Bhujangasana

Hi I'm with my good friends Ilana and Betsy and we're going to demonstrate the first back bend in this sequence so I wonder if you will both lie down on your on your tummies and make sure that your feet are not wider than your hips and also it's very important for you to have your little toes on the floor it gives a little bit of internal rotation to the upper thighs and helps to lengthen the lower back now would you come up onto your forearms please with your elbows directly below your shoulders so you want the upper arms to be perpendicular to the floor and the forearms parallel to each other very good Ilana is going to represent the beginning student of the beginning beginning student and I'm going to ask her to be very careful about the way she does this exercise Betsy will represent a little bit more experienced student and I'll let her do a little bit more of an active exercise so the important thing with bhujangasana it's often called the cobra I'm not sure that's the exact or very precise translation of bhujanga I would prefer to call the serpent pose the problem with this pose is that there's a tendency when you lift the elbows off the floor is it to push your torso into your lower back which is not a happy thing for the lumbar spine so this may be enough for beginning students we may allow beginners to come a little bit off the floor to get a taste of what it might be like to do the full pose so let's ask you just to lift your elbows a little bit away from the floor and see what that's like and that might be enough for a beginner right there I want you calm down now for Betsy I'm going to ask you to come all the way up and when you do this I want you to be sure that you when you lift the torso that you're pushing the sternum bone forward between the arms that's right and rolling shoulders back and down a little bit very nice you keep coming now make sure the little toes stay on the floor you're letting them come up just a little bit too much you want to maintain that internal rotation and lengthen the tailbone all the way back down toward the heels very nice bhujangasana the cobra pose which is the common way of translating the word but again I prefer to call it the serpent and then Betsy can take an exhalation and lower herself back down on the floor very good and both of you can lay your heads down lay your upper torsos and heads down the floor bring your hands below your shoulders and with an exhalation push yourself back in the child's pose remember not to push into the lower back as you do this that's right very good back in the child's pose and after a backbend as we just did I'd like you to stretch your arms forward toward the front of the mat and then once you're sitting bones are down on the heels I want you to lift your sitting bones about an inch off the floor and stretch your hands out a little bit farther yes and glue the hands of the floor with yoga glue and then drop the sitting bones down onto the heels again very nice thank you this is bhujangasana