How Do I Learn Backbends?

When you think of backbends in yoga practice you may immediately imagine wheel pose and say "I can’t do that!"

Truth is, there is a wide range of back-bending yoga poses that are accessible to all levels of yoga practice.

Before jumping into a love of backbends, let’s start with a couple of important points:

1. Always make sure your spine is warmed up before starting back bending poses. This can include cat/cow, side bends, and gentle twists to make sure you have moved through different spine shapes.

2. There can be backbends that are more difficult on days when you've been working at a desk all day. On these days, take extra care to warm up your spine and include a knee-to-chest pose with some rocks to really massage out the spine.

3. Balance your backbends with equal amounts of forward-bending yoga poses to counteract the backbending. These could include forward fold, ragdoll, child’s pose, head-to-knee, pyramid, etc.

OKAY! Into the depths.

Why should you practice backbends? 

Backbends can:

Increase the mobility in your lumbar and thoracic spine.

Open your front body.

Strengthen your back muscles, helping to alleviate back pain, stretch the hip flexors, improves posture, increases circulation, stimulates the heart chakra, and improve breathing.

Be super fun and bring joy, which is a definite benefit!

How can you do backbends safely? 

As previously mentioned, warming up the spine is crucial. Engaging the core and rooting down through the hands, feet, or hips (depending on the pose) will also help you to backbend safely as well as working on creating an even arch over the entire spine.

What are some examples? 

Fish

Dancer

Bridge

Wheel

Sphinx

Camel

One-legged king pigeon

Bow

Snake

Coba

Upward facing dog

What if you have a bad back or previous back injury? 

It really depends on your injury - some poses can help alleviate pain but some should be avoided. If you’re unsure, please speak to your doctor before adding backbends to your practice and as always if something does that feel good in your body, stop.