Understanding the Mechanics of Yoga Backbends: Your Hips and Lumbar Spine

I’m going to be honest, I absolutely hate backbending postures. That’s why I never have any expectations when entering backbending poses. It wasn’t until I fully understood the mechanics of backbending, that I started to find a little more ease with it. Don’t get me wrong, I still despise backbends, but you have to practices the poses you hate too.

What Does Backbending require?

In yoga, back bending and spinal extension are one and the same. In every backbending posture, the intention is to stabilize your low back and work with your natural lumbar curve. The same goes for your neck or cervical spine. You want to stabilize and utilize these natural curves, while simultaneously reversing the curve in your thoracic spine or mid-back.

Here’s where you can run into trouble though…it is so incredibly easy to “dump” your weight into your low back. This causes an excessive curve in your lumbar spine wherein your pelvis is in an exaggerated anterior tilt. This can cause a stiff, painful low back. It is important to understand exactly what muscles we need to use in order to stabilize, and what muscles we need to work in terms of mobility.

How to Stablize & Stregthen

Having healthy, strong back muscles plays a large role when it comes to entering backbending postures safely. Furthermore, having awareness and strength in your transverse abdominis will help you maintain and even bend throughout. Both of these muscle groups help stabilize your sacrum -the bony protrusion at the base of the lumbar spine.

Stabilizing Your Sacrum

Your sacrum will typically be in one of three positions in a yoga pose; anterior tilt, posterior tilt, and neutral. An anterior tilt will exaggerate the natural curve in your lumbar spine. While a posterior tilt will scoop your tailbone under and lessen the curve in your lumbar spine. When your sacrum is neutral, your pelvic bowl is balanced.

A good way to visualize a neutral pelvic bowl is to imagine it holding water. If your pelvic bowl is experiencing an anterior tilt, then the water will spill out the front. However, if your pelvic bowl is experiencing a posterior tilt, then water will spill out the back. To have a neutral pelvic bowl means that no water will spill out the front or back – the bowl is balanced.

When you move into a backbend, you want to maintain a neutral pelvic tilt. In order to maintain a neutral tilt, you need both your core and back muscles to work together. Your transverse abdominis is the deepest core muscle in your body. It connects to your pelvis and ribcage, as well as the fascia that moves into your low back. This makes it a major stabilizer while backbending.

Accessing Your Transverse Abdominis

You can access the tansveres abdominis by practicing mula bandha, or root lock. Among other things, mula bandha is the sanskrit word that is often used to describe this deep core engagement. It involves drawing up and in with your pelvic floor muscles. It’s essentially a kegel exercise, similar to stopping mid-stream.

Instead of limiting this engagement to just the lowest portion of your abdominals andpelvic muscles, you want to ensure that you lengthen your spine and draw in at the space right below your belly button. When you lengthen and lift, the engagement will naturally move into your obliques where you can continue to provide a stable structure for your backbends.

Additionally, the transveres abdominis can help you open up through the front side of your body. The portion of the transverse abdominis that connects to your pelvis, runs along the ligament that connects to your psoas muscle. Your psoas muscles are responsible for facilitating the opening and stretching of the front of your hips in backbending postures.

Despite the fact that you’re opening or stretching the front of your hips, your psoas muscles are still gently engaged. By engaging your psoas muscles, the muscles in your lumbar spine will star to lengthen. This allows you to maintain space throughout your low back so that you can maintain your natural curve without dumping your weight.

Length, Strength, and Flexibility

Overall, backbending postures require a great deal of strength and flexibility. One of the most important factors to keep in mind is to lengthen before you bend. This is why forward folds are often used to prep for backbends. It’s necessary to maintain space throughout your entire spine so that you’re bending evenly when move into spinal flexion, or backbending postures.