Spoiler Alert: The dummy is me.
Backbends are the hot sauce on my soul, and I like hot sauce. While I am admittedly, a genetic udon-noodled spine, this gift brought the curse of overdoing backbends in practice like Bikram and chronically sore spasming muscles across my low to mid back. I did not practice yoga, which means union– I practiced bending my back in half where it naturally wanted to bend, without connection or use of the rest of my body. It’s funny to me when people asked how I progressed my backbend from catching my ankles to my shins.
I didn’t.
The deepness of my backbend now reflects the practice time that has allowed the rest of my body to catch up and support my backbend. My backbends today are about my legs and my whole body.
If this makes you want to hit me, recall that I am, or was? — a DUMMY. AS such, some thoughts from a backbendy person who learned along the way might actually be helpful to anyone’s backbend. Mind you, I’m not going to use words like “nutation” or chakra. I’m simply going to describe my experience in a way that might inspire thoughts for you.
- Whole Body. Backbending is about the whole body. There is no backbend in isolation. Yoga means union, remember? Jason Bowman once quoted Richard Freeman in a vinyasa class as saying “Your backbend must be tethered to something.” This spoke to me: My upper body and lower body could literally split in half, like a magician had sawed me in two. With the aid of good teachers, I learned to connect the dots along the front line of my body, to tether the backbend to my foundation in my feet, and work it all the way up to my head.
- In other words, use your legs. If you don’t, the backbend may just be your back. Think back to a pose like LBH, or leg behind the head. It’s not just your hip: it’s your abs, your upper back. No asana is just one thing. I don’t feel sore in my back the day after a deep final backbend (but I might feel sore fro the stretch I got across the front of my hips ).
- Backbend Like It Isn’t A Big deal. Allright, in Ashtanga it kind of is, but then again, so are jumpbacks, because if you count there’s about a gazillion of them as opposed to a couple of wheels. Stay with me:
I’m more attached these days to what I cannot do easily. I am attached and humbled and insecure about handstands (which I actually can do but still!) If you can handstand like you love it, treat your backbend like your handstand.
Make your backbend great again by mentally going about that part of practice like you do the stuff you are good at. I cannot speak for you, but I feel confident about a pose, if I feel Instagrammably photographable in a pose — I don’t avoid it, I relax about it and let it be whatever it is. Don’t push. - Allow the backbend– get out of its way. My backbend is deeper now than it was years ago because at a certain point my back isn’t bending — the rest of my body is. My final backbend reflects more about the front line of my body than it does my back. You allow pieces of your practice to flourish I think, by tending to yourself as a whole.
- Samastithi. I am a broken record, but for good reason. David Garrigues said “each of the asanas is more alike than you think.” That final backbend caching is more like samastitihi than anything else I know. In my mind, I am standing up tall. I am standing up tall in uttanasana too. I am standing up tall in durvasana, in utthita hasta padangustasana. I am standing on the line with a little extra bell and whistle on it. So, whole body. Your backbend is a line, too.
- Up, Not Back. I’m gonna remix an old Peg Mulqueen blog here: I think Up, not back. This is part of the whole body/line idea. In kapo, you will see people lean way back to get hands to floor and ankles. Then they have to walk in–or, up! I do this too. Once my hands come down, I immediately try to shift from “BACK” to “UP.” I am always asking myself to go up, to feel up. This is also how I straighten my legs after catching. Up, for me, is about finding the line.
Maybe you don’t catch. Maybe you don’t do kapo. Maybe you stand on your knees with hands at hips and open you chest up to the sky. Well, I know a beautiful practitioner for whom that is her backbend. And she looks like Union. She looks like the Line. She looks “UP.” I see her kapo and my kapo and I see the same thing.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B5I6S4snfiL/
*****
My final backbend in the mysore room last visit was coocoo for cocoa puffs- crazy high.
No one took a picture of it. No one was left in the room. No doves sang, No trumpets blared, No book deals signed, No money grew on trees, No fame came, No enlightenment — Not even a new folower came to me. No one even Instastoried my hands above my knees, and I almost forgot about it until I sat down to write this piece about backbending, because what really caught me on fire that day were tic tocs, and working on the jump back over (something I am not naturally gifted at AT ALL). But back to that final backbend —
It was just another extraordinarily ordinary moment of practice. Not special at all, but special to me.
Don’t be a dummy like me.
Backbend like YOU.