Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks

A number of weeks in the past, I wrote a submit on find out how to put together your physique for Camel Pose (Ustrasana). Camel Pose is a difficult backbend. It stretches your entire entrance physique, particularly the quadriceps, stomach, chest and shoulders. Within the submit, I outlined a sequence you’ll be able to follow with a purpose to stretch and mobilize these important areas of the pose. In in the present day’s submit, I’ll describe how one can follow Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks to make the pose extra accessible and cozy.

A standard concern in training Camel Pose is that straining to achieve your heels together with your fingers restricts respiratory. Practising Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks raises your fingers and reduces the pressure in your chest, which will help ease your respiratory.

Not everybody’s spinal construction helps straightforward backbending. As you’ll be able to see from the above photograph, the lion’s share of the backbend happens within the lumbar backbone. (The thoracic backbone is just not actually designed for greater than minimal backbending.) Some folks’s lumbar spinous processes are massive and thick, that means that they may “hit” one another a lot prior to 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 although 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 limit motion. All that is to say that training Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks could make the pose accessible to virtually everybody.

Find out how to Follow Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks

You possibly can follow Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks 3 ways. Yoga Blocks have three totally different top choices: tall, medium and brief. (The above photograph reveals blocks at their medium top.) Right here’s find out how to follow Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks.

1. Collect your props: a Yoga Mat and two Yoga Blocks. You might also place a folded Yoga Blanket beneath 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 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, be sure your blocks are in your mat or on the ground moderately than in your blanket to offer them a secure base. (This is applicable to strong flooring akin 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. Raise your chest and lengthen your backbone as you start to bend backward, reaching to your blocks.
6. Take just a few breaths with the blocks at their highest top. Is your respiratory 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 respiratory is simple, be happy to show the blocks on their sides, to medium top. Test in once more together with your respiratory. In case your respiratory is free and simple, take just a few breaths right here. Then in order for you, you’ll be able to decrease the blocks to their lowest stage. Once more, verify your respiratory.
8. Free, unrestricted respiratory is far more essential than getting your fingers to your heels or to the bottom top of your yoga block. So preserve checking your respiratory 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 every of your Yoga Blocks as your knees permit.

One Extra Suggestion

Yoga Blocks can definitely make Camel Pose extra comfy, but it surely’s equally essential to be sure that we put together the physique to the fullest extent doable earlier than we embark on Ustrasana. I extremely advocate that you simply learn the submit I wrote just a few weeks in the past about find out how to put together your physique for Camel Pose, and find out 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 started instructing in 1986. Charlotte is the writer of Aware Yoga, Aware 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 Purple Rock Rondo, whose DVD gained two Emmy awards.