Peak Pose: Ustrasana (Camel Pose)

Hatha Yoga is the mix of postures and respiration practices. For hundreds of years, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika outlined bodily yoga apply. Many of the 15 poses described within the textual content are seated postures, with one lone backbend, Dhanurasana (Bow Pose). As yoga has tailored to fashionable life, nonetheless, backbends have develop into ever extra vital. This submit will function one in every of yoga’s emblematic backbends, Ustrasana (Camel Pose).

Practising backbends is vital due to the thoracic backbone’s tendency to droop ahead over time. It’s comprehensible. Most of our day by day life actions require that we bend ahead—over digital units, counter tops, steering wheels, and many others. Add to that the tendency for gravity to tug us ahead over time. Common backbending might help us keep upright.

It’s vital to level out that the thoracic backbone will not be really designed to increase (backbend). Once we apply backbends, it’s the lumbar backbone that’s really doing the backbending. However there are issues we are able to do to ensure we don’t overuse the lumbar. We do that by getting ready different areas of the physique correctly earlier than we try Camel Pose, or any backbend.

How you can Put together for Ustrasana

It’s vital to heat up earlier than practising any backbend. Listed here are the actions that may put together us for practising Ustrasana, together with poses that help these actions:

Cautions for Ustrasana

Bear in mind that Ustrasana will not be a wholesome pose for each particular person. Please keep away from this pose when you have hypertension or extreme fatigue. Listed here are another cautions and contraindications from Yoga Journal:

• Keep away from or modify in the event you really feel any pinching or ache in your low again.
• Keep away from or modify when you have any shoulder ache, shoulder arthritis, or shoulder accidents.
• Keep away from or modify when you have any again ache or accidents, together with surgical procedures.
• For many, it’s best to not drop your head again on this pose, notably when you have a neck damage or are in danger for stroke. As an alternative, elevate your chin barely and use your neck muscle tissue to stabilize your head in place. You may even draw the chin in towards the chest.
• Keep away from or modify when you have shoulder accidents or ache within the pose.

How you can Apply Ustrasana

After you’ve spent a while getting ready your physique, you’ll doubtless be able to strive Ustrasana. This model will use a yoga bolster throughout the calves that can assist you get most elevate and lengthening within the backbone.

How you can Put together

1. Start by sitting in your heels on a yoga mat. In case your knees won’t enable this, be happy to put a rolled blanket or block beneath your hips to start out.
2. Take a second to really feel your physique. What’s the character of your vitality? Gradual or fast? Downward or upward shifting? Calm or agitated? There’s no have to attempt to “appropriate” what you’re feeling; merely discover what’s current.
3. Press your knees and shins into the ground to elevate your hips off the heels, bringing you to a kneeling place, together with your pelvis instantly over your knees.
4. Place a yoga bolster throughout your calves.

Proceed to Camel Pose

1. Place your palms in your pelvic rim. Floor your knees and shins, lifting your sternum towards the sky, in order that your low again lengthens. From this lengthening, root your pelvis proper over your knees (don’t let it fall again towards your heels), and start to bend again from the waist. Preserve lengthening your backbone as you bend again.
2. Attain your palms again behind you and place them in your bolster. Breathe and broaden.
3. Keep right here, respiration totally, for five to 10 breaths.
4. Press your knees into the ground to assist carry your physique again to upright. Launch each arms to your sides and return to sitting in your heels or your block or bolster.
5. Shut your eyes and pay attention to your physique’s vitality. Has something shifted?
6. In case your lumbar is versatile in backbends, you are able to do this once more, putting your palms in your heels as an alternative of the bolster. When you do that and discover that your respiration is restricted or your pelvis collapses again over the ft, return to an upright place and apply once more with a bolster. Additionally, be happy to maneuver on to the following step.
7. After practising Ustrasana, apply Jathara Parivrttanasana (Revolved Stomach Pose). Then apply at the very least one seated ahead bend to stretch the again physique and settle your nervous system. End with Savasana (Rest Pose).

About Charlotte Bell

Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and started educating in 1986. Charlotte is the writer of Aware Yoga, Aware Life: A Information for On a regular basis Apply 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 folks sextet Purple Rock Rondo, whose DVD gained two Emmy awards.