What is it that increases our youthful vibrancy? What makes a smile come to our lips and puts a twinkle in our eyes? Be present in your body and recall when you were an infant and first connecting your physical senses with the world around you.
What is it that increases our youthful vibrancy? What makes a smile come to our lips and puts a twinkle in our eyes? Be present in your body and recall when you were an infant and first connecting your physical senses with the world around you.
Your purpose was joy, curiosity and movement experiment to achieve happiness.
This is still our purpose as adults, but aging can dampen that original curiosity and resilience because gravity pulls us downward, compressing the spine and congesting the nervous system, organs and connective tissue. Gravity can be a real downer!
Especially with many of us sitting in front of computers and hunched over mobile phones or tablets, unskillful movement patterns can, like gravity, be real downers!
The Ultimate Joy Medicine
Fortunately, backbends extend the spine and help us defy gravity, restoring harmony and spaciousness in the spine. Even 20 minutes a day of yoga improves brain function, relieves stress, increases oxytocin, eases pain and restores the body. Research shows that yoga practice can even lift depression.
The first principle in any yoga practice is safety. The whole point of yoga is to come “back” to your true nature, so find what’s comfortable for you. Be sure to consult your doctor before beginning any exercise or training regimen.
Try this healing backbend sequence with keys for healthy “youthing!”
Warm Up with Child’s Pose
For Child’s Pose, or Balasana, kneel on the mat, earth or floor. Touch your big toes together. Let your knees slide a little farther apart. Ease your hips back over your heels with your arms extended. Lower your forehead to the floor, or supported on a block if needed. Soften your jaws, close your eyes and progressively deepen your inhale and lengthen your exhale.
Feel your sacrum broadening while you draw your front hip points toward the navel. Reach the tailbone toward your feet while extending your brain away from the back of your neck.
Breathe for five deep breaths. Feel and sense the inner body, reaching awareness into the toes, fingers and lips. Feel your energy flowing in the core, head to tail, soothing mind and body.
Tip: Balance.
As you settle into the pose, the front chest opens forward to the ground and what we have avoided in the heart may arise in the mind. Unprocessed feelings of resentment, sadness or disconnection, part of the congestion that we are clearing, can release. Let emotions rise, fall and settle into a relaxing balance: More peace, less stress. Reconnect to your natural flow of joy.
Cat and Dog Tilts
Also called Marjaryasana Svanasana Abhyanati, pull your body forward with your hands to slightly accentuate the lumbar curve in the spine. Set the shoulders over the wrists and knees under the hips with parallel thighs.
Flex the spine upward like a cat, bringing the nose toward your tailbone, lift the navel and stretch the backside skin. Then lift the pubic bone and head to the sky, extending the spine in a backbend. Undulate the spine up and down gently — cat back and dog tilt.
Tip on agility: Never go into the deeper backbends until you’ve investigated the slow arching of the spine forward and backward. Become nimble in the easy poses first, breathing into the cartilage and connective tissue. Releasing compression and stress on the vertebrae defies gravity and builds agility. Listen to your body.
Tip on strength: Be sure to keep your shoulders down away from your ears and your spine lengthened. Don’t tighten your buttocks or shoulder joints. Focus on the fluid movements of a pleasurable, graceful, open spine. Strengthening and lengthening occur in the body simultaneously.
3 –Compassionate Backbends
If you’re a bit stiff, that’s enough. But for the adventurous, there’s no need to confine yoga to a mat, a class or a room. As long as you’re properly warmed up, go outside, reach out for a beautiful palm and mimic the strength of its trunk, the flexibility of its graceful branches. Being careful to open and place the shoulder in line with the hand on the trunk correctly we can bend the spine in harmony with the trees, grasses and even sea waves. Go slowly and notice what helps you open and stretch your heart.
Respect the body’s wishes and take your time.
Tip on flexibility: No matter how flexible you think you are, more advanced poses like the Bow and Wheel require precise placement of the pelvis and sacrum and ought to be practiced only with a seasoned, qualified yoga teacher.
Yoga gives us a glimmer of ease in movement and steadiness in life. No matter what your history, age or body type, yoga changes the neuroplasticity of the brain and inspires more joyful aliveness.
Backbends are known as the sunrise poses because they nurture the rising of an inner radiance that come from “living in the flow.” Discover backbends, let your true youthful nature flow, and your inner joy will rise like the brightest sun.
Contact writer at marya.mann@gmail.com
Marya Mann, PhD., is an energy medicine specialist at Kona Coast Wellness and the Lotus Spa at Royal Kona Resort and she teaches Yoga at Club Rehab in Kealakekua. She is the co-author of Healing our Planet, Healing Our Selves.