Yoga Beyond Belief: Insights to Awaken and Deepen Your Practice

pose—from the ground up. Standing poses are good for warming up, building strength, learning symmetry and alignment, and discovering imbalances in the body.
Balancing Poses
    Balancing poses teach poise and equilibrium. The body finds balance through cues from the inner ear, visually, and from receptor sites located in the muscular and nervous systems. One of the great lessons balancing poses demonstrate is that balance is not a state or place to arrive at, but involves constant attunement, correction, and adjustment to changing conditions of the moment.
    It is easier to maintain balance than to regain it once lost. When practicing balance poses, we need to move slowly into deeper levels of the posture. Don’t proceed faster than your ability to maintain stability. Your stability will gauge how far and how fast to move into the pose—another lesson also applicable to life.
Backbends
    Backbends warrant special attention and explanation. They are, in a sense, the most
unnatural
positions for the body. By unnatural, I mean that we only rarely bend backward in our normal, daily movements. Our bodies are mostly oriented in various degrees of forward bending. Sitting, walking, lifting, running, biking, and the majority of our movements are essentially forward bends. The only backward stretch many people receive is if and when they lie on their stomachs propped up on elbows to read. For other primates, swinging through the trees gives a regular interplay of forward and backward movements that help maintain spinal balance. Living without back extensions is a major contributing factor in back pain, stooped shoulders, poor posture, and a host of other spinal problems.
    After birth we slowly grow and mature from the rounded child’s positions of creeping and crawling to the upright, erect postures of the adult human—the only animal that walks upright. In this sense, backbends have been called “evolutionary” and “farthest from the womb.” As we age, without the benefits of yoga, we slowly round and hunchforward and lose our ability to maintain an upright posture. Backbends, in a complete yoga practice, can prevent and reverse this process. Because we are not accustomed to bending backward in our usual daily movements, backbends, especially the deeper variations, require special care and awareness to prevent injury. Backbends have powerful, anti-aging effects. They help counter the negative effects of gravity. They stimulate the endocrine system, keep the spine pliable and balanced, and maintain good flows of nerve energy through the spinal column.
    Backbends require the most attention and awareness in asana practice, so I would like to present some key points for attention. When backbending, keep in mind the following important principles:
Always be fully warmed up before going into deeper backbend poses.
Stay attentive and tuned into what you are doing and feeling. Backbending can distract you by altering consciousness, and you also can’t easily see what you are doing.
It is very effective and helpful to stretch the quadriceps and psoas muscles before backbends.
Maintain a strong, well-placed foundation with the legs—or with the arms in inverted backbends.
Keep the feet and legs as parallel as possible.
Tuck your tailbone to help prevent overextending the sacrum and lumbar joints.
Many people find using Mula Bandha, or contracting and holding the anal sphincter firmly, protective of the spine and helpful in back extensions.
Bend evenly along the spine. Keep the chest lifted, letting the upper body take more of the bend than the lumbar area.
Keep a gentle to moderate energy flow, or lines of energy, into the legs.
Slowly progress from simpler backbends to the deeper variations.
Don’t overextend the neck. Avoid the tendency to lead with the head and bend it as far back as possible.
Inverted backbends, such as backbending from Headstand or Elbow Balance, can be easier on the spine. The same is true for supported backbends over a ball, bolster, or the arm of a couch and for backbends from the Lunge pose. They keep weight and compression out of the spine.
Come out of the poses slowly and attentively.
Always remember to rebalance the spine after backbends by easing into forward bends and twists. The body’s spring tensions will reset to the normal balance of forward bends.
Forward Bends
    Forward bends relax and stretch the muscles, soothe the nervous system, and tend to lower blood pressure. They relieve muscle