Deepen Back Bends Safely

A key to creating safety in all back bends is the ability to lengthen your spine and maintain good alignment while pushing into deeper territory. One way to do that is to strengthen the muscles that support and extend your spine. We learn through stress, but if the stress is too acute, we stop being open and thinking clearly. Make sure as you try deeper postures you go little by little, ensuring you learn from the intensity rather than get shut down (or worse, hurt!) by it.

One way to train ourselves to work in this way is through yoga poses and techniques that are hands-free. When we remove our hands from back bends, we’re forced to work our core and spinal muscles in a an honest way. We can’t cheat how deep we can get, when our hands aren’t pushing us past what we can hold with integrity.

My favorite yoga pose to practice hands free back bending is Ustrasana, or Camel, and that’s the pose I’ll use to illustrate my instructions.

Here’s how it works:

Generate Length

• Generate length in your spine by pressing down into the ground with your foundation; in Camel that would be into your legs, knees, shins and feet.
• Elongate the sides of your body and telescope up through the crown of your head.
• Pay particular attention to keeping length in the back of your body, too, so you don’t compress your lumbar or cervical spine.
• Continue to lift up as you curl back, as length in the spine is needed through the entire duration of a back bend.

Use Your Power

• The part of the spine that’s often underworked during back bends is the upper back, between the shoulder blades; learn how to access these muscles — specifically the rhomboids — to gain more power. (Check out my post on cactus arms to learn how).
• Use these muscles to pull your shoulders back and dramatically lift your chest, in camel, I’m lifting into my hands.
• Engage your pelvic floor and lower abdomen, through mula bandha, so your low back is supported from within.

Lean Into It

• As you curl back, imagine you’re curling up, over a giant beach ball, rather than collapsing into it.
• Lean your hips forward to counter balance the weight of your head and shoulders as they move back, just make sure you push your inner thighs back to keep your legs from turning out.
• Lean only so far back in the pose that you can get back up chest first, with the back bend still intact and without the help of your hands.

Other back bends that strengthen the spine that can be done hands free are: Locust (Shalabasana), Cobra (Bhujangasana) with hands hovering above the ground, Fish (Matsyasana) with hands in the air, One Legged Pigeon (Eka Pada Rajakapotasana) with back leg straight, arms by sides or overhead, Kneeling Lunge (Anjaneasana)