Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks

A couple of weeks in the past, I wrote a publish on learn how to put together your physique for Camel Pose (Ustrasana). Camel Pose is a difficult backbend. It stretches the whole entrance physique, particularly the quadriceps, stomach, chest and shoulders. Within the publish, I outlined a sequence you may observe in an effort to stretch and mobilize these very important areas of the pose. In right this moment’s publish, I’ll describe how one can observe Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks to make the pose extra accessible and cozy.

A typical concern in practising Camel Pose is that straining to achieve your heels together with your arms restricts respiration. Practising Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks raises your arms and reduces the pressure in your chest, which may help ease your respiration.

Not everybody’s spinal construction helps simple backbending. As you may see from the above picture, the lion’s share of the backbend happens within the lumbar backbone. (The thoracic backbone just isn’t actually designed for greater than minimal backbending.) Some individuals’s lumbar spinous processes are massive and thick, which means that they may “hit” one another a lot before shorter, thinner spinous course of do. This restricts vary of movement in spinal extension.

As well as, some practitioners have a extra pronounced thoracic kyphosis (convex curve). This additionally restricts vary of movement in backbending. So despite the fact that the thoracic backbone’s vary of movement in backbending is proscribed, even a small quantity of extension makes the pose simpler, whereas a curvier thoracic backbone will prohibit motion. All that is to say that practising Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks could make the pose accessible to virtually everybody.

Methods to Follow Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks

You may observe Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks 3 ways. Yoga Blocks have three completely different top choices: tall, medium and quick. (The above picture reveals blocks at their medium top.) Right here’s learn how to observe Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks.

1. Collect your props: a Yoga Mat and two Yoga Blocks. You may additionally place a folded Yoga Blanket beneath your knees for additional padding in the event you like. If you happen to’re utilizing a blanket, fold it in order that it’s narrower than your mat, and place it within the middle of the mat.
2. Come to a kneeling place in your mat and/or folded blanket.
3. Place blocks at their highest stage on the outsides of your toes. If you happen to’re kneeling on a blanket, be certain your blocks are in your mat or on the ground reasonably than in your blanket to provide them a steady base. (This is applicable to strong flooring akin to wooden or concrete. I wouldn’t advocate utilizing blocks on plush carpeting.)
4. Place your arms in your pelvic rim and press down, releasing your tailbone towards your knees.
5. Carry your chest and lengthen your backbone as you start to bend backward, reaching to your blocks.
6. Take a number of breaths with the blocks at their highest top. Is your respiration free and unrestricted? If not, keep right here for a number of extra breaths to see if it turns into simpler.
7. In case your respiration is straightforward, be at liberty to show the blocks on their sides, to medium top. Test in once more together with your respiration. In case your respiration is free and straightforward, take a number of breaths right here. Then if you would like, you may decrease the blocks to their lowest stage. Once more, test your respiration.
8. Free, unrestricted respiration is far more necessary than getting your arms to your heels or to the bottom top of your yoga block. So maintain checking your respiration to verify it feels relaxed.
9. Take 5 to eight deep breaths, wherever you’re within the pose. Then return to kneeling and both sit in your heels or sit on one in all your Yoga Blocks as your knees permit.

One Extra Suggestion

Yoga Blocks can definitely make Camel Pose extra comfy, nevertheless it’s equally necessary to be sure that we put together the physique to the fullest extent potential earlier than we embark on Ustrasana. I extremely advocate that you just learn the publish I wrote a number of weeks in the past about learn how to put together your physique for Camel Pose, and learn how to calm down afterward to rebalance your physique. Your breath—and a pair Yoga Blocks—can information you right into a Camel Pose that’s each exhilarating and relaxed.

About Charlotte Bell

Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and started instructing in 1986. Charlotte is the creator of Conscious Yoga, Conscious Life: A Information for On a regular basis Follow and Yoga for Meditators, each revealed 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 people sextet Crimson Rock Rondo, whose DVD gained two Emmy awards.