Years in the past, I heard Judith Hanson Lasater pose this query: “Who ought to follow backbends?” Her reply: “Anybody who’s rising older.” This, after all, means everybody. Most of us spend our days bent over one factor or one other—desks, digital units, counters, and many others. Shifting our shoulder joints and spines in the other way counters the tendency to hunch ahead. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the normal textual content that describes the 15 poses which have endured by means of the millennia, contains just one backbend as important to asana follow: Dhanurasana (Bow Pose).

When Britain colonized India, they imported British gymnastics to the nation, and particularly, to the follow of yoga. So most of yoga’s backbends truly got here from the colonizers. That doesn’t imply these imported backbends usually are not useful for our our bodies, nonetheless. In truth, the vary of backbends within the present asana canon ensures that there will likely be not less than one backbend to suit each particular person’s construction.

The Advantages of Backbending

Backbending confers a number of advantages:

• Strengthening the muscle tissue that reach the backbone to assist us keep wholesome, upright posture
• Increasing the chest and anterior shoulder joints
• Stretching the stomach muscle tissue
• Lengthening the hip flexors, muscle tissue that are likely to shorten after we spend lengthy hours sitting
• Revitalizing the physique typically; backbends are likely to warmth and energize our our bodies and minds

Dhanurasana Challenges and Options

There’s little doubt that backbends may be difficult. Some individuals’s buildings are made for backbends; others, not a lot. We are able to prep our our bodies for backbending, however for some individuals, a extra secure spinal construction will restrict how far their our bodies will go. The extent to which your lumbar backbone will lengthen is one figuring out issue. Folks with a curvier thoracic backbone may additionally discover some backbends tougher. However that is all fully okay. Anybody, regardless of how “deep” your backbends look, can get pleasure from the advantages.

Dhanurasana may be difficult for individuals with any of the aforementioned structural qualities. But it surely’s additionally simple to switch, utilizing a Yoga Strap to attach your palms along with your ft.

Methods to Apply Dhanurasana (Bow Pose) with a Yoga Strap

1. Collect your props: Yoga Mat, Yoga Strap and a Yoga Blanket (non-obligatory). In case your hip bones are delicate to strain, you would possibly need to place a folded Yoga Blanket throughout the middle of your mat.
2. Lie face down in your mat, along with your pelvis in your Yoga Blanket if utilizing.
3. That is the tough half: Bend your knees, drawing your heels in near your glutes. Place your Yoga Strap round your ft or ankles and maintain onto the ends of the strap, one in every hand. Maintain the strap taut sufficient in order that it doesn’t slide down your legs towards your knees. After all, you may keep away from this awkward transfer by having a good friend or instructor place the strap round your ft should you’re not training alone.
4. Lie face down once more, however along with your knees bent and the strap ends in each palms.
5. Root your pelvis into the ground and elevate your chest and legs, strolling your palms towards your ft to maintain the strap taut.
6. Maintain your head in a impartial place, dealing with straight forward. There’s a bent to throw your head again in backbends, however in susceptible backbends specifically, this could pressure your lumbar backbone. It is because when your neck is hyperextended, your hyoid bone pushes ahead and disengages your digestive organs. You possibly can learn extra about this right here.
7. Keep within the pose for five to 10 deep breaths. Whenever you’re completed, return to a susceptible place. If you wish to follow Dhanurasana once more, hold ahold of the strap. If not, let go and chill out along with your head resting in your palms.

About Charlotte Bell

Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and started educating in 1986. Charlotte is the writer of Conscious Yoga, Conscious Life: A Information for On a regular basis Apply and Yoga for Meditators, each revealed by Rodmell Press. Her third e book is titled Hip-Wholesome Asana: The Yoga Practitioner’s Information to Defending the Hips and Avoiding SI Joint Ache (Shambhala Publications). She writes a month-to-month column for CATALYST Journal and serves as editor for Yoga U On-line. Charlotte is a founding board member for GreenTREE Yoga, a non-profit that brings yoga to underserved populations. A lifelong musician, Charlotte performs oboe and English horn within the Salt Lake Symphony and people sextet Purple Rock Rondo, whose DVD received two Emmy awards in 2010.