Bending Over Backwards

Young Yogi backbends with ease. Grrr.

See this kid? I used to be this kid. When I was little, doing a backbend was as easy as breathing. I'd push straight up from the ground, my belly arcing towards the sky, creating a tunnel for my friends to crawl through, laughing as they went through. Or I'd lean backwards, my hands stretching towards the ground as I folded myself in half.

Ah, youth.

What happened? Life happened. Although I had plenty of opportunity to flip and twist as a collegiate diver, practicing backbends was an increasingly uncommon occurrence the deeper into adulthood I ventured. When I practiced yoga — and even when I taught — the backbends that were visited and revisited were less extreme bends: Cobra. Upward Dog. Fish. Standing Backbend. The very infrequent Bow. The even rarer Camel. And that was it. Good thing that, in all the years I've taught yoga, my students have been Gentle and Restorative students for whom Bow and Camel were cause for quaking.

Except for that kid up there, known in the Instagram circuit as Young Yogi. He's my son, and his ease with backbends make me a) proud of his abilities b) jealous of his flexibility c) reminisce about the way I used to be d) all of the above.

As the years went by, even these backbends took a back seat to other yogic postures. The only backbending poses I practiced regularly were Fish and Standing Backbend. In fact, I soon devised what for years I called my Big Three: the three yoga poses I truly disliked practicing. I might even say hate, if I believed in using such a strong term. My Big Three asanas were Cobra, Bow, and Upward Bow, aka Full Backbend. It took me until this past summer to realize what these three poses held in common: they were all backbends.

Kino MacGregor backbending. Grrr.

I truly do not know why I developed such an antipathy towards backbends. It certainly didn't have anything to do with adulthood, because there are adults with amazing back flexibility such as Kino MacGregor, who travels the world sharing her love for and experience in yoga. It's not that I was sedentary. I've always been been athletic, and work didn't call for me to sit at a cubicle all day for years, slowly killing my flexibility. I just grew disinterested. It didn't help that a severe car accident (my VW and I were sandwiched between a tractor trailer and a Dept. of Transportation snowplow on a blizzardy Iowa highway) shattered my left wrist and damaged several of my thoracic vertebrae. Two surgeries and a heap of physical therapy followed and, as a result, I could no longer push up into a backbend. It simply hurt my wrist too much and, after having it reconstructed with screws and pins, I was too afraid to risk damaging it. And, with my injured back, bending deeply into anything was now out of the question.

Still, because I had yoga students and because I had visions of elderly women with kyphotic backs, I started doing the gentle backbends again. These were difficult and stressful at first -- I could definitely feel the strain in my thoracic spine -- and Camel and Bow were still intensely disliked. Upward Bow stayed off my radar... at least until one year ago.

In February 2014, I evaluated my personal yoga practice and came to the conclusion that I had cut myself short, limiting myself to what I'd taught my students over the years instead of taking into account my own personal abilities. In effect, I'd become a Gentle/Restorative practitioner. Despite my injuries -- both from the car accident and from assorted misfortunes as a competitive runner and triathlete -- it was time to kick it up a notch.

Upward Bow Pose, February 2014

My lack of practice over the years had indeed taken a tremendous toll on my backbending ability. I was most definitely not about to have any kids happily clamboring in and out of that tunnel! I found myself gingerly pushing up into position, afraid to further hurt my left wrist (which, at this point, had now been broken or fractured five times) and I was just generally inflexible. Lack of practice had made my back non bendy.

I decided to focus on improving my Camel Pose, which I viewed as the least stressful of my Big Three. I wasn't upside down. I wasn't fighting gravity from the floor up. I was on my knees, just bending backwards. I could handle that!

Camel Pose, February 2014

Well, not really. I had completely forgotten the Rule of Interconnectivity. In short, it's not just my back that does a backbend. It's my whole body. My hip flexors had to work eccentrically and isometrically to bring my hips into proper alignment directly over or just in front of my knees) and keep them there. My obliques and rectus abdominis had to kick in to control the extension of my back, and my scapulae had to maintain my shoulders in position as well, while my quads just cried quietly to themselves.

Camel Pose, 05/14 and 10/14

Once I set my sights on a goal, however, I'm almost unshakeable. I'm driven to achieve, and I was going to achieve Camel or else! I targeted my problem areas with Pilates, I consulted with running and triathlon coaches, and I practiced asanas that worked the muscle groups needed for Camel. I recorded my practice so that I could see how my alignment measured up, what weaknesses I had to address, and what, if any, improvement was evident. The day I was finally able to fix my gaze on the wall behind me was cause for celebration. Now I just needed to fix my hip alignment; compromising the position of my hips in order to get a deeper backbend is a very common habit in yoga and not one I wished to embrace.

Upward Bow Pose, August 2014

In August 2014, I participated in an Instagram Challenge. To be honest, I don't even recall the name of the challenge. I just remember that I was driving home from visiting my husband at his Army base when the notification of the day's pose scrolled by on my phone. At the next rest stop, I paused to check in and discovered, to my dread, that it was Urdhva Dhanurasana, Upward Bow or Full Backbend. Eeeep. I chose a grassy spot somewhat away from prying eyes, set up the camera, and hoped for the best. To my shock, I pushed up with ease... and, more importantly, without pain! I couldn't believe it. I was so stunned by this that I stopped at the next rest area to try again. I was backbending without issue again! Sure, I still wasn't anywhere near what I'd been in my youth, but I was strides ahead of where I had been in February and without the struggle I'd gone through to hold the pose. It was the Rule of Interconnectivity again: all the work I'd done to improve my Camel had improved my Upward Bow as well.

Camel Pose, January 2015

By September, I had removed both Upward Bow and Camel from my Big Three (Bow is still there, but that's another story!). Camel has become one of my favorite poses to play around with, changing arm positions, binding a leg, and working to deepen the bend. I even included a photo of myself doing Camel in a desk calendar I gave my husband for Christmas. I've brought my hips into proper alignment and I am now working on getting my hip flexors to release even more so that I can drop fully backwards into the pose known as Kapotasana, or Pigeon Pose.

As for Upward Bow, I continue to work on deepening the arch and bringing my arms into better alignment... a rather

Upward Bow Pose, January 2015

lofty goal, as rotator-cuff surgery has left my shoulders with a limited range of motion. I can walk my hands backwards down a wall to achieve Upward Bow, and I can lift one arm, one leg, and even one arm and one leg simultaeneously without losing my balance. I am also working on slowly inching my hands and feet together, with the hope of someday achieving Chakrasana, or Wheel Pose, in which the hands grasp the ankles to complete a full backbending circle. That's in the distant future. Then again, I have registered to attend a Backbends Workshop taught by Kino MacGregor this April, so who knows what I'll be able to achieve in just a few months!