In yoga practice, you often hear the teacher’s command, extend your spine, try your best to create a sense of space in your spine, and don’t arch your back.
Sometimes, you will hear the teacher say, relax your spine and let it bend naturally…
What should you do? Before answering this question, let’s briefly understand the anatomical structure of the spine.
The spine includes: cervical spine, thoracic spine, lumbar spine, sacrum and coccyx.
And there is cartilage connection between the vertebrae of each two adjacent vertebrae, which is called intervertebral disc.
Each region of the spine has its own specific curvature and range of motion.
The thoracic spine is anterior and posterior arch, while the lumbar spine is anterior and posterior arch, and the range is also different.
Therefore, the whole spine can not only bend and extend, but also bend laterally and rotate (twist)…
During yoga forward bending, if the back is arched during forward bending, the front side of the spine will be in a squeezed state, resulting in thinning of the front side and thickening of the rear side of the intervertebral disc, losing balance.
If the pressure on one side of the spine is too high for a long time, it will lead to disc bulging, protrusion and even prolapse over time.
Therefore, in the practice of Yang Yoga, students will be asked to extend their spine and not arch their back.
One or two wrong exercises have little effect on the body, but we should also take precautions.
Students who suffer from scoliosis or thoracic and lumbar discomfort need to pay attention.
The practice must be carried out with the permission of the doctor and under the guidance of professional teachers.
They should also try to avoid postures such as forerunner, arch back and back bend.
The back should not be arched during yoga forward bending.
Because the tendons and muscles of our back are connected with our hips and hamstrings at the back of our thighs.
Whether sitting and standing forward flexion or standing forward flexion, if the muscles of our thighs, hips and back are not overstretched, the practitioner who can stretch effectively should show the natural curvature of the spine, which is the standard forward flexion posture.
However, if there is tension in our back, hips or the back of our thighs and we can’t fully extend them, we will arch our back if we just straighten our legs and move our body forward.
Why does the arch back appear “as shown in the figure below”? From an anatomical point of view, because our back muscles, rear thigh muscles and gluteus maximus will be in a state of competition with each other when flexing forward.
If your muscles are tense and your body cannot move forward completely, but you still insist on bending forward and folding reluctantly, the back muscles and the muscles behind your thighs will be pulled in different directions like two little people.
“The arrow shown in the figure below is the direction of force.” for people with weak hamstring and gluteus maximus and back muscles, when the hamstring and gluteus maximus tighten and push straight, the back muscles can only retreat and tighten in an arched way, so that the legs can push straight.
If we analyze the structure of the spine, we can find that such forced forward flexion will put too much pressure on the back muscle, and the position of the lower lumbar muscle will be curled.
While curling, it also needs to bear the weight of the human body under gravity, which is easy to lead to the symptom of “lumbar disc herniation”.
In the forward flexion, the back muscle curls.
If you observe it from the perspective of bones, you can see that the lower back, the spinal joints with deep bending, the front (abdominal area) are severely squeezed, and the rear side is open.
In standing forward bending, due to the influence of gravity and the practitioner’s forced stretching to make the body close to the lower leg and tibia, if the influence of some external force is added, the posterior spine will be excessively opened.
In the long run, the intervertebral disc will be pushed back, causing strain and injury, resulting in “intervertebral disc herniation”.
Therefore, even in forward flexion, our spine should maintain its physiological natural radian, but in fact, the natural radian of everyone’s spine is different.
Generally speaking, women’s thoracic vertebrae will be relatively flat, while the lordosis radian of the lower lumbar vertebrae will be larger.
In addition, women’s back muscles are not so thick and robust compared with men.
Therefore, when women do forward flexion, visually, their back will be straight.
But if we take an X-ray at this time, we will see that she is also maintained in an arc of natural extension of the spine; But if we look for a man, due to the difference of body shape and physique, they will show different visual effects.
Even men with strong flexibility can enter deep forward flexion.
Because men’s thoracic kyphosis arc is larger than women’s and their back muscles are thick, they will more or less show the feeling of slightly arching their back in forward flexion, but this does not mean “arching their back with chest”.
If a person stands with his back arched and his head tilted forward, we call it “with back” or “hunchback”, which also needs to be avoided in our daily standing and sitting posture.
In forward flexion, the arch of the back will transfer all the weight of the body to the spine, which we need to pay close attention to.
It should be reminded that if you find this arched back after stepping straight legs during practice, it is called “hunchback” rather than “mellow”.
In this case, bend your knees slightly, inhale and stretch your back, exhale and then bend forward, keep your abdomen close to your thighs, and keep your back extended.
Stay here for a while, so that your back can be stretched.
In this way, we can relax the stretching of the muscles behind your hips and thighs, and let your back muscles have a chance to be stretched first.
Through such practice, over time, you can make your legs straight and your back stretched at the same time.
On the contrary, if you continue to practice this forward bending posture by straightening your legs and arching your back, it will lead to: first, the practice of posture will stagnate and make no progress; The longer-term adverse effect is that if you pull forward and press forward too reluctantly, you may have the problem of intervertebral disc herniation at any time, so this is a very important safety code..
