Variations on Ustrasana (Camel Pose)

Transcript

hey yoga Mas um I just want to share a little uh guidance on one pose Essa also known as camel pose and it's backward Bend um it can be very deep but I will provide some modifications that can make it more gentle uh I think it's good and wise though to sort of like prepare yourself for it like unless you're very flexible or well practiced or you just got out of yoga class I wouldn't just like plunk myself down into it so um you could just start you know loosening the shoulders by Rolling them forward a few times and back and part of doing this is warming up the body and the other part is to kind of see where you're at what do you feel in your shoulders and upper back as you do this letbe take a deep breath in and bring your shoulders up and then drop them down try it again Shake Your Arms out a few neck rolls in One Direction and the other again doing this to warm up but also to just feel what's going on in the area of the neck feels tight maybe bring the arms out and just open the chest up and maybe you can go a little deeper with that and just interlace the hands behind the back and reach that's one way to open that up and you feel the shoulder blades coming together if it's tough to do that you can grab the arms like that and or even just reach back or touch like that but you're bringing the shoulder blades together okay little bit of warm up not a ton so some variations in camel pose I'm not just going to pop into it now um I'll show it to you at the end but you normally would start in veras which is a kneeling pose my blanket out of the way I put the blanket there sometimes for padding for the knees I also want to show that if you have a blanket and you want to roll it up if it doesn't feel good for you to kneel you can do that it's kind of big and bulky but you can get a smaller like a towel or a thin cushion for some people this makes it more accessible um if the tops of your feet front of your ankles are tight you can tuck your toes under so there's that that's one way to modify and make it more comfortable and that's the beginning of the pose is from kneeling I'm going to go ahead and show it to you like I'm going to use the the blanket as padding for my knees another way to prop if if your floor is hard which mine is okay so um you start in verosa this is a kneeling pose traditionally that doesn't feel right for your body or if you have a pain or um any chronic tension in your lower back you might come up kneeling with the hips above the knees toes can point back or tuck under and from here you would have the hands on the lower back or on the pelvis back of the pelvis fingers are facing down and just let your breath float and as you open up shoulder blades come together just like we did in that warm up hips might shift forward a little and you either look forward or your head can go back so try that maybe you shift only if it feels good here or you stay with hips above the knees and open up it might not be a big back bend that's all right if you want to go deeper you're totally welcome to put one hand down and then the other again you can look forward or the head can go back and then to come out you reach up with one arm and then the other okay so that was in gradations like you would start and if this is the maximum you can or want to do that's cool if you want to go down with one side and then the other that's another way to do it you want to make sure you got the you're up for it and your core and that's not holding it it's just kind of opening and you might even raise an arm another way if you don't want to start from kneeling up is starting from down kneeling down and putting hands behind you and the toe the fingers are facing back now this starts out kind of easy and then gets more intense so you're in this version you're going to slowly lift the hips and shift them forward now depending on your flexibility you might go partly forward you might go more chin is into the chest or the head goes back if that feels good when you come down go slow okay or some people that does not feel good at all and if that doesn't even begin to feel good don't go there um and maybe one day you can do that and another day it's like it doesn't feel possible so listen to your body um another variation which could also be a warmup for the the full pose is starting in that kneeling and having the hands back behind you and just doing like a mini one so there's different ways to place the hand and you can just find your what's comfortable and you just come up a little bit honestly this sometimes feels harder to me because it's not as easy to get high up into it but it's let it be something you play with want to think of these posters as Explorations you don't always have to go in this full deep posture for it to be worth it all right last variation is more of a movement a mini sequence and you kneel and very us again you can put something between the hips with the thighs and the calves this next part is the hands can go on the feet or on the ground behind you so it'll be one at a time and this is more of like a side to side movement so let's say my right hand goes down my left arm sweeps in front of me and maybe go up without lifting the hips or I can go up and lift the hips and to the other side hip C down or go back and forth right you get the idea but notice when I'm doing that my gaze is all over the place I'm looking to the side I'm looking up I'm looking down and there's no rule about where you place your focus visually it's just what feels feel good in your neck and I'm I'm talking about that now because in the other versions I said you can either look forward or you can let the head go back and in those different positions your gaze will be in a different direction and we use that and it's called dishy dishy is your focal point with your eyes and it helps you find balance and stability and sometimes it's an extra challenge to kind of let that gaze wander and now I'm kind of bending the rules traditionally because because a lot of poses have a traditional dristy and in camel pose it's the tip of the nose so essentially You' be like crossing your eyes look at your nose um which is fine and has its own benefits but for now I'm just saying which direction is the head looking forward with the chin down or back and when you're doing that side to side one which looks like this the legs look different but this is just to give you another view of what I was doing and without lifting my hips you can lift the hips but notice how I still get a nice opening in the chest and the whole front of the body at least the front of the Torso and then you could even just hold that somewhere along the way you don't have to just keep moving but you could maybe there's a spot that feels like it needs a little bit of opening feels great um I'm all about bending the rolls in alignment and position as long as it's safe for the body so let's um my invitation to you is just to explore this posture um this is not this is not guidance for like a complete beginner I do invite you to go to yoga classes Google it consult other resources for the very Basics on the specific alignment if you're not sure but I hope that you at least play with those little VAR creations and they make camel pose a little more fun and um help you explore it in little doses so you don't feel like you have to pop up into this big back bend so give it a try let me know how it goes this can be a spontaneous thing you do in your day when you're um I don't know doing something around the house or playing with your kids on the rug or whatever or you can incorporate this into a sequence or a session and at the end of this month not this month but in October I will um kind of provide a little sequence that uses camel pose and some of the movements and areas of the body um in a sequence that makes uh kind of like a fluid sense so that you prepare your body for Camel and then you do some things to counter it so looking forward to that and I say not the end of this this month because the way I'm approaching my newsletter on substack now Urban yoga mama is to starting with actually the the Autumn Equinox which was last Friday um from there I will measure that month the month's theme so the month is not the calendar month of September it's from that Equinox until um the full moon of October so we will be following the cycles of the moon and the cycles of the seasons to uh provide a structure for the monthly themes and just the general flow of the offerings here so check it out at Urban yogam mama. substack docomomo yoga No matter how busy they are so I hope this has inspired you I hope you got some good tips here please feel free to comment or ask questions either in this um YouTube thread or on my newsletter at Urban yogam mama. sstack.com thanks for watching happy practicing