Should we drop the head back in Camel pose?

Should we drop the head back in Camel pose?

I wanted to write this post that has been swimming in my head for a little while, based on a personal experience I had recently at a hot yoga studio. I was in a “HOT yoga” class which is really just code for “BIKRAM” (when nobody wants to be associated with “BIKRAM” anymore. Anyway, I digress).

One of the Bikram teaching cues for entering Ustrasana or Camel Pose is to drop the head back first and if you’ve ever been to a Bikram class you might notice that the Bikram teaching script remains almost identical class to class.

I was practicing in the very back of the room and when the cue for Camel pose came up I chose, as I usually aim to, enter the pose in the way that I know is the most optimally beneficial for my body – which in my case is to lift UP with the heart/sternum and expand and lead the movement with the thoracic spine first, letting the head lengthen back if/when it is ready, whilst letting the tail bone drop down and creating stability through the pelvis, thighs and knees.

The instructor, who is really great, then began telling me from the other side of the room that I needed to drop the head back first, head back first. Eventually the instructor came over to me to ask why I wasn’t dropping my head back first and I told her that it’s my personal preference to lift from the thoracic spine first. She mentioned, in a very nice way that the practice of yoga is 5000 years old and  (although she also sometimes prefers entering into the pose without dropping the head back first) that this way of doing it was wrong.

100% I agree with the practice of yoga being ancient and sacred, but also I’m almost 98% certain that the average yogi of yesteryear didn’t spend 70% of his waking hours in chronic flexion hunched over his laptop.

Class finished and at the end of the practice I went up to the teacher and thanked her for helping me with the Camel Pose entry.

I also then explained some of my reasoning for not dropping the head back first and why it suits my body to enter into it another way, which I want to explore in the rest of this blog post.

I use the word “explore” very intentionally, because as my understanding of the yoga practice grows and evolves I’ve come to personally understand that there are no “right” and “wrong” ways of doing things – there are only more optimal and less optimal patterns of movement depending on your purpose and what you are trying to functionally and energetically achieve within an asana. (I mean, honestly, I think teaching yoga would be a WHOLE lot simpler if there were just right and wrong ways of doing things.) So before I get into my current viewpoint on this, I would love to invite some constructive thoughts, ideas, feelings and experiences in the comments below or on instagram or facebook from anyone who is interested in this conversation as I would love to see what I can learn from some different opinions and voices within the yoga-world!

MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND VIEWPOINT

My personal body type is one that is on the more mobile scale, so every yoga practice I go to, I have to work really hard to NOT let myself sink into places where I know my body has a whole lot of range – for me a common area for this to happen is within the lumbar spine/lower back. Even when I am standing upright I have a very deep natural/genetic lordosis or curve to my lower back – which is an area, like many women have, that can easily be overexploited in the yoga practice. For me, when I come into camel pose and drop my head back first, my lumbar spine compresses way more easily than keeping the neck long to start. I find that the sheer weight of the head hanging back makes it quite difficult to find thoracic extension after the fact – and for me the purpose and function of this pose is to create a chest/thoracic spine/heart opening sensation – which I lose slightly if I drop the head back first.

In fact, I feel I lose a lot of the control and strength within the pose in general when I drop the head back first. I also find with the weight suddenly going down and back with the extra bowling-ball head mass + gravitational force that it is more challenging for me to keep the pelvis pressing forward and stable. Again, this is my personal practice, my personal body and my personal experience.

Below are two different entries to Camel pose – 

A: is dropping the head back first

B: is dropping the head back after lifting and lengthening the thoracic spine up and back first.

Bearing in mind, that I have a naturally very deep lumbar/lower back curve in my spine (which reflects in both images), have a look at the thoracic spine lift that happens in B compared to A.

Another thing to bear in mind with this:

“Dropping the head back” is still a cue that I don’t believe is all that optimal and really, to me, in both these images it looks like my head is “hanging” off the shoulders, although slightly more so in A than in B. When you lead with the thoracic spine lifting up and over and keep the back of the neck long as you do this, there is more muscular engagement in the front line of the neck that is required to keep the head up in this position, so it makes sense then that even with dropping the head back after the thoracic spine lift, that there is slightly less “hanging” in this way of entering into the posture.

A little while ago, Jason Crandell, a yoga teacher whose teachings I respect, had a very interesting podcast on the direct correlation between the cervical and the lumbar spine – which makes TOTAL complete sense to me. (I tried to find the exact episode he mentions it, but couldn’t find it – but his podcast is here if you are interested).

The basic premise is that (and paraphrasing) ‘whatever is going on at the cervical spine, is likely going on in the lumbar spine’ – and this makes complete sense to me because of the S shape curve of the spine: The cervical and lumbar spine both have (lordotic) curves, or curves in the same direction, which is opposite in direction to the (kyphotic) curve of the thoracic spine (rounding forward).

