The Three Bs of Backbends: Benefits, Balance, and How to Begin (or Advance) Your Practice Safely
The cliché “don’t bend over backwards,” serves as a key reminder to not overextend ourselves, however, backbends are important to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Backbends have a variety of key health benefits. It is also essential to understand what to balance while back-bending to prevent short and long-term back injuries, and how to practice backbends safely.
Benefits of Backbends
Whether you are a brand-new baby yogi (regardless of age… big believer in that you can grow old if you’re still growing up 😉), a 30-year veteran of a diligent yoga practice, or somewhere in between, it is important for everyone to understand the immeasurable benefits of back-bending regularly in a yoga practice. I say immeasurable because while you could quantify these benefits below but there is no way to quantify the quality of your life… back-bending can help you remain active, enjoy more time with your friends and family, and help you live independently for longer into older age:
Backbends are essential in maintaining healthy spine mobility. Backbends help to counteract the forward slump of “tech neck” and “slouchasana,” both of which are caused from prolonged periods of sitting and hovering over a computer, tablet, or phone. Back-bending is spinal extension, whereas rounding through the spine is spinal flexion. A healthy spine needs both movements to safely and efficiently complete everyday tasks. Too much forward rounding, also referred to as kyphosis, can lead to intervertebral discs prolapsing and/or herniating. Kyphosis can also lead to a reduced sense of balance and coordination, which could increase the risk of falling in older age.
Backbends improve balance and coordination. Due to the strength building in the back body and within the spine, back bends also improve balance and coordination of day-to-day tasks. This helps to reduce the risk of falling, which is a related health concern to aging adults.
Backbends can prevent bone mass loss and can promote bone growth… even into your golden years! Bones are living tissue. By adding mechanical load through engaging surrounding back and leg muscles and increasing range of motion (ROM), backbends can stimulate bone formation or potentially slow bone density loss, especially for women.[1]One study showed that a 12-minute daily yoga regiment could reverse osteoporotic bone loss![2] This is key in preventing osteoporosis, which is one of the most dangerous diseases of aging due to the risk of bone fractures, including within the spine.
Backbends can help to strengthen other parts of the body. Back-bending, when done correctly, strengthens the back side of the body. While muscle engagement can vary slightly depending on type of backbend, generally speaking, you are strengthening your hamstrings, glutes, and upper back muscles. This also helps to support improved balance and coordination.
Backbends help to stretch and open the front body, improving the ability to breathe fully, improve heart health and circulation, and promote digestive health. Backbends open the chest, shoulders, and hip flexors, which all can become tight from extensive sitting. Backbends, along with a regular yoga practice, can reduce cortisol, the “stress” hormone,” and help to lower blood pressure.[3] Further, backbends promote deeper breathing into the diaphragm— a ballon-like muscle at the base of our lungs. Deeper breathing means more oxygenation of the blood, which helps to promote circulation. When the diaphragm is able to expand and contract more fully, it also gently applies pressure to a gastrointestinal organs, thereby promoting regularity… and I’ll leave that at that ;-)
All backbends are heart and throat openers, so there’s a bonus benefit in that backbends can help to open the hearth and throat chakras. From an energetic yoga perspective, some practitioners also associate backbends and chest-opening practices with the heart and throat chakras—areas connected symbolically with communication, connection, vulnerability, and self-expression. While these concepts arise from traditional energetic frameworks rather than biomedical models, many practitioners report emotional and psychological shifts alongside the physical benefits of these practices. Symptoms can start to appear in two ways when the heart and/or throat chakra is blocked, as shown below:
Blocked Chakra : Heart
Physical Symptoms: Chest tightness, breathing issues, reduced circulation, chronic fatigue
Emotional Symptoms: Loneliness, Depression, Lack of empathy, Fear of commitment or abandonment, Overly judgmental or guarding
Blocked Chakra: Throat
Physical Symptoms: TMJ, neck pain, hoarseness and/or voice loss, mouth ulcers, thyroid dysfunction
Emotional Symptoms: Communication breakdowns; Inability to express emotions, thoughts, or needs; reduced sense of creativity; Fear of judgement
Backbends, in addition to side body bends (a blog post for a different day 😉) can help to realign these chakras into balance by stretching to open the front of throat, neck, chest, and shoulders. When these chakras are aligned, not only can you get alleviation from physical symptoms, but you can get alleviation from the emotional imbalances that blocked chakras can create too, thereby increasing your overall sense of wellbeing both inside and out!
What to Balance in Backbends
There are two main concerns to balance of if you are new to back-bending or looking to advance your back-bending practice and the first key point is to the stereotypical image many of us carry in our minds when we think of backbends—backbends are not about how far backwards you can bend, or if you can touch your toes behind your head.
