For the Back

Tuesday’s Yoga (7/27/10)

I’d been eyeing yogadownload’s Yoga for Back Pain for a while now because I, dear readers, have near-chronic back pain.  One of the reasons why I am so devoted to yoga is that it helps with my tight back and hips, therefore keeping me mobile.  I love how relaxed I feel after yoga, like I’ve been physically and mentally unrolled and massaged.  It’s wonderful.

The Yoga for Back Pain class is listed as a gentle beginner class, and I think that’s a good description, EXCEPT that there’s a bunch of ab work thrown into the mix!  I wasn’t expecting that!  It was kinda fun to get some bonus ab exercise, and the logic behind this makes sense: a healthy back requires strong abdominal muscles so that the back muscles aren’t constantly compensating for weak abs.  But I confess that when the instructor told me to do bicycle twists for a full minute, I had to stop and take a break.  Those twists are very challenging after a dozen or two!

The yoga back work was quite nice.  I don’t think any of the moves were new to me; I’d done them all in other classes, so it was easy to follow this audio-only class.  There were lots of forward folds, including one of my favorite moves, the gorilla move where you are bent forward and then you tuck your hands literally under your feet and bend your elbows, giving you a gorilla-like posture.  There’s something about the way the back rounds during that pose—it just feels great to me.

For future reference, I think Yoga for Back Pain isn’t quite as relaxing as the Hatha Yoga classes, but it’s nice to have another gentle yoga option.