Back To Backbends

I love backbends in classes, from Camel ( Ustrasana, see pose), Wheel ( urdhva dhanuraasana, see pose) to Kapotasana ( see pose) and of course, my favorite King Pigeon ( Eka Pada Rajakapotasana - see pose ) –> by the way, just flipping through “Light On Yoga” and Iyengar was doing the fullest pose with his upper lip touching the heel of the back leg 8P wow….inspiring!

Yey, today we are back doing backbends and dropbacks. Woohoo!

Twas a bit scary doing the first dropback as I have not done it for quite some time. I remember the first time I tried doing drop back, it was quite scary. The feeling of going down backwards is not something normal people do. It’s like falling down into the unknown. But once you overcome that fear, the feeling is light and open and almost magical. It’s like you gone past that what ifs stage, and you know you are going to be just fine and your hands gonna land safely… you know exactly what’s going to happen.

If you are new to backbends or have some back problems, please please, do not try this… unless you have your yoga teacher around, kay?

Some tips on drop backs that I have experienced ( due to amazing teaching by Bo )
1. It’s all about opening the chest. Try this anusara method in opening your chest : Stand with “robot arms”, arms bent at elbows. Have someone in front of you to help spot you. Ask the person to put his hands on your elbows. You push your bent arms against the person’s hands. Breathe in, roll shoulders back, push your chest outwards ( like a puffed pigeon’s chest ). Then push your bent arms against the person’s hands as you back backwards. … –> must draw pictures to show properly… stayed tuned…

2. Standing wider, bending your knees slightly and pushing your hips forward as you bend backwards will help.

3. If your back is still not strong, you can practice by standing with your back facing the wall. Then bend backwards using similar “robot hands” until your max and you can stretch your hands out behind and above your head to touch the wall behind. Then you can slowly “walk” your hands down the wall.

Then the second part : coming back up from the drop back ( from wheel ).

This is one part which I am still practicing hard to get. But I think I am inching forward. I can finally feel that I am engaging and pushing my feet down to the floor as I move up.

How I practice ( thanks to Shirley who shared this tip ) :
While in wheel, try to lift your hands off the floor. Slowly work with hands on floor, then try to go onto the fingertips and then to try to lift and hang with the fingertips off the floor. While using this method, I find that I was able to connect with the legs more and hence able to finally figure out how to push the foot to the floor when trying to lift.

Another good way to help is to have your feet apart more and have your feet with toes pointing slightly outwards. This way I can feel my inner thighs pushing down to the inner shins and finally down to the inner side of the feet.

Oh ya, must try to rock back and forth to help with the momentum abit to lift up ( I dare not do this when I am alone, I need a security “blanket” to help me in case i fall back ).

Technorati Tags: Ustrasana, urdhva dhanuraasana, Eka Pada Rajakapotasana, anusara