Years in the past, I heard Judith Hanson Lasater pose this query: “Who must apply backbends?” Her resolution: “Any individual who’s rising older.” This, after all, approach everybody. Maximum folks spend our days bent over something or some other—desks, digital gadgets, counters, and so on. Transferring our shoulder joints and spines in the other way counters the tendency to stoop ahead. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the standard textual content that describes the 15 poses that experience persisted in the course of the millennia, contains just one backbend as crucial to asana apply: Dhanurasana (Bow Pose).

When Britain colonized India, they imported British gymnastics to the rustic, and in particular, to the apply of yoga. So maximum of yoga’s backbends in truth got here from the colonizers. That doesn’t imply those imported backbends aren’t useful for our our bodies, on the other hand. If truth be told, the variety of backbends within the present asana canon guarantees that there will probably be no less than one backbend to suit each particular person’s construction.

The Advantages of Backbending

Backbending confers a couple of advantages:

• Strengthening the muscle tissues that reach the backbone to lend a hand us take care of wholesome, upright posture
• Increasing the chest and anterior shoulder joints
• Stretching the stomach muscle tissues
• Lengthening the hip flexors, muscle tissues that have a tendency to shorten after we spend lengthy hours sitting
• Revitalizing the frame typically; backbends have a tendency to warmth and energize our our bodies and minds

Dhanurasana Demanding situations and Answers

There’s indubitably that backbends will also be difficult. Some other folks’s buildings are made for backbends; others, now not such a lot. We will prep our our bodies for backbending, however for some other folks, a extra solid spinal construction will prohibit how a ways their our bodies will cross. The level to which your lumbar backbone will prolong is one figuring out issue. Folks with a curvier thoracic backbone may additionally to find some backbends tougher. However that is all totally ok. Any individual, regardless of how “deep” your backbends glance, can revel in the advantages.

Dhanurasana will also be difficult for other folks with any of the aforementioned structural qualities. However it’s additionally simple to switch, the usage of a Yoga Strap to attach your fingers together with your toes.

The right way to Observe Dhanurasana (Bow Pose) with a Yoga Strap

1. Acquire your props: Yoga Mat, Yoga Strap and a Yoga Blanket (non-compulsory). In case your hip bones are delicate to force, you could wish to position a folded Yoga Blanket around the heart of your mat.
2. Lie face down for your mat, together with your pelvis for your Yoga Blanket if the usage of.
3. That is the tough section: Bend your knees, drawing your heels in as regards to your glutes. Position your Yoga Strap round your toes or ankles and hang onto the ends of the strap, one in every hand. Dangle the strap taut sufficient in order that it doesn’t slide down your legs towards your knees. In fact, you’ll be able to steer clear of this awkward transfer through having a pal or instructor position the strap round your toes for those who’re now not training on my own.
4. Lie face down once more, however together with your knees bent and the strap leads to each fingers.
5. Root your pelvis into the ground and raise your chest and legs, strolling your fingers towards your toes to stay the strap taut.
6. Stay your head in a impartial place, going through immediately forward. There’s an inclination to throw your head again in backbends, however in susceptible backbends specifically, this will pressure your lumbar backbone. It’s because when your neck is hyperextended, your hyoid bone pushes ahead and disengages your digestive organs. You’ll learn extra about this right here.
7. Keep within the pose for five to ten deep breaths. While you’re completed, go back to a susceptible place. If you wish to apply Dhanurasana once more, stay ahold of the strap. If now not, let cross and loosen up together with your head resting for your fingers.

About Charlotte Bell

Charlotte Bell found out yoga in 1982 and started instructing in 1986. Charlotte is the writer of Conscious Yoga, Conscious Lifestyles: A Information for On a regular basis Observe and Yoga for Meditators, each printed through Rodmell Press. Her 3rd ebook is titled Hip-Wholesome Asana: The Yoga Practitioner’s Information to Protective the Hips and Keeping off SI Joint Ache (Shambhala Publications). She writes a per thirty days column for CATALYST Mag 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 Crimson Rock Rondo, whose DVD gained two Emmy awards in 2010.