Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks

Just a few weeks in the past, I wrote a publish on tips on how to 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 publish, I outlined a sequence you may apply with a purpose to stretch and mobilize these important areas of the pose. In right now’s publish, 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 arms restricts respiration. Practising Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks raises your arms and reduces the pressure in your chest, which will 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 isn’t actually designed for greater than minimal backbending.) Some folks’s lumbar spinous processes are massive and thick, which means that they’ll “hit” one another a lot earlier than 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 though 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 limit motion. All that is to say that training Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks could make the pose accessible to virtually everybody.

Tips on how to Follow Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks

You may apply Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks 3 ways. Yoga Blocks have three totally different top choices: tall, medium and brief. (The above picture reveals blocks at their medium top.) Right here’s tips on how to apply Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks.

1. Collect your props: a Yoga Mat and two Yoga Blocks. You may additionally place a folded Yoga Blanket underneath your knees for additional 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 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 ft. When you’re kneeling on a blanket, make certain your blocks are in your mat or on the ground relatively than in your blanket to provide them a steady base. (This is applicable to stable flooring corresponding 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. Elevate your chest and lengthen your backbone as you start to bend backward, reaching in your blocks.
6. Take just a few breaths with the blocks at their highest top. Is your respiration free and unrestricted? If not, keep right here for just a few extra breaths to see if it turns into simpler.
7. In case your respiration is simple, be at liberty to show the blocks on their sides, to medium top. Examine in once more along with your respiration. In case your respiration is free and simple, take just a few breaths right here. Then if you’d like, you may decrease the blocks to their lowest stage. Once more, verify your respiration.
8. Free, unrestricted respiration is far more vital than getting your arms to your heels or to the bottom top of your yoga block. So preserve 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 permit.

One Extra Suggestion

Yoga Blocks can actually make Camel Pose extra comfy, nevertheless it’s equally vital to guarantee 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 just a few weeks in the past about tips on how to put together your physique for Camel Pose, and tips on how to 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 commenced educating in 1986. Charlotte is the writer of Conscious Yoga, Conscious Life: A Information for On a regular basis Follow and Yoga for Meditators, each revealed by Rodmell Press. Her third ebook 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 folks sextet Crimson Rock Rondo, whose DVD gained two Emmy awards.