyond yoga and fitness illustration, the pose works for a character pushing up from the ground after a fall, or a swimmer-like stretch in an animation warm-up. In Edit this pose, bend both elbows so they hug the ribs and lower the upper body by about a third to get the gentler baby cobra, leaving the pelvis and feet in place. The floor itself is not shown in the render.
Free to use (CC0). The pose images on this page are released under CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication). Use them for drawing practice, commercial illustration, reference sheets or AI image generation; no attribution is required. A credit to PoseMaker is appreciated but optional.
Cobra Pose pose prompt
Copy a prompt for your AI image generator. Pair it with the OpenPose skeleton in ControlNet so the generated character matches this exact pose.
General prompt
A person in cobra pose, lying face down with legs long and together and the tops of the feet on the floor. The hips stay down while straight arms, hands under the shoulders, lift the upper body into a deep back bend; head tilted back, gazing upward. Plain background.
Midjourney
full body person in cobra pose, yoga back bend, lying face down, legs extended together, hips on the floor, straight arms lifting the upper body, hands under shoulders, head tilted back looking up, side view, plain background --ar 3:2 --style raw
Stable Diffusion
1person, full body, cobra pose, bhujangasana, yoga, prone, lying on stomach, back bend, straight arms, hands under shoulders, hips on floor, legs together, tops of feet on floor, head tilted back, looking up, side view, plain background, fitness
Negative prompt
hips lifted, knees off floor, upward dog, downward dog, bent elbows, legs apart, hunched shoulders, flat back, flexed feet, extra arms, extra legs, fused fingers, distorted spine, broken neck, cropped feet, blurry, nsfw
OpenPose skeleton for ControlNet
Load the PNG into a ControlNet OpenPose unit (preprocessor: none), or import the JSON into an OpenPose editor.
Have a photo of the pose you want?
Upload it to Photo to Pose. We detect the pose in your browser and put it on the mannequin, ready to adjust.