It’s Not About the ‘Gram, Fam
In researching for this article, I did not come across one yoga article that showcased a beginner-type backbend. That is a problem. Western yoga culture highlights contorted, usually very thin, usually white, usually female, influencers doing a style of backbend that is not accessible for the vast majority of yogis… including myself— and I’ve been a student of yoga for 22 years and counting!
Image aside, showcasing only these very advanced (and sometimes still harmful, which I will get to in a minute) can lead to newer students not doing proper warm up before attempting such poses, leading to short and long-term injury. Or, what is perhaps worse, is that a student is completely disempowered from trying to backbend because they know they cannot get into that shape in a safe manner.
Back-bending is about safe, stable, and empowered extension of the spine while also depressing (moving downward) and retracting (moving inward) your scapulas (shoulder blades) to your spine to stretch the front body.
Baby cobra (ardha bhajangasana) is an excellent backbend, and is used in virtually every yoga sequence with progressive cueing to not only warm up the spine for other backbends later in class, such as locust (salabhasana) pose, but can also support increased ROM of that posture alone as the back warms up throughout the practice.
Protect Your Low Back, Not the Pose
Not engaging leg muscles or glutes enough, weak core engagement (yes, there is a little bit of core work in back bends!), hip misalignment, tight muscles (from not warming up properly and/or tightness overall) can all lead to excessive lumbar compression. In the short term, this can cause strains, pinch nerves, or aggravate intervertebral disc issues. Long-term— improper backbends can lead to lumbar spinal stenosis, a form of osteoarthritis. Symptoms include back pain, a burning sensation through the butt and down the sciatic nerve, loss of feeling in legs and feet, and loss of other functional abilities such as sexual abilities and bowel movements. Not very beneficial to maintaining a high quality of life into older age, eh? Just because you might be able flexible enough to get into the pose does not mean you have the mobility (strength-support-control in conjunction with flexibility) to do so!
Back-bending is less about “how far” you can bend and more about creating spacious, supported spinal extension distributed throughout the body. Rather than collapsing into the areas where the spinal curves meet, healthy back-bending emphasizes length, breath and core support, and balanced shoulder mechanics.
The thoracic spine (upper and mid back) is naturally more stable because of its connection to the rib cage and is often held in prolonged flexion from sitting, driving, typing, and phone use. Because of this, nearly everyone benefits from improving thoracic extension mobility. The lumbar spine and cervical spine, on the other hand, are already relatively mobile and often benefit more from balanced stability and support.*
The goal is not to create sharper angles in the spine, but to create more a more evenly distributed arch throughout the body.
How to Begin or Advance Your Backbend Practice Safely
Backbends have a wide array of health benefits for physical and emotional well-being. They are key to living an active, independent life into older age. You can also improve your ROM with back-bending overtime, regardless of age! Here are three key points I leave you with if you’d like to explore back-bending in more detail:
Go to a yoga class with an experienced, certified yoga instructor. Yoga teachers are trained to help students safely engage in proper back-bending and can help you start your back-bending journey, or help you advance it.
Props are your friends! Props are designed to support and empower your yoga practice so you can more safely engage and empower yourself in different yoga postures, such as backbends.
The advance yoga practice is one of loving awareness—honor your body, honor your mind. Forcing range of motion often reduces awareness, breath quality, and muscular support — all of which are essential for a sustainable yoga practice. Our bodies change every day, and it is a privilege, not a right, to age. The choice is yours in how gracefully you choose to do so.
I truly enjoy helping people understand how to use their bodies and their minds to move through this crazy world we live in to achieve their dreams, and contribute to the higher good. If you have questions or would like to learn more about me, please visit www.brown-eyedyogi.com or find me on Instagram at @browneyedyogi006.
[1] Sinaki, M., Wollan, P. C., Scott, R. W., & Gelczer, R. K. (1996). Can strong back extensors prevent vertebral fractures in women with osteoporosis?. Mayo Clinic proceedings, 71(10), 951–956. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0025-6196(11)63768-3
[2] Lu, Y. H., Rosner, B., Chang, G., & Fishman, L. M. (2016). Twelve-Minute Daily Yoga Regimen Reverses Osteoporotic Bone Loss. Topics in geriatric rehabilitation, 32(2), 81–87. https://doi.org/10.1097/TGR.0000000000000085
[3] Mayor, S. (2014). Yoga reduces cardiovascular risk as much as walking or cycling, study shows. BMJ. 349: g7713 doi:10.1136/bmj.g7713
*Some of the movement education and biomechanical perspectives in this article were informed by SAYF (Sustainable Asana Yoga Foundation) training and continuing education. Learn more at www.sayfyoga.com
