Yoga Lab April 16: starting at the bottom and opening in the front

I love backbends.  And there are a lot of them to love.  Extending the spine from standing, from seated, from asymmetrical lunges, from the hands and from inversions...bring it, I say. Well we've gotta start somewhere.  The next yoga lab is a back bending class, and I believe we'll start toward the bottom. 

The term front opener is used in the write up for good reason (and credit for that term should be given to Alice Joanou).  The spine is pretty far back in your torso, right?  I mean, it's not right against the skin.  That's the spinous process you're feeling back there:

To be clear, this is a side view with the back side of the body to the left, front to the right.  And what you can see then is that a back bend is going to both open up the front of the vertabrae, but also require all that stuff that's in front of the spine to open up too.

Oh, but it's not that simple, right?  If it were we'd just lay back over a bolster, the couch, a friend standing in a forward bend and just open up.  Hm, perhaps we'll do the latter as a partner pose.  It's quite nice.  But a lot of the practice is active and the spine needs support, grounding.  So what we'll work on is opening, energizing and bringing awareness to the lower support structure through the pelvis, hips and legs, and doing the same with the core.

And just to carry over the ideas presented in the first two yoga labs: At the first class (yoga for athletes) I talked a lot about using asana practice to strengthen that which is weak (or, perhaps underutilized by your particular athleticism, be that your amateur archery on roller skates league or professional dog walking), and doing a lot of work with the "overworked" muscles to get them to open up.  For front opening: work the legs, hips, core > get at the lower back.  Then, what was talked a lot about in the arm balance class: draw energy to the midline and support the pose with awareness and strength in the core (particularly by utilizing Uddiyana Bandha) is *huge* when it comes to creating the support structure for back bends.  It's very noticeable in simpler back bends but is absolutely crucial when more weight of the body is supported over the lower back.
If  you click on that, pretend my forehead isn't wrinkled.

The next yoga lab will move things up the spine.  We'll do forearm balance and a lot of shoulder stuff that will hopefully make clear the pathway toward how the shoulders are utilized in bound back bends (meaning hand and foot are connected) like the 4 pigeons, Natarajasana....