
Backbends are heart openers because they open the heart chakra or Anahata. Once in a yoga backbending class, my yoga teacher said to observe and feel all the emotions that may come up. Doing this improves your respiratory and cardiovascular health. So, when you do a backbend and maintain diaphragmatic breathing, not only your back strengthens but also your diaphragm. The diaphragm is the most efficient muscle to use when breathing. Enhances Cardiovascular and Respiratory Healthīackbends stretch all the muscles in the front side of the body, including the diaphragm. By improving your posture and stretching your body through backbends, you improve your blood circulation to the brain. When you have poor posture, the muscles and nerves are tight and the blood cannot flow freely. Poor posture, whatever the cause, leads to poor blood circulation.

This tightness in the hip flexors can cause lower back pain and pain in your hips and thighs.Īny backbending asana stretches the front side of the body, including your hip flexors.

If you tend to sit for a prolonged period due to work, your hip flexors are tight most of the time. Stretches Hip Flexorsīackbends are an effective way to stretch the hip flexors. Backbends such as Ustrasana or Camel Pose can relieve your neck and back pain by extending your back and neck. Relieves Neck and Back Painīack and neck pain is a common ache we feel, especially if you overly flex your cervical and thoracic spine. It reverses the effects of bad posture by also strengthening the muscles around the spine, such as the erector spinae and the quadratus lumborum. This bad posture leads to tight chest and back pain.īackbending in yoga improves the posture by stretching and opening the chest. We usually hunch forward and round our thoracic spine too much.

So many of us work behind our computers with bad posture. According to this study, it increases the mobility of your spine and the flexibility of your hamstrings. Backbends in yoga improve your spinal mobility by enhancing the spine’s flexibility and strengthening the muscles that surround it. Enhances Cardiovascular and Respiratory HealthĪ healthy spine is a mobile spine.
