Tips for practicing yoga forward bending movements

To bend your hands and grab your thumbs and toes before standing, please be careful not to exert force on your shoulders and arms, but to completely tighten your abdomen and lengthen your upper back while relaxing.

One of the most basic but problematic actions

Anyone who has learned yoga must have done forward bends. Whether it is standing and bending forward, sitting and bending forward, bending forward with one hand, bending forward with both hands, bending forward with open feet, bending forward with both feet... you can easily do more than 30 changes in various movements. Why are there so many forward bends? Because it is very basic, if you do a good job in front corners, many movements will naturally be done well. If you can't do the forward bend well, many movements are difficult to do.

Although it is so basic, there are not so many things that can be done thoroughly.

For beginners, although forward bends are often done, people with tight hind legs can't do it well no matter how hard they are. Therefore, in order to bend more like everyone else, the most common thing is to bend your back hard, or even use force to bounce back and forth, hoping that the tips of your fingers will touch the floor when you bounce back and forth, even for a while.

This practice has made our often hunched back worse. Moreover, the back muscles and spinal joints of beginners are stiff. If you snap or bend the back hard, it is very easy to cause problems, such as pulling the disc until it is heterotopic.

Therefore, for beginners, it is enough to think about three main points when doing forward bending: constantly pulling up the hind legs, straightening the back, and completely retracting the stomach. As long as you work hard to achieve these three points, you will be guaranteed to do better and make your knees and spine safer.

Challenges for Advancers

If your hands can already touch the ground, the next challenge is to completely lengthen your back and legs, and your abdomen fully adhere to your thighs, which is what people often call the "hairpin bend." We got this name because we fold our bodies completely in half, and when viewed from the side, it looks like a black hairpin. To achieve this, you must "tuck" the entire abdomen into your upper body and straighten your legs and back before you can do it.

Whether you do forward bending in a standing or sitting posture, you usually use both hands to hold your thumbs, or tuck your hands under the feet of your feet (standing posture) or to the side (sitting forward bending). In order to lengthen their backs more and keep their abdomen closer to their thighs, many people usually buckle their toes or feet very hard.

If you are an advanced friend, please pay more attention to whether your shoulders are tense when you do a forward bend. That is, when you bend forward, please pull your bent elbows as far as possible to both sides, so that the shoulder blades will be wider and the shoulders will be more relaxed.

The same applies

Don't underestimate this little "loosening" action. It can relieve the tension in our back and let us make forward bends without losing breath. And once you learn the tricks of how to loosen your shoulder blades, you can use the same technique in dog stance. That is, when we stretch our upper and lower bodies hard and put our hands on the floor hard, it becomes easier to do it.

Yoga does not mean that the more you do it, the more you will feel nervous, but the more you do it, the more you know how to relax. Relaxing shoulders and neck is the most basic and important part. In addition, when making a forward bend, not only do we loosen the shoulder blades, but we also need to lengthen and relax the back. At this time, it will be more comfortable to let gravity lengthen our back than to stretch it hard.

What good is forward turning for us? On the body, it can compress the abdominal cavity, activating the internal organs such as digestion, reproduction and excretion, effectively eliminating toxins. Stretching the back can activate the gradually stiff back. Lengthening the hind leg muscles prevents the leg muscles from gradually shortening and becoming stiff. Standing and bending forward is very helpful for improving blood circulation and activating brain cells. (But for those with high or low blood pressure, please don't stay for too long ~

On the psychological level, forward bending can bring us closer to Mother Earth, be more humble, and be more inclusive. When you are in a bad mood, you will feel very safe and release your psychological uneasiness. (Internship Editor: Wu Jinyu)