A good – if slightly claustrophobic way – of keeping the arms from splaying out in the ascent to Wheel (Urdhva Dhanurasana).
Tips:
I’d be less likely to use this on a really tight guy (who may need a little extra room to find full flexion of the arms) than on a flexible but instable person who needs more support.
Work to make the strap loose – not to hang out in it.
The key to the backbend is in the upper back – thoracic extension. For maximum stability, set the shoulder girdle before you become weight bearing and press all the way up.
However, this pose is particularly challenging because it also demands full flexion of the arm at the shoulder.
For tighter folks, have them place their hands a little further away from their ears and turn their hands out (creates more space)
Less stable and weaker folks (more flexible) can move their hands closer to their ears before fully coming up in order to facilitate the press up.
Here is a two person partner assist for Full Wheel (Urdhva Dhanurasana). This assist is perfect for those needing more space and stability through their lower back.
Tips:
place the straps at the bra line and sacrum line
guard your own body position (hinge at your hips, not your low back)
pull the straps diagonally rather than straight up
use your own body weight to pull the straps – not your arm strength
Anyone with wrist issues or tight shoulders knows that Wheel (Urdhva Dharusasna) can be hard to do. Here’s a simple and easy partner assist that you can do (keep it simple by not using straps and just using the ankle hold) to help your tighter students find their way into this complex pose. For a deeper look at positioning the straps, click here.
Tips:
Use just the ankle hold if you’re doing this as an in-class partner assist to help someone with wrist issues and shoulder tightness
If you’re using the straps, make sure to place them at the bra and sacrum line in order to facilitate maximum traction.
With straps, pull on a diagonal line rather than straight up. Pulling straight up will overly compress the spine, whereas pulling diagonally will create more length through the lower back
You can use a good deal of strength through the straps to create support, so use your body weight (slowly) rather than rely on the strength of your arms
Stay in good communication with your partner at all times
Join me and the YYoga 200-hour teacher trainees as we explore how to do Full Wheel when there are wrist issues. Great modifications so that you can help make this pose accessible to all your students!
Urdhva Dhanurasana (Upward Bow, also known as “Wheel”) is one of the most delicious and expansive of yoga asana, inviting a full opening of the “Eastern,” or front, side of the body. As in all yoga asana, the stability (sthira) of the back body is essential for supporting the full expansion and sweetness (sukha) of the front body. Also, Urdhva Dhanurasana calls for a profound opening in the hips and shoulders in order to access the fullest expression of the spine. Since the body has to put all these parts together effectively, accessing the full expression of this pose can sometimes be elusive.
However, with some preparation and variation, the benefits of this pose can be readily be made available to a wide range of students.
Component Parts
Hips
Finding the full range of motion in the lower body for Urdhva Dhanurasana is more than a matter of spinal flexibility. For most of us, we can find about 45 degrees of mobility through the spine, and an additional 15 degrees of extension between the hips and the thighs. What this means is that in order to access the full “bow-ness” of Upward Bow, we must be conscious to open the hips as well as the back.
The muscles to target here are the psoas, iliacus, and rectus femoris (one of the quads). By effectively opening these muscles, over time the full hip extension of Urdhva Dhanurasana becomes accessible. While opening the quads can be targeted through thigh stretches (think low lunge, bending the back knee, and drawing the heel towards the buttock), the ilio-psoas needs to be stretched by a differential between the angle of the back thigh and the pelvis. Crescent and Upright Low lunge are great candidates. When stretching the psoas, the back leg will often turn out in a clever attempt to avoid the stretch. Focus on softening the upper inner thigh of the back leg towards the back plane of the body until the thigh is neutral in the socket. Once space and alignment is created, the anchoring of the tailbone down will create the posterior action needed to begin stretching this important muscle.
Because the psoas attaches all the way up the lumbar spine towards T12, conscious alignment of the hips is one half of the equation. Note that in the stretch, the lumbar and thoracic spine will want to pull forward in space. Instead, consciously draw the lower belly and sides of the waist back and up (almost like scooping your belly with an ice cream scoop). This lifting and scooping action will draw the superior fibers of the psoas away from its insertion on the back thigh. Like ice cream: delicious.
Shoulders
Urdhva Dhanurasana requires a lot of openness through the shoulders. Invariable, this is why some of our sturdier male students remain landlocked on the ground. The arms need the facility to flex fully at the shoulder joint. External rotation of the upper arm is preferred to help anchor the scapulae firmly on the back. Prepare the body for this position by focusing on poses that get the arms above the head: crescent, chair. One of my favorite poses is to do Chair (utkasana) with a block firmly positioned between the hands. Work on pressing your hands into the block as you externally rotate the upper arms, straighten the arms, and then lift them overhead. Once you’ve worked in these positions, move the body in weight-bearing positions to open the shoulders in such asana as dolphin and handstand.
