Yoga Updog & Seal Pose

Video Transcript

"Alright, back bends. Back bends are a big deal. A lot of times people do not know how to back bend safely and effectively. This is what we're going to explore today using three gentle back bends, well, graduated back bends that you find in almost every yoga class. Again, cobra, updog and seal pose - these are very similar poses. What the heck is the difference, and which one do I choose? I'm going to tell you. Cobra is a very gentle back bend. The thing about cobra is that you're going to use the muscles of your back to lift the heart. So here in cobra I'm not pressing down with my hands at all; all I'm doing is lifting the heart, letting the crown of the head float, keeping my legs long and the toes pressing down, reaching out behind me. So once I'm really comfortable with cobra I'm going to come up into updog. Here's the thing about updog: I'm engaging my thighs so that my knees are off the floor. The reason that we do this is to protect the lower back because what we don't want is to sink into the lower back and compress the vertebrae. If you try and do too deep of a back bend before you're ready you can cause serious damage to your spine. So in updog, we're resting on the palms of the hands, which are under the shoulders, and we're resting on the tops of the feet, engaging the quads, engaging the knees, engaging the belly. Once you're comfortable here and you're ready to do some deeper back bending, you release those quads and you allow yourself to press even deeper into the spine. Again, you inhale to create lots of space in the spine and exhale as you deepen your back bend. The reason that we do that is because we don't want to come at a back bend from a place of no space. When you inhale, you bring a little bit of space in between those vertebrae so that when you bend, they can slide past each other. That way you increase your flexibility in your back safely and effectively. If you don't pull those vertebrae apart before you bend, they just crash right into each other. You get a lot of pain and eventually you get an injury. So when you're doing your back bends, when you're choosing what back bend to do in yoga class, make sure you keep those things in mind. Do it safely and effectively. "