Stabilizing the Lower Back for Back Bends
Over the last decade as I’ve been exploring different approaches to movement, I’ve always found myself coming back to my yoga practice asking the question “how does what I’ve learned inform my approach to yoga?” For the most part I’ve consistently found that new knowledge from different perspectives has facilitated greater insight into many classical yoga postures and, simply put, allowed me to perform many of these postures better and safer.
Because my personal practice and my teaching have placed greater and greater emphasis on postures that maintain a neutral spine, I must acknowledge that this approach has been at the expense of a great many important postures, arguably the postures that most distinguish yoga from other movement practices. The postures most conspicuously absent for a long time were “forward bends” and “back bends,” the two classifications of asana that involve deliberately moving the spine out of neutral and into flexion and extension respectively.
More recently, as I’ve begun to emphasis stabilization of the spine rather than neutrality, it has opened up my practice and teaching playbook to forward bends and back bends once again. And once again, I find I am understanding and performing these types of postures better than ever before, albeit with a bit of rust to work off. Back bends in particular have been a thrill to come back to and to perform with the ideal combination of safety and efficacy that I believe is essential to the practice of any asana.
One simple posture has laid the foundation for me to reintroduce more back bends into my practice and my classes. It is a posture that can be done by just about anyone, and I’ve even found it accessible to clients who are in acute back pain (although I wouldn’t recommend that someone in acute back pain use it without the help of an experienced instructor). This posture can be done on its own or used as an effective set up for any back bending asana. It is particularly useful for preparing the body and mind for prone back bends such as salabasana (locust), bhujangasana (cobra), urdhva mukha svanasana (upward facing dog) and dhanurasana (bow).
Take a look at the video above where I demonstrate the posture I call “3 Month’s Prone.” This video shows a limited view of the posture for the purpose of highlighting its key feature. For a somewhat more detailed video on this posture and a more complete view, refer to an earlier video I posted which you can find here.
As always, if you are uncertain of your ability to do such a posture, or if you have an injury to your spine, CONSULT YOUR DOCTOR BEFORE ATTEMPTING!