Half Moon Back Bend: Try to touch the wall behind you

AI can do weird and wonderful things to our photos.

But until it can do our backbends for us, we have to do the hard work ourselves.

Not just the hard work, but the smart work.

Be Smart and Make a Long Lever

Do you remember learning about levers? Fulcrums, loads, efforts and all that? 

Put it another way, does this diagram cause you to break out in a cold sweat?

Don't panic. We're not about to revisit high school science class. We just want you to remember this important principle:

The longer the lever the greater the force

In the Half Moon back bend, the lever is your spine, shoulders, arms. And the force is... you guessed it, gravity.

So the longer you make your spine, shoulders, arms, the more gravity pulls you into a back bend.

And what's another way of saying make your spine, shoulders, arms long in this posture? Have an early mark if you said try to touch the wall behind you, as in:

Arms back immediately

Try to touch the wall behind you

Bikram Yoga Teacher's Dialogue

Is that all?

Of course not. There are all sorts of other things going on when you try to touch the wall behind you.

You're building on what you started in the Standing Deep Breathing exercise, stretching and strengthening more than a dozen shoulder muscles, opening the chest, ribcage and lungs even more.

It's also an exercise in loving yourself 💖 and letting go of fear. But we'll save that essay for another day.