Thoracic Spine
Naturally, a backbend ain’t a backbend without the extension of the thoracic spine. Start small and target the upper back through poses such as cobra and sphinx. Once the upper back has been educated, then you can move to fully spine extensions such as full cobra and updog. When working in spinal extension, it is important to maintain the stability of the lower back in order to avoid over-compressing in the lumbar and lower thoracic. The lower back is the backbendiest place of the spine, and the juncture between the lumbar and thoracic is particularly mobile. While we do use this mobility when we backbend, we don’t want to overly capitalize on it and neglect the opening that needs to occur in the upper spine. Create length and stability by maintaining a broadness in the mid and lower back and focus your backbending efforts higher up. Use the external rotation of the upper arms to facilitate a greater sense of drawing the scapulae into the back. This will help with your thoracic extension. (Try it: do a mini standing backbend with your arms externally rotated, then internally rotated – which is easier?)
The pumpkin
The buttocks in backbending can become overly zealous. My teacher Catherine Munro called this phenomenon the “pumpkin.” While the glutes work, we want to be careful that they don’t overly engage. The secondary action of the glutes is to externally rotate the thigh, which can lead to compression through the lower back and inability to lengthen the tailbone. Use the muscular midline (adductors, internal rotators) to keep the legs neutral even when the glutes engage.
You can teach proper engagement in your backbends, but also in poses such as crescent or 3-legged dog, where the back leg needs to find a slight internal rotation to bring it back to neutral.
Getting up there- Two hand positions
After you warm up your students thoroughly and appropriately, start your students in bridge and confirm the neutral placement of the feet. The feet – as a distal reflection of the thighs – will attempt to turn out when the glutes engage. Use midline to keep the legs (and feet) parallel. As your students lift into bridge, confirm the action of the legs and pelvis in this non-weight bearing position.
From here, they place their hands in position #1: by the ears and close. The proximity of the hands to the head will give them more muscular access to lifting up.
Once they come onto their heads, widen the hands into hand position #2, which creates a little more space into the shoulder girdle. While they will have less power to press up, most students appreciate the extra space. They can also turn their hands out slightly to create even more room.
Now it is time to affirm the lift into the thoracic spine and appropriate action of the shoulders – before they become weight-bearing through their arms. Have your students roll towards their hairline to draw their chest forward through their arms as they root the upper arms bones back into their sockets (towards their hips). This will anchor the scapulae on the back. From here, they can then press into the hands and feet evenly (watch the feet don’t move – continue to hug the midline) to come up.
There are two variations of Urdhva Dhanurasana. In variation 1, the student works to create an even bow through the whole body, with the pelvis and ribs level. While this is easier on the shoulders, it’s harder on the wrists as they are at a very acute angle. In version 2, the student begins to bring their shoulders forward over their wrists (see pic above). Easier on the wrists, but asking for lots of space in the shoulders. Eventually, you can take version 2, then walk the feet in as is comfortable to tighten the bowstring. Students should maintain the capacity to feel grounded in the feet (good for standing up eventually from this pose) as well as rooted in the hands (great for shoulder opening). Here’s a tip from Asthanga teacher Chris Richardson: To keep the lower back long, move everything from the navel through the thighs towards the feet, while the navel through the back spine reaches forward into the hands. Move both parts of the body away from each other to create spaciousness in the center.
If you have students who are limited through their shoulders, you can have them hold your ankles. They should place the webbing of their hands into the crease where your leg and foot meet and hold there, rather than wrapping their hands around your lower leg. (Make sure to keep your feet on the wide side.) Otherwise their hands will slide down to your feet anyway, giving you a you an unwelcome skin massage.
One step at a time
Many times students will forget about the foundation in the excitement of getting up and turn their feet and leg out every which way in an effort to “do the full pose.” While this may be initially exciting, it is far better to proceed with patience so that the whole body can be integrated in the pose – from the toes to the fingers. Otherwise, cranky low backs will ensue rather than the adrenal stimulating, expansive awakening that Urdhva Dhanuarasana provides.
The”full expression” of Urdhva Dhanurasana allows you to leverage the action of the arms to open the upper back and chest, your students in bridge are still experiencing the delights of spinal extension. Over time and patient practice, the body will become more receptive and open to this luxurious expression. Warm up intelligently, manage your foundation and actions, and allow the pose to unfold from there.
Urdhva Dhanurasana, aka Upward Bow – don’t call it Wheel, that’s a different pose ;). One of the ultimate yoga stretches for the front of the body, Urdhva Dhanurasana challenges us to maintain our strength though the core as we radiate through our upper chest and heart and stretch our hip flexors and shoulders. Any restriction in the shoulders or hips will immediately translate into a crunched lower back, so Upward Bow requires a great deal of warming up and opening in order to be happily explored.
Risk factors: The low back. This is priority number one. In order to keep our low back long and strong, we much engage the rectus abdominus and create containment through the front of our body. Opening the shoulders and hip flexors will help us to find an even arch through the spine and take pressure off the lower back to do all the bending.
What to warm up:
The shoulders in flexion (reaching forward and up). Whenever we have the arms over our head, our upper arms must in in external rotation. This means that poses like adho mukha svanasana (down dog), urdhva hastasana (arms over the head in tadasana – I love this when squeezing a block between the wrists, arms straight, front ribs in), and handstand (urdhva hastasana upside down) will be great warm ups for the shoulders. You should be able to straighten the arms above the head without bending the elbows or bowing the spine. If this isn’t possible yet, then keep working on the shoulders and wait before trying Upward Bow. With time, it will come.
The hip flexors (front of the thighs). Low lunge, high lunge, and Virabhadrasana I are great poses for opening the front of the thighs. We are particularly interested in the psoas rather than the quads, as the knees in Urdhva Dhanurasana aren’t really that bent.
The thoracic (upper back). Work to open the front of the heart by broadening the collarbones, lifting the sternum, and drawing the shoulders deeply into the body. Can you work to isolate the drawing in of the upper back while you keep your lower back long? It’s a little bit of a conundrum, but this is exactly the paradoxical work that backbends require. Poses such as sphinx, bhujanghasana (baby cobra), urdhva mukha svanasana (up dog), and salabhasana (locust) can refine this work. Twists such as parivrtta parsvakonasana and parivrtta trikonasana are excellent at teaching the body to open the upper spine while engaging the abdominals and lengthening.
The core. To maintain a long lower back, we must use strength through the front of the body to contain the area between the front hip points (the ASIS) and the lower ribcage. Poses such as plank, forearm plank, and navasana (as well as other non-yoga varieties that might be in your repertoire) can bring awareness to this area. Doing a mild camel with your frontal hip points stuck to the wall and focusing on lifting up an out of the hips can be an effective way to bring attention to the work of the abdominals.
The inner thighs. The adductors link to the core. Also, as we press into backbends, the tendency is to grip the buttocks, which can cause external rotation in the thighs and squash the sacrum. By engaging the inner thighs and rolling them slightly to the back body, we widen the sacrum, create length through the back and more room to reach the sitbones away from the back. The adductors can be accessed in almost every pose, but are particularly obvious in neutral lunges when we can “scissor” the inner thighs towards each other. Putting a block between the upper thighs or the inner feet immediately creates and adductor-engaged imprint in the body.
Props: Use a strap shoulder-width above the elbows to prevent flailing out in the arms and loss of external rotation. Strap the upper thighs at hip distance apart to keep the legs parallel the hips (and inner thighs down, and sacrum wide). A block between the upper thighs cues the inner thighs to engage and roll to the floor. A block between the feet or a strap around the big toes helps to keep the feet parallel and tracking (keeping the thighs neutral rather than externally rotating). Blocks tilted at the wall can take the pressure out of the wrists by decreasing the angle at which they need to bear weight.
Energetics: Urdhva Dhanurasana is one of the great heart openers. But we cannot move to opening unless there we have strength through the core of the body. We need a solid foundation through the legs, pelvis and lower core (energetically we need stability in chakras 1-3) in order to radiate and expand through the upper chest (chakra 4, the heart chakra). In a recent workshop, Anodea Judith invited us to open our hearts while staying in our core. In relationships – the purview of chakra 4 – we often find ourselves either hardening and retreating or becoming too malleable and floppy. We are either defensive, or we let too much in. Urdhva Dhanurasana invites into the great balance; the more strength and grounding that we can find in our center, the more open and receptive that we can safely become.
Backbending thoughts from Aadil Palkivala:
Physically speaking, backbends move the spine into the body, creating strength in the back of the body and length through the groins, abdominal cavity, rib cage, throat, and frontal shoulders. Backbends charge the kidneys by drawing them into the body, rejuvenating the adrenals and drawing the life force given by the kidneys back into the body. Backbends generally open up three major areas of the body – the pelvis, heart and throat. Therefore, they can open the hips, free the chest from congestion, and bring back a healthy curve to the neck. Most of our daily habits (sitting, driving, working at a desk) cause a collapse in the front of our bodies and push the spine backwards. This is why you will often feel bony lumps on the spine of older people. Backbends bring healthy alignment and mobility back into the spine, moving the vertebrae forwards.
Psychologically speaking, backbends move us toward our future and away from our past, since the back of the body represents the past and the front of our body represents our future. Backbends quieten the hyper-analytical activity of the front brain, and because of the extension produced, trigger a feeling of openness in the limbic system (the emotional center of the brain). In contrast, when we are in a state of fear or anger, we curl up and go into a position of flexion (protection). Thus, psychologically speaking, backbends move us from fear to power.
Energetically speaking, backbends move the spine toward the Pillar of Light in the body. They open up congested and stagnant pelvic energy. This allows the energy to move upward in an expression of aspiration for growth, where it can be transformed by the wisdom of the Heart Chakra. Backbends open up the Heart Chakra, expanding the feeling of love and joy. They also open the throat, allowing the Heart Chakra to express words of beauty and love. This opening also allows the mental energy to move more easily down to the Heart Chakra.
However, a caveat: All the above happens in backbends only if there is the intention for this to happen as you practice. Otherwise you will simply become more flexible!
