Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks

A number of weeks in the past, I wrote a put up on how one can put together your physique for Camel Pose (Ustrasana). Camel Pose is a difficult backbend. It stretches the complete entrance physique, particularly the quadriceps, stomach, chest and shoulders. Within the put up, I outlined a sequence you possibly can apply so as to stretch and mobilize these important areas of the pose. In at the moment’s put up, I’ll describe how one can apply Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks to make the pose extra accessible and cozy.

A typical concern in training Camel Pose is that straining to achieve your heels along with your fingers restricts respiration. Practising Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks raises your fingers and reduces the pressure in your chest, which might help ease your respiration.

Not everybody’s spinal construction helps straightforward backbending. As you possibly can see from the above picture, the lion’s share of the backbend happens within the lumbar backbone. (The thoracic backbone will not be actually designed for greater than minimal backbending.) Some folks’s lumbar spinous processes are giant and thick, that 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 restricted, even a small quantity of extension makes the pose simpler, whereas a curvier thoracic backbone will prohibit motion. All that is to say that training Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks could make the pose accessible to nearly everybody.

Easy methods to Apply Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks

You’ll be able to apply Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks 3 ways. Yoga Blocks have three totally different top choices: tall, medium and brief. (The above picture exhibits blocks at their medium top.) Right here’s how one can apply Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks.

1. Collect your props: a Yoga Mat and two Yoga Blocks. You might also place a folded Yoga Blanket underneath your knees for further padding when you like. When you’re utilizing a blanket, fold it in order that it’s narrower than your mat, and place it within the heart 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 ft. When you’re kneeling on a blanket, be sure that your blocks are in your mat or on the ground moderately than in your blanket to provide them a steady base. (This is applicable to stable flooring equivalent to wooden or concrete. I wouldn’t advocate utilizing blocks on plush carpeting.)
4. Place your fingers 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 in 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 simple, be happy to show the blocks on their sides, to medium top. Test in once more along with your respiration. In case your respiration is free and simple, take a number of breaths right here. Then if you need, you possibly can decrease the blocks to their lowest stage. Once more, verify your respiration.
8. Free, unrestricted respiration is far more necessary than getting your fingers to your heels or to the bottom top of your yoga block. So maintain checking your respiration to ensure 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 enable.

One Extra Suggestion

Yoga Blocks can actually make Camel Pose extra snug, but it surely’s equally necessary to ensure that we put together the physique to the fullest extent doable earlier than we embark on Ustrasana. I extremely advocate that you just learn the put up I wrote a number of weeks in the past about how one can put together your physique for Camel Pose, and how one can settle 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 writer of Conscious Yoga, Conscious Life: A Information for On a regular basis Apply and Yoga for Meditators, each printed by Rodmell Press. Her third guide 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 Pink Rock Rondo, whose DVD received two Emmy awards.