Breathlessness During backbend

Hello Anandhi

It’s very normal to feel a constriction to the breath during a backbend. It can be harder to physically get air in because of the extension and the effects on the chest, ribs, abdomen. There are many factors that would give different answers to many individuals (including the quality of one’s breathing practice,  experience, capacity and more). But I have a couple of hunches and ideas so let’s start there.

There are major issues with lifting up the arms over the head AND bringing the hands together. For MANY people, they lift arms up and the action of bringing hands together encourages the shoulders to rise up from their functional position of shoulders down and back (flowing down the spine).  You really need to make sure your shoulders are away from the ears at every opportunity. My suggestion is that you raise the arms up, focus on keeping the shoulder blades down and back and the shoulders away from the ears. Try it even without doing a backbend to test this all out. When you bring the hands together, you may notice a couple of things. You may discern the shoulders lifting (even a tiny bit) and the other sign is if you notice that to bring the hands together, the CHIN drops ever so slightly.

If either of these things are happening (even a TINY bit) then your job is to keep the hands apart. Try instead to have the arms vertical, up from the shoulders. Keep those shoulders firmly planted down and back. Your palms can face in if you like. Only ever bring your hands together (or indeed your arms as close) as much as you can always keep the shoulders down away from the ears, AND your chin staying parallel to the floor or neck long.

Here’s a neat trick that you must try: feel the difference between when your arms travel upwards both without and with your hands energised. The secret is to energise the baby finger. There is a connective tissue connection from the baby finger to the shoulder blades that you WILL feel activate when you activated that baby finger as you bring the arms over the head, and approach the hands. Equally, you will feel your down-dogs markedly improve when you press your baby fingers into the ground. So often I only hear teachers indicate that pressure is placed through the thumb and forefingers. Add in the baby finger, switch on this amazing body reflex for this magic.

Let me know if I was on the right track or if it is something else that is preventing you from moving through your backbends with ease.

Summary and an extra point: shoulders down and back. Never let the chin drop forward when you are in a backbend. A chin drop usually means tightness in the shoulders and a shortening of the neck, and that can actually mean your accessory breathing muscles are engaging. Use of accessory breathing muscles means you are moving into sympathetic nervous system reflexes of FFF and your breathing moves into your upper lungs. With a chin drop, your eyes will drop forward too (even if only a tiny bit), instead of looking up and back behind you (in the direction you’re going). All these things conspire to make your backbends hard, tension-filled and difficult to breathe.

Only ever go back as far as those shoulder, chin and eye signs allow! Ah yes! Should be much easier!

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