Backbending OR the Ramp ...
is my Mount Olympus! Check this out
Ya that's my backbend. Have you ever seen anything so sad and shallow! Humf! And no I'm not still going up, that's it, the back will budge no further. It's like pushing against a cement wall. (However, I must say in my last Mysore class I did a wicked urdhva dhanurasana! My torso just kept going up and up and up and my arms were going straighter and straighter! I thought OMG this is amazing! And I thought now this is what others must feel like when they do it. I wish there'd been a mirror to see it! That's another post. I mean the mirrors.) When I was a kid I vowed NEVER to enter a gymnastics class again because I couldn't get up in a wheel like the others that had the most beautiful flexie round wheels. Mine was more like a long rectangle just like the one above. I felt ridiculous. And of course they did it with such ease as they were pushing against a lovely flexie giving back whereas I was heave-hoeing against a brick wall. They never saw my shadow again. ... I never in my wildest dreams believed that in my deep adult age I would revisit this. Haha! Karma is a b** or God loves His jokes. But now, I don't really care. I judge my improvements against myself. Doesn't mean I don't get a twinge of longing and desire for those beautiful flexie looking bends but I've accepted that it's AOK to work where I am. And man, it's a shallow deal indeed. lol!
When I first started yoga my updogs looked like a ramp — not even a slope — no a LOW low grade ramp. I despaired! But I sucked it up. If that's what I can do that's what I can do. Be where you are! I believed I would see some improvements no matter how incremental. And now my updogs can look like a pretty good slopey bend when I'm warmed up nicely. Yeah! Not to say I don't have some excuses for my wee-wonky slopes. I like to lean on that when I feel a little down about it. I have mild scoliosis in my upper back, an S curve between my shoulder blades, which makes one shoulder a touch higher than the other. It was my ballet teacher who discovered it in class just as I started to get upper back pain from it. Just because it's mild doesn't mean the pain is mild. I also have a nice little dent in my mid-lower spine where my spine dips inward and then back out again. And not to be outdone, to add a little twist to the deal I have a literal twist just below it going to my lumbar spine. I'm thinking all those little challenges in my spine are what's making it less bendy. No wonder I have absolutely no lumbar bend. Most peoples backs that's where they get the majority of their bend from so all the good yoga teachers try to take you out of the lower spine to get you to address the upper so you don't use that area as a crutch and over tax it. BUT I have NO bend there whatsoevah! So for me, I would like to employ ALL those area's in my back for backbending. I'm still wondering if the lower twist is what causes my lumbar to resist. If you think about it if you twist a a chainlink and then try to bend it, it's just not that bendy. So maybe that's what's happening down below. However, I refuse to give up as I still believe there's some openings to be had despite these challenges. Like opening up my hip flexors, doing passive backbending on my exercise ball and over a pillowed chair, ushtrasana is a great one for me to open my back after passive backbending. And my all time fav is standing backbend. All these extra homework has really helped to open my back. And now I can see the wall behind me when I do a standing backbend whereas before I could see only the ceiling. Go figah! I tell ya, practice and all is coming.
etc., etc. ...
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