Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks

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

A standard concern in practising Camel Pose is that straining to succeed in your heels along with your fingers restricts respiratory. Working towards Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks raises your fingers and reduces the pressure in your chest, which might help ease your respiratory.

Not everybody’s spinal construction helps simple backbending. As you may see from the above photograph, 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 individuals’s lumbar spinous processes are massive 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 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 practising Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks could make the pose accessible to virtually everybody.

Tips on how to Apply Camel Pose with Yoga Blocks

You’ll be able to 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 the best way 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 below your knees for additional padding in the event you like. In the event 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. In the event you’re kneeling on a blanket, be certain that your blocks are in your mat or on the ground reasonably than in your blanket to present them a steady base. (This is applicable to stable flooring equivalent to wooden or concrete. I wouldn’t suggest utilizing blocks on plush carpeting.)
4. Place your fingers 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 on your blocks.
6. Take a couple of breaths with the blocks at their highest top. Is your respiratory free and unrestricted? If not, keep right here for a couple of 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 along with your respiratory. In case your respiratory is free and straightforward, take a couple of breaths right here. Then if you’d like, you may decrease the blocks to their lowest stage. Once more, examine your respiratory.
8. Free, unrestricted respiratory is far more necessary than getting your fingers to your heels or to the bottom top of your yoga block. So maintain checking your respiratory 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 actually make Camel Pose extra snug, however it’s equally necessary to ensure that we put together the physique to the fullest extent potential earlier than we embark on Ustrasana. I extremely suggest that you just learn the put up I wrote a couple of weeks in the past about the best way to put together your physique for Camel Pose, and the best way 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 commenced educating in 1986. Charlotte is the writer of Conscious Yoga, Conscious Life: A Information for On a regular basis Apply and Yoga for Meditators, each revealed 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 folks sextet Pink Rock Rondo, whose DVD gained two Emmy awards.