Yoga for Spine or Backbone

“You are only as young and healthy as your spine is strong and supple”

Spine or backbone is considered as the central support system that provides structural support and balance to maintain the upright posture and plays a very important role in our day-to-day activities like sitting, standing, walking, twisting, and bending. Spine connects different parts of our musculoskeletal system that controls all the voluntary muscle movements which could be as extreme as jumping or as subtle as pushing a button.

Spine is segmented into five main parts: Cervical (Neck), Thoracic (middle back), Lumbar (lower back), Sacrum (bone that connects the hips) and Coccyx (tailbone). So, It is very essential to stretch, warm up and move all the parts of the spine every day to keep it healthy and young. Especially these days, with the sedentary lifestyle, stiffness and compression in the back is very common. Ageing and incorrect postures are also some of the other reasons for back pain and injuries.

In Yoga, there are many postures that work on spinal movements like flexion, extension, latteral streches and twisting. For example, cat posture helps in flexion of spine focusing on strengthening of the abdominal and front body muscles and cow posture helps in extending the spine focusing on strengthening the upper back muscles. There are other postures like shalabasana and viparita shalabasana which helps in strengthening the upper back, Marichyasana C helps in providing a great twist to the spine and upper body, Trikonasana and Parshvakonasana that helps in providing a great latteral strech to the spine.

This Yoga sequence is a great combination of all the spinal movements which can be regularly practised by beginners to build strength and flexibility of the muscles around the spine. This sequence can also be practiced as a warmup by the advanced practioners which will prepare their body for some intense practice which may involve some deep back bend or forward bend asanas.