Dhanurasana with a Yoga Strap Bowstring

Years in the past, I heard Judith Hanson Lasater pose this query: “Who ought to observe 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. Transferring our shoulder joints and spines in the wrong way counters the tendency to hunch ahead. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the standard textual content that describes the 15 poses which have endured via the millennia, consists of just one backbend as important to asana observe: Dhanurasana (Bow Pose).

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

The Advantages of Backbending

Backbending confers a number of advantages:

• Strengthening the muscle tissues that reach the backbone to assist us preserve wholesome, upright posture
• Increasing the chest and anterior shoulder joints
• Stretching the stomach muscle tissues
• Lengthening the hip flexors, muscle tissues that are likely to shorten once we spend lengthy hours sitting
• Revitalizing the physique on the whole; 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 constructions 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 prolong is one figuring out issue. Individuals with a curvier thoracic backbone may also discover some backbends more difficult. 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 straightforward to change, utilizing a Yoga Strap to attach your fingers along with your toes.

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

1. Collect your props: Yoga Mat, Yoga Strap and a Yoga Blanket (non-compulsory). In case your hip bones are delicate to stress, 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 difficult half: Bend your knees, drawing your heels in near your glutes. Place your Yoga Strap round your toes 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. In fact, you’ll be able to keep away from this awkward transfer by having a good friend or instructor place the strap round your toes in the event you’re not training alone.
4. Lie face down once more, however along with your knees bent and the strap ends in each fingers.
5. Root your pelvis into the ground and elevate your chest and legs, strolling your fingers towards your toes to maintain the strap taut.
6. Hold 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 particularly, this could pressure your lumbar backbone. It’s because when your neck is hyperextended, your hyoid bone pushes ahead and disengages your digestive organs. You may learn extra about this right here.
7. Keep within the pose for five to 10 deep breaths. If you’re completed, return to a susceptible place. If you wish to observe Dhanurasana once more, preserve ahold of the strap. If not, let go and loosen up along with your head resting in your fingers.

About Charlotte Bell

Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and started educating in 1986. Charlotte is the creator of Aware Yoga, Aware Life: A Information for On a regular basis Observe 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 folks sextet Crimson Rock Rondo, whose DVD received two Emmy awards in 2010.