SO – BECAUSE of the S shape curve of the spine, if the head drops back, the chest/ thoracic spine must move forward/up. (Try this right now and test it for yourself! Drop your head all the way back (if there is no pain or pinching and it feels safe to do so) and notice how the thoracic spine/chest automatically lifts up and forward).

So – if dropping the head back causes the thoracic spine to lift forward/up then isn’t that exactly what we are trying to achieve in Camel pose?

Yes, the lift up of the thoracic spine is what we are after – BUT trying to access the lift by simply moving the most mobile part of the spine (the cervical/neck area- which has roughly 75 degrees of extension) creates really just a compensation of movement in the thoracic spine – which only has an extension range of about 25 degrees.

Many of us, from sitting rounded over our desks/phones/computers – don’t have this range of movement extension at all in the thoracic spine – so the mobility is then just “borrowed” from the next available, more mobile place – which, happens to be the lumbar spine (with it’s average of 35 degrees extension) and we end up with compression in the lower back. (Particularly, if – like me, you have a way more mobile lower spine than thoracic spine).

The three photos above show for me, that direct correlation between the cervical and lumbar spine.
A: is “dropping the head back” first on entry.
B: is lifting from the thoracic spine up and over first and then lengthening the head back
C: is exactly the same as B, but just dropping the head back at the end.

For me, B shows the most equanimous curve to the spine – (and I would even argue that my chin could be a little bit closer to the sternum!) – if you look closely at B and C – you will notice how much more lumbar compression is going on in C, and the ONLY thing that is different between B and C is “the head dropping back” (ie: I didn’t change a thing from B to C except drop my head back and notice the effect this has on the lower spine) – so interesting to see the connection between cervical and lumbar spine in this way!

For me how it FEELS in my body with the thoracic spine lifting first is that I am able to enter into it much more breath led – so that the breath creates structural support in the thoracic spine to keep the lift. When I drop the head back it is more challenging for me to get a fuller inhale which then collapses the chest and I feel that I have either a) lost the grounding sensation in the legs or b) gone deeper than was originally intended – (based on MY body type). I think one of the most problematic things about dropping the head back first is that it can, with that little extra nugget of gravity, pull the body into a position that is deeper than you originally intended to go.

Of course, if you are moving on to things like standing drop backs – then obviously you will need to lengthen the head back at some point so that you can see where you are going – BUT I think it is still important to get the LIFT up and create as much space in the thoracic spine FIRST.

I would LOVE some yoga teachers to weigh in on this! If there are any Bikram teachers out there reading this, I would love to hear your view points and why you choose to teach this first – perhaps there is something functional or biomechanical that I can learn from you that I didn’t know. Or maybe it is just a case of an unchallenged script?! I’m not sure.

Speaking of unchallenged scripts – Jules Mitchell has a really fascinating biomechanics and yoga course which I’ve done where she completely challenges the entire yoga teaching script based on load and forces and general biomechanics within the body. I actually asked her recently via instagram about where to find credible yoga/medical sources  on the internet and she pointed me to google scholar (did not even know such a thing existed but its GREAT!!) where I found a few really interesting articles and studies on yoga injuries  particularly relating to this idea of dropping the head back first or not – this is an exert from one of them:

In backbending, vertebral compression and nerve impingement occurs when a Yoga student is too aggressive, thrusting the head and neck back in bhujangasana (cobra pose), urdhva mukha svanasana (upward-facing dog pose), or ustrasana (camel pose). This is particularly true in poses such as ustrasana in which gravity will play a part in taking the head back. The key instruction (and awareness) that will protect the neck is to arch the head back only after achieving the maximum possible arch in the thoracic spine. It is also helpful to maintain some muscular tone in the front of the neck. With these protective actions, the arching movement Table 5 is spread evenly through the vertebral column.

I think it will always be challenging when things don’t fit into the neat little packages (ha!) that we want them to!

I remember going to a workshop on the lower back from an Osteopath about 2 years ago and I remember coming away from that workshop feeling VERY angry! Mainly because he round-house slammed just about everything that I, up to that point, had thought of as “right” and “wrong” and “yoga” and “not-yoga” and it’s only really been through growing and developing my own understanding of what it means, for me, to be a teacher that I’ve come to see things in a different way.

If you practice yoga, or Bikram or teach or have an experience with how this feels in your body – I would LOVE to hear your thoughts, insights, teachings, wisdoms! How does it feel for you? How do you teach this? How do you practice this? Please leave a comment below!

As I said, this is what works best for me and what I believe, and know from my current understanding to be the most optimal way of finding thoracic spine * e x t e n s i o n * in Ustrasana/ Camel (and most back bending practices) but I am very open to new viewpoints/perspectives if there is some evidence/experience/wisdom to support it! Please share! 🙂

Yours in heart opening!

Ché

xx

 

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