Dhanurasana with a Yoga Strap Bowstring

Years in the past, I heard Judith Hanson Lasater pose this query: “Who must follow backbends?” Her resolution: “Any individual who’s rising older.” This, in fact, method everybody. Maximum people spend our days bent over something or some other—desks, digital gadgets, counters, and so forth. Shifting our shoulder joints and spines in the other way counters the tendency to droop ahead. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the standard textual content that describes the 15 poses that experience continued throughout the millennia, comprises just one backbend as crucial to asana follow: Dhanurasana (Bow Pose).

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

The Advantages of Backbending

Backbending confers more than one advantages:

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

Dhanurasana Demanding situations and Answers

There’s for sure that backbends will also be difficult. Some other folks’s constructions are made for backbends; others, now not such a lot. We will be able to prep our our bodies for backbending, however for some other folks, a extra strong spinal construction will restrict how a ways their our bodies will move. The level to which your lumbar backbone will prolong is one figuring out issue. Folks with a curvier thoracic backbone may also in finding some backbends more difficult. 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. Nevertheless it’s additionally simple to switch, the use of a Yoga Strap to attach your palms together with your toes.

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

1. Accumulate your props: Yoga Mat, Yoga Strap and a Yoga Blanket (non-compulsory). In case your hip bones are delicate to force, you may wish to position a folded Yoga Blanket around the middle of your mat.
2. Lie face down in your mat, together with your pelvis in your Yoga Blanket if the use of.
3. That is the tough phase: Bend your knees, drawing your heels in on the subject of your glutes. Position your Yoga Strap round your toes or ankles and dangle onto the ends of the strap, one in each and every hand. Cling the strap taut sufficient in order that it doesn’t slide down your legs towards your knees. After all, you’ll be able to steer clear of this awkward transfer through having a chum or instructor position the strap round your toes when you’re now not practising on my own.
4. Lie face down once more, however together with your knees bent and the strap leads to each palms.
5. Root your pelvis into the ground and raise your chest and legs, strolling your palms towards your toes to stay the strap taut.
6. Stay your head in a impartial place, going through instantly forward. There’s an inclination to throw your head again in backbends, however in vulnerable backbends specifically, 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 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 vulnerable place. If you wish to follow Dhanurasana once more, stay ahold of the strap. If now not, let move and loosen up together with your head resting in your palms.

About Charlotte Bell

Charlotte Bell came upon yoga in 1982 and started educating in 1986. Charlotte is the creator of Conscious Yoga, Conscious Lifestyles: A Information for On a regular basis Follow and Yoga for Meditators, each printed through Rodmell Press. Her 3rd guide is titled Hip-Wholesome Asana: The Yoga Practitioner’s Information to Protective the Hips and Heading off SI Joint Ache (Shambhala Publications). She writes a per month 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 Pink Rock Rondo, whose DVD received two Emmy awards in 2010.