What Doing 100 Backbends a Day Does for My Body, Mind & Spirit

Musings of a 46-year-old yogi

Backbends are one of the best ways I know to touch into body, breath, emotions, and spirit. They are also my number 1 medicine when it comes to feeling integrated, regulated, present, and at home in my own skin and my own mind.

Over the course of a day, every day, I do at least 100.

Not all are big, dramatic shapes like that pictured above. Many are small, subtle, simple. Some are static…others in motion. All require balancing strength and flexibility in order to stay safe.

In myriad forms and flavours, they make me feel good. They also make me feel normal.

On rare occasion, when I’m not working remotely and have less freedom to break into backbends on a whim, I’m a more anxious, smaller, disconnected version of myself. Add too much noise, too many people, and too much small talk, and body-mind-spirit dis-ease edges towards panic.

This month, I’ve been participating in a 30-day backbend challenge with the Jedi Fight Club. A long time ago, in a Galaxy far, far away, I practiced with head Jedi Esak Garcia in person as well. His teachings and practice are stellar — and I’m not just talking physical postures.

The challenge involves doing “wall walks,” backbends where you use a wall as a prop, guide, and way to go deeper. See my Instagram feed for a video visual.

I already do wall walks as part of my daily practice, but the challenge encourages me to explore new places and take my bends further — all the more so these days…er, years, when my only practice is solitary home practice.

In this — as with practice generally — I always go extra slow and always listen to body and breath.

Any attempts to “try” or “do” in yoga have tended to result in injury for me (usually in classes; rarely, if ever, at home, when I can more fully listen to my body and do exactly what it wants and needs on any given day).

It’s a subtle edge — this playing with expansion. One that allows space for spirit — not pushing in a way that pushes spirit aside.

One that invites stretching intuitively, with breath, into new shapes.

Slowly, slowly. Listening closely and always. Imagining