Teaching Camel Pose to General Students

Teaching Camel Pose requires understanding about lower back compression. Most Yoga Teachers are trying to get their students to attain the deepest version of the pose only.  Depth of the pose is a good thing for the spine in general this is true, but unless we bring awareness to the potential compression of the lower back we are missing something.  By internally activating the front of the body with psoas and iliacus engaging, the lower back compression is mitigated and the student can attain deep backbends without risk of causing pain.

“Hi Fred just wanted to share this with you 🙂 yesterday I was doing my daily practice and it was time for dolphin and I just lifted my legs up so easily it was so easy that I got surprised and wondered hey what’s happening here .,,and I was so happy and thought of you of course !”

Many people with permanent lower back pain believe that back bending poses are a problem.  Because they have experienced pain when doing poses like cobra and camel, they associate those postures with causing pain.  This is not accurate however and the fact is that back bending postures like camel are totally fine for people with permanent back pain… as long as the pose is being done very correctly.

The irony is that what is really a threat to people with major back pain are forward bending postures, which can cause a major aggravation of the situation.  This can make back pain worse very fast.