The Hot Yoga Doctor – Free Bikram and Hot Yoga Resources › Hot Yoga Doctor Forum › The Hot Yoga Poses › Ustrasana › Odd feelings while doing Camel Pose/Ustrasana
The Hot Yoga Doctor – Free Bikram and Hot Yoga Resources › Hot Yoga Doctor Forum › The Hot Yoga Poses › Ustrasana › Odd feelings while doing Camel Pose/Ustrasana
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Found this site while Googling “heart racing camel pose”, found a thread from 2004 with no answer to the question, so joined to ask question and to learn. I’ll give a little background info to help with the questions I have. I am not doing hot yoga, ….but am taking a wonderful yoga class w/an excellent teacher. Been doing yoga off and on for about 5-6 years , I’m overweight and usually stressed-out, so looking to lose weight and bring inner calm. I no longer work for company I was with for 12 years, that was the most significant source of my stress (smile) and am using my time off to seek a new path and get healthy. Eventually my goal is to take a teacher training and start a practice with kids or pre-natal. It’s been almost 3 years since I was in regular yoga practice (while pregnant) and I re-started my practice this May. I’ve done 7 classes and already noticed differences in my body, strength and energy. I do some modification with poses, I have too much weight to fully get into some of the poses….3 children has left me with a nice round belly…LOL! I am pleasantly surprised this past week that I have been able to get into poses that I didn’t think I could do, it has been exhilarating! My class last night was amazing, we did “lions roaring” cleansing breaths and we went through lots of “building” sequences to get our bodies into poses with proper form, so this brings me to my questions.
I felt strong in class and pushed myself to try things I didn’t think I could do, and it felt good, I eased back when I needed to. But one pose left me feeling a little strange, we worked on building into Camel/Ustrasana, with lots of heart opening and subtle back bends before going into the fuller pose….. we stopped the pose at the point of hands on heels or hips. I am a former dancer, so I understand using my core to lift up and out of my ribcage, extending my back up, lengthening first and then bending back, so my spine stays stretched….and then pushing my heart center open and out the front to fully extend. When sitting on knees and keeping my butt down and sitting on my heels, I felt great in the pose. But when we lifted up, on our knees, but with hips stacked over knees, and reached into Camel, my heart started racing and I felt big waves of nausea!! SO I kept doing it for a second and then would lower down and rest, then try again and lower down again. I have NEVER felt a response like this in all the times I’ve practiced yoga, this was a completely new sensation…and I have done Camel many times before. For the entire class, I did strongly focus on really working to open my chest and heart center.
I spoke to my teacher, she asked me several questions about my form, and she thought it was most likely that I had many blockages in the heart chakra and this pose was causing me to fully open up and release and causing the nausea and heart palpitations?!? I have been a little stressed out this past week, and wanted to use my class to relieve this tension,and maybe that’s what it was. She said I was wise to listen to my body and rest instead of pushing through it, but I am confused as to what happened. I don’t have blood pressure issues, but during my pregnancy (3 yrs ago) my blood pressure was high (especially days I worked for the stressful job) and I had occasional heart palps, but now that I’m not pregnant, that seems to have resolved itself. I am trying to figure out if this was a negative response and my heart saying “you are doing too much and stop”, and if I need to pay a visit to the doctor and be evaluated…. or if this is a possible normal response to Camel pose? Any and all advice is welcome, and thank you so much for listening through my long message:) I look forward to learning more on this website and perhaps seeking out a hot yoga class! Namaste….
Sara 🙂
Hi Sara,
The sensations you described while practicing camel sound very familiar…! From my (limited) experience, backbends can open up lots of emotions because we are exposing our front side which isn’t how we operate on a day to day basis. In some classes when I practice camel I feel energised and refreshed, and in others I feel nauseous and dizzy and my heart races at a hundred miles per hour. I usually find that the second feeling happens when I have something going on outside the room – a bit stressed from work, unhappiness, conflict in my relationships… something that is a bit negative which I have been holding onto.
I hope this helps – I think what you described sounds like what can be a fairly normal reaction to this asana.
Shona
I agree. Camel is an interesting pose – sometimes it’s exhilarating but fairly easy, and other times it kicks my butt. Instructors at my studio often remind the class that strong feelings are a normal part of this pose, and that as part of the meditation that is yoga, we should just notice the feelings and let them go, even it we feel a very strong response, such as crying, etc.
I have never actually cried, but my heart often races, even more than in triangle pose, and doing the second set on those days can be the most daunting part of class.
Good point to bring up – I know I found this overwhelming when I first started practising.
Namaste, Ilonka
I have only recently started doing bikram (5 classes so far, loving it), and whilst i have no health issues, i have similar sensations when going into camel pose, it has almost been to much to just lean backwards with my hands on my hips – i feel as though a panic attack is beginning. My hypothesis is that (for me) it is more emotiona-healthl than physical-health related. I feel it is symbolic of opening up my heart or something else related to revealing myself fully. I react really strongly to this pose, but have no problems with (attempting) any of the others.
Having said that, its always a good idea to get a health check-up just in case, better safe than sorry =)
Hi Sarah
There are several ways to approach this issue. One is to analyze and work out why something is happening. Another is to observe it, and move on!!! 😉
And further you can examine if there’s anything physical that you’re doing that is triggering the physiological panic reaction that you are experiencing. For example MANY people dread this pose as a result of their initial experience. What often happens is they look up instead of back. Then the chin starts to drop, the neck tightens, the breath becomes choppy and there you have it – physiological panic which could be the start of your emotional reaction. Then it spirals downward from there.
So go back to class, just place your hands on your hips and focus next time on a soft belly while you breathe and looking back and not up. Only drop your head back and don’t go into a backbend unless you feel OK. If that works we can move on from there. Report back. If that doesn’t work I will give you something else to do.
Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂Thank you to everyone who replied to my post, I greatly appreciate the feedback and advice…..and I’m so happy I found a place I can ask questions and learn 🙂 I will continue to try and do camel, and I don’t think I will dread this pose or have anxiety about it….I will look forward to the heart opening and emotion release and think about the good it is doing to get all that out! I read all the responses I received and found more posts on camel pose, I think that my response to the pose was more emotion based rather than having something wrong physically that caused this reaction. It seems like this may be a normal release of emotion/blockage like my teacher had mentioned. All of you ladies have had a similar response in camel, so that makes me feel better about my experience. I had a huge amount of stress going on last week, and was approaching the start of my period. I think the nausea might have been a hormonal response, I tend to get waves of nausea from time to time when my hormones are fluctuating.
Gabrielle….I think you might be right about my head position. It’s hard to remember, but I don’t recall trying to look “back” and maybe was looking “up” instead. I think this, coupled with the release of stress/emotion, may have caused the “panic” response. I will say that I look forward to this pose again. The sensations I had were strange and unfamiliar….but at the same time it felt good and exhilarating! When I do any type of dancing/aerobics classes, my heart rate gets up there and I feel similar, so I think it’s a safe response as long as it’s not sustained for a long period of time. Thank you for the tips on technique with my head, I will try looking back the next time I work on this pose….and I will let you know if that makes a difference.
I think it’s really amazing that a yoga pose like this can create such a response in the body, I think that is why I feel ok with the response and don’t have fear towards continuing to try this pose. I recently read an article in a yoga magazine about Seane Corn and her “yoga journey”…..and she described going into a pose and suddenly bursting into tears and weeping for no apparent reason. I thought about how incredible yoga must be to cause an emotional response just by twisting and stretching your body and breathing. It inspired me to continue to find deeper meaning in my own practice. So perhaps my “camel” in class the other night was my first emotional response to a pose and the beginning of being intimate with my practice. It tells me I am going in the right direction in my path…..
Thanks again….Sara 🙂
RE: Camel Pose & backbends
Just this week I expressed to my yoga instructors how much I love Camel pose—it might well be my favorite. I realized that when it was incorporated into class 2 days in a row [hot Vinyasa flow] that I was the only person in one class to ‘enjoy’ the full expression, the next day I was one of only two. I too have noticed nausea and a feeling of ‘faint-ness[??] when I very first started [8 months ago] and if I have not done the pose in a while. What I noticed is that the nausea seems to actually ‘originate’ from both femoral arteries—the largest in our bodies, closest to the surface @ the bend where the top of our leg meets the hip—just under the hip bones on top [ventral side]. I intuitively feel that it has to do w/the restriction of that blood flow source while pressing back—not unlike the tourniquet effect that some poses have [ex: half pigeon].
Strangely, I have come to embrace that sensation. I have also found that if I push my hips more forward that it alleviates that sensation AND BREATHE-so I usually experience the nausea as I am entering into the pose-before I have fully settled in—thus the alleviation when I press my hips more forward and drop my my head back.
Gabrielle—any theories as to why I LOVE backbends so much??? I’ve been a competitive swimmer most of my life [but not for the last 8 years or so—I’m 51] and not ever a gymnastic type-but did practice ballet for 11 years growing up.
Just wonderin!
Thank you for the backbend email today—I loved it!
Stefani in Dallas, TexasHello Stefani!!! Nice to hear from you 🙂
Glad you liked the email! Hmmm Loving your backbends! Is it your organs singing? Your chakras rejoicing? It’s so beautiful to access parts of your body that normal everyday movements don’t reach. It’s tied in there somewhere with all that. What’s your theory?
Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂WoW!! So I’m not the only one experiencing strong emotions in Camel Pose. Although it’s taken a few months of being able to get through a whole Bikram session here in Perth, Australia.. and not just sitting on the floor trying to keep my nausea from appearing yet staying in the room, I have finally been able to participate in the class (and my life) for the entire 90 minute duration.
However….. the lead up to Camel Pose at the beginning of this past week had become significantly unbearable. Just getting onto my knees brought up a lot of anger and resentment. Almost to the point I felt like I was rebelling against myself. Like a little child having a temper tantrum, ever stalling to drink water before going into the backbend!!! I just did not want to do this pose!!! I wasn’t immediately aware of my actions or ‘reaction’ to this pose until the next session…. where I thought ‘hang on’ something’s going on here and decided to ask my Yoga Teacher who was instantly able to put me on the correct path. She explained that our emotions are stored in our heart chakra.. and me being a Reiki Master immediately understood what she meant!
So the next time I went back to class, trying not to focus on Camel Pose approaching… but when it did, I could feel the anger and resentment building again. This time, actually last night, I pushed my stubborn ego aside and went into the pose wholeheartedly giving myself permission to release the anger and replace it with love for myself! I am aware I haven’t fully worked through this and will be kind to myself. Won’t beat myself up as it’s all in due course. Realising this is going to pass, I will still continue to give myself permission to let go and hopefully I will be enjoying this pose sooner rather than later.
Thanks for sharing your experiences 🙂
NamasteThank you Jodi. What a beautiful process you have been able to witness.
Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂 -
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