April is Script Frenzy month, brought to you by the creators of NaNoWriMo. Script Frenzy (called “Screnzy” for short) is an international writing event in which participants take on the challenge of writing 100 pages of scripted material in the month of April.
Just like with NaNoWriMo, there are some Rebels who want to write during the month and have the supportive and wacky community that goes along with these kinds of events. During April, Anna and I will be Screnzy Rebels. We’ll each be taking on the challenge of finishing our damn NaNoWriMo novels. Although each of us “won” NaNo, meaning we wrote over 50,000 words during the month of November, neither of us actually has a totally, completely finished story. I’m terrible at estimating things (such as distances or what size container I need to fit the leftover soup), but at my best guess, I’ve got about 15,000 words to go. I can totally accomplish that in a month! Hell, I could accomplish that in a week if I really put my mind to it, but I just haven’t been able to sit down and work on my novel.
I think my characters may have forgotten who I am.
So, pull up a chair, do some outlining, and decide to write with us. Maybe you’ll write a script. Maybe you’re a Rebel! Perhaps you’ve got a NaNoNovel to finish, or you’re working on another cool project, or you want to write a short story a week during April.
Make a commitment to writing with us in April. It’s going to be awesome.
It’s the last week of the challenge, and I’ve been slacking off. There’s still time for me to catch up this week and make my goal, and I’m going to try my hardest to do that.
Tonight before bed, I went back to the chair yoga we’ve grown to love. I’m thinking about how I might be able to use these exercises on a long train trip that might happen in the near future.
Since my partner was already soundly asleep next to me, I didn’t have the wide space that the dude in the demonstration does, but one of these days, I’ll go through these all sitting in a regular chair with plenty of space like he does. For tonight, I did them in bed, sitting cross-legged.
Just wanted to share a quick and exciting update with everyone… for the first time since (I think) the fall, I made it back to a yoga class Friday morning!
I’m feeling a bit sore already (both fibro and RA/hypermobility wise) and will probably skip my Saturday practice, especially since I have a really busy day planned, but I bought an eight class card and I’m looking forward to making this a habit again. I’m a little nervous about what tomorrow will feel like, since the class was over an hour long and had a different instructor than I’d had in the past, who also worked at a faster pace than the instructor I was used to.
I learned one or two fun things that I’ll try to share in a day or two after I’ve rested a bit!
I got these awesome little guys in the mail today from Anna! She said that she thought they’d be at home with me during our yoga challenge, and that the one (can you guess which?) was pushing it a bit being a little extra bendy… and the other one was just relaxing. I love them!
In the interest of full disclosure, I barely squeaked by with meeting my lower spectrum goal for yoga last week. (I’m pretty sure I came in right around 30 or 35 minutes, which was the lowest goal I set, five minutes a day.) I had a really hard time recovering fibro-wise from the camping trip I went on, and my week basically consisted of mustering up the energy to click the “next episode” button on the Netflix window. All of the yoga I did was in bed or (briefly) standing next to my bed – I never felt like I had it in me to take out my mat. Some of it was, as I predicted at the beginning of the challenge, just doing some deep yoga breathing. But I’m looking at it this way… if we weren’t doing this challenge, would I have done any yoga at all? Hell no! So, that in itself is an accomplishment.
I’m starting to feel a bit better, though, and tonight I did about 20 minutes of yoga. I also updated my yoga work sheet, and though I haven’t done yoga every day, I’ve only missed four days, which means I’ve done yoga 75% of the time.
How about you guys? Is anyone out there? We started out with a lot of folks, and it’s been kind of quiet. Did anyone else have trouble last week like I did?
My apologies to Tori and the rest of you for my tardy posting of this! Here’s part two of Tori’s Backbending extravaganza. And if you thought I was exaggerating about it being an extravaganza, I’m not – Tori is actually continuing the Backbending series on her blog, Anytime Yoga. So, Part 1 was here, you’re currently reading Part 2, and here’s Part 3 over on Tori’s blog.
Let me preface this second installment with a revisit to my SAFETY NOTE AND DISCLAIMER: I am not a certified yoga teacher, and none of this is professional advice. That said, in my student-centered opinion, it’s all kinds of important to take care of your neck and low back — places subject to “crunching” and compression — when attempting backbends. A good rule of thumb is to lead the movement from your heart center and to picture lengthening your spine rather than curving it so much. That said, please use your body’s wisdom and your best judgment when feeling out any of these asanas for yourself.
Today, we’re going to look at some prone backbends. I’m going to go through them in the order of what’s most gentle to most intense for me. There’s a solid chance that this will have a lot of overlap with what your body feels. However, it may well not be a perfect correlation. Either way, you should feel free to find the bend that works best for you on any given day. There is no magic yoga rule that says deeper backbends are inherently better.
There are, however, some guidelines that are generally applicable to all of these prone backbends:
Support** yourself from your base. Depending on the pose, this may mean pressing your pubic bone, thighs, and/or feet into the floor.
Support** your lower and mid back by using your abs. Think of drawing your navel into your spine, not for any sense of aesthetics, but to keep your body safe in the pose.
Lead with your heart. (Yep, I said it again.)
Keep your arms safe. In a lot of these poses, the arms are supporting some or a lot of the upper body weight. Find an arm position that doesn’t place undue stress on your wrists, elbows, or shoulders.
** The amount of support and muscular engagement you need will vary from person to person and from pose to pose. I find that there’s a pretty close correlation between this and the amount of work you’re asking your back to do, but I also find that “amount of work” is different for everyone.
The first asana we’re going to look at is crocodile:
Crocodile is a supported backbend. Placing the forehead on the forearms is one option, but you can also use a block, bolster, or pillow — anything that lets your neck rest at a comfortable angle. Because the backbend is subtler here, you may want to play with leg placement. Often, bringing the legs closer together will bring the bend more toward the upper back while bringing the legs further apart will increase the bend in the lower back — something that’s safer to explore here (assuming no complicating low back factors) because of the restorative character of the pose. Also because this is a supported asana, it’s a good one to try holding for longer periods of time, which is useful when you want a pose that’s grounding or calming.
Related to crocodile is sphinx:
It might help to think of sphinx as a more activated, more “lifted” crocodile.
The tops of the feet here are pressing into the floor, which is activating the whole leg and providing a base of support. Lengthening the tailbone toward the feet simultaneously presses the pubic bone into the floor, which is the second step in that supportive base. The third step is drawing in through the abdominals — not “sucking in” for aesthetics, but calling on and really using the muscle to support the back.
The other base of support here is the arms. The shoulders should be in a relaxed position, with the elbows directly under or maybe slightly in front of the shoulders. (Bringing the elbows forward a little will decrease the arc of the backbend. Bringing the elbows directly under the shoulders will increase the arc. Do what feels right for your body.) The forearms can either be parallel with the palms flat on the floor, or you can grasp opposite elbows as in crocodile. Regardless, what you’re looking for is an overall arm position that allows the neck to be relaxed and the shoulder blades to slide down the back.
From those bases, the “action” of the backbend can happen. Leading with the heart, on an inhale, the whole ribcage lifts up and forward off of the low spine. On the exhales, the shoulder blades slide down and toward one another on the back, drawing the chest open. This may happen visibly in the shape you create, or it may happen more subtly in the breath body. What I mean is, you may not see or feel yourself moving in a really noticeable way. However, you should be aware of — and it sometimes helps to visualize this — an intent to breathe your body in those directions. It is really doing something, I promise. ;)
Sphinx is a good pose to practice to get used to how the body moves in prone backbends. It’s also a good way to build up the abdominal and lower body musculature (and upper body too — backbends require a lot of different muscles!) if the intent is to later move into more vigorous backbending postures.
PS, y’all — This is, I think, where I leave you for the week. I am planning at least one more post on prone backbends, to go up soon at Anytime Yoga. This is actually not a shameless plug. I’d meant to write it here, but it turns out I talk about backbends too darn much!
Here’s another post from Tori from Anytime Yoga. This week we get an intro to backbends – here’s part one, “Why Backbend?”
Not just because it looks cool, though admittedly, some backbends look pretty darn fabulous.
But I know that for me, it sometimes feels like everything in my day is designed to collapse my heart center. I bend forward over my car steering wheel, over students’ desks, over the stove, over the sink, over my computer. Sitting on pretty much any common piece of furniture (car seat, classroom chair, home sofa — even my home desk stool designed to help posture) plunks me on my tailbone instead of my sitting bones, rounding my spine away from my natural curve. And of course any time I’m anxious, angry, in a hurry, or otherwise stressed, my shoulders creep up and forward, up and forward, up and forward. I even sleep on my side with my shoulders curling in toward one another.
And all that stuff? Accounts for a lot of my day (and night). As a result, the muscles across my upper and mid back have a tendency to be overstretched and lacking in strength. Similarly, the muscles across the front of my chest have a tendency to be tight and constricted, lacking in elasticity. And I don’t think I’m atypical in this.
From a purely musculoskeletal perspective, without even getting into other benefits they have, backbends offer a counter pose to the forward-bending and forward-leaning positions that many of us are in for a good chunk of our days.
SAFETY NOTE: I am not a certified yoga teacher, and this post is not professional advice. That said, my totally non-professional opinion is that you please take care of your neck and low back if and when you attempt any backbending. A guide I’ve found useful is to imagine leading the backbend from the heart center and to work to lengthen the spine, creating space. I recommend — again, totally non-professionally — avoiding overarching the neck and low back, which actually tends to compress vertebrae into one another. It may mean that you don’t create quite as bendy a shape, but in my experience, I’ve found the relative lack of pain and injury to be 110% worth it. :)
We’re going to look at a few different seated backbends in this post and a few prone backbends in the next, all of which are suitable counter poses to the forward bends from last week. A few general safety tips:
Support your backbend from your base. Generally speaking, this is going to mean engaging the muscles of some part of the body below the back, like the pelvis, thighs, or feet. How much support you’ll need will depend on how intense the individual backbend is for you.
Where applicable, find a comfortable position for your shoulders, elbows, and wrists, making sure those joints aren’t forced out of their natural alignment.
This is important enough to bear repeating: Don’t “dump” into your neck or low back. Rather, envision lengthening your spine and leading the arc with your heart.
The first series we’re going to look at are some seated backbends:
While I do <3 the variety and detail in this video, it's probably worth noting that these backbends can be modified to include other seated positions. Sitting kneeling or in a cross legged position may well weight your lower body enough to support your spine through these bends. The only lower body support you may need is a consciousness that your lower body isn't lifting off the chair, bed, or floor — which, admittedly, is a more or less intense effort depending on the individual.
In terms of arm positions, generally speaking, bringing your arms in front of you or out toward the sides will result in a gentler, subtler backbend. Bringing the arms behind you — particularly bringing the hands close in by your bum — opens the fonts of the shoulders a lot and tends to create a backbend that’s more pronounced and “stretchier” in front. Especially if you’re newer to backbends, it’s a good idea to start out gently and move slowly until you find your edge; that way you don’t accidentally race past it. ;)
Gentle backbending still moves the body out of the “heart closed” position, so it’s still giving a lot of benefit. Although it can be tempting to think that if you’re not doing the biggest bendiest backbend, then you’re not bending enough — that really isn’t true. Simply moving your body into a new shape (or a shape where it doesn’t spend a lot of time) is perfectly awesome.
And although it may not be practical to incorporate every arm position — even if you can do every arm position — in every situation (e.g., in office chairs, riding the bus), in general, chair-based backbends are versatile asanas for a lot of people. For example, when I’m sitting for long periods of time, I like to try to do some kind of backbend — whether or not it’s my most vigorous backbend — every 15 to 30 minutes. Obviously, your mileage may vary on the time between backbends, but it’s something to play with and work out for yourself.
Here’s another short sequence of chair yoga for those of you who found those last ones helpful. Again, these are great if you’re a wheelchair user, or you work at a desk all day and need a short break, or if you spend a lot of time in bed from chronic illness or disability.
Cat from Measuring Spoons
moxiedoesit
