Basically I have a single backbends question here.
Let us take either a standing dropback or Kapotasana (they're the same for purposes of this question).
I can handle the set-up steps: thighs engage and "think" toward each other, hips forward, ribs up and away, breathe, hands maybe to chin, maybe to forehead, all of these steps repeating, hands reach up and over, elbows together for as long as possible.
As I've said, I can hang back, arms fully extended over my head, in a standing half-bend. It's harder for me to hang over my head in Kapo but I can do it.
The CHALLENGE of these poses (for me, anyway, at this point) is increasing the ACTUAL lumbar bend. Yes, I know, the thing you hear in all backbending is "be careful now, don't take it all in the lumbar" and of course that's true, I tell students that myself.
BUT
On Monday night last, I dropped back and landed on my shoulders/back/head on the first one (harmlessly). To set up for the second one I did my hang back and then thought "Ok Patrick, now INCREASE IT in the lumbar" and in a few breaths, I did, and then I dropped back onto my hands.
If you watch any of the digital-shala backbenders do their thing (hi Susan, Tova, Owl, and Karen counts here too), you see this MASSIVE lumbar bend.
So, either for those folks, or for the rest of you, or really for anyone who comes across this, did you go through a phase of "holy crap, that's intense" before it gradually became comfortable?
When I drop back, I get this sponge-squeezing, fantastically intense feeling in the low and mid-back. It's pure muscular sensation (I've cranked the SI before, and I know the difference between muscle feeling and white nerve tweaky sensation).
Dropbacks are actually (again, for me) a bit more intense sensation-wise than Kapotasana (keeping in mind that my Kapo has just recently become a full toe-grab, and that's with assistance). No, that's not right. They're more intense in the LUMBAR than Kapo. Kapo is MILES more intense in my quads than dropbacks are.
Anyway: is greater comfort coming? It came in lengthening the hamstrings, in developing jumpbacks; it came in everything else. Shall I keep trusting the sequence on this?
4 comments:
Don't know if you ever saw this, but the comment by Owl is something I return to pretty often:
http://donutszenmom.com/2007/06/09/meme-what-was-learning-kapotasana-like-for-you-everyones-tagged/
Patrick, i just went and read the comments on Karen's post. it is very interesting to read and watch where people are flexible and where they have to work harder. i was REALLY stiff when i started this practice, but I also have to admit to being a 'natural backbender'. when things feel most open for me is when the bend is most in the hip flexors and the thoracic spine. i was watching a friend at the shala stretching out his shoulders in the pre-backbend thing that a lot of people do here, and later i told him, the problem isn't your shoulders , it is your hip flexors, VERY tight.
when i was really struggling with supta vajrasana one of my teachers told me that i was not letting my hips open up enough, because my back is so bendy i was trying to make the pose come from my back.
if you are one of those folks who spread your legs wide and turn your toes way out when you drop back, you are getting around the hip flexors, don't do it.
also, before the bend came more deeply into my hip flexors i would get really dizzy and nauseated and i actually would start to get numbness down my legs from cruncging the lumbar spine. not good.
anyways, i hope some of my blahblahblah is helpful.
Karen, yes, priceless linkage. Good stuff.
Tova, yes also, to the hip flexors. I'm a feet-wide-as-the-mat guy, but I try with all possible might never to turn the feet out.
I think a video would be most helpful, but I'm going to need a co-conspirator who can take one. I'll have to ask around.
Kapo and Urdhva Dhanurasana actually teach me more about the hip flexors than dropping back does. Or maybe better said, I'm more aware of that work in those poses than I am in half-bending and dropping back.
And it fits, that the reason I don't play much with coming up from a backbend is because the front and back body are so totally max-loaded with sensation from the backbending that it's pointless to ask more of them. Yet.
Yes, video or even still photos would probably help you a lot, Patrick. It is pretty much impossible (for me, anyhow) to understand what's going on in backbends.
I was convinced I needed more thoracic bend (and, in fact, I do), but when I looked at a vid recently, I saw that the hip flexors are what's hanging up my progress. I had no idea, based on my *feeling* of the halfbend, that they were such a significant issue. But I could SEE it, plain as day, when I had something to look at...
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