Dhanurasana with a Yoga Strap Bowstring

Years in the past, I heard Judith Hanson Lasater pose this query: “Who ought to apply backbends?” Her reply: “Anybody who’s rising older.” This, in fact, 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 the millennia, contains just one backbend as important to asana apply: Dhanurasana (Bow Pose).

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

The Advantages of Backbending

Backbending confers a number of advantages:

• Strengthening the muscle tissues that stretch the backbone to assist us preserve wholesome, upright posture
• Increasing the chest and anterior shoulder joints
• Stretching the belly muscle tissues
• Lengthening the hip flexors, muscle tissues that are inclined to shorten once we spend lengthy hours sitting
• Revitalizing the physique normally; backbends are inclined to warmth and energize our our bodies and minds

Dhanurasana Challenges and Options

There’s little doubt that backbends will be difficult. Some individuals’s constructions are made for backbends; others, not a lot. We will prep our our bodies for backbending, however for some individuals, a extra steady 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 also discover some backbends more difficult. However that is all totally okay. Anybody, regardless of how “deep” your backbends look, can get pleasure from the advantages.

Dhanurasana will be difficult for individuals with any of the aforementioned structural qualities. Nevertheless it’s additionally straightforward to change, utilizing a Yoga Strap to attach your arms along with your ft.

The way to Follow 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. In fact, you may keep away from this awkward transfer by having a pal or instructor place the strap round your ft when you’re not practising alone.
4. Lie face down once more, however along with your knees bent and the strap ends in each arms.
5. Root your pelvis into the ground and carry your chest and legs, strolling your arms towards your ft to maintain the strap taut.
6. Maintain your head in a impartial place, dealing with straight forward. There’s an inclination to throw your head again in backbends, however in susceptible backbends particularly, this may pressure your lumbar backbone. It’s because when your neck is hyperextended, your hyoid bone pushes ahead and disengages your digestive organs. You’ll be able to 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 apply Dhanurasana once more, maintain ahold of the strap. If not, let go and loosen up along with your head resting in your arms.

About Charlotte Bell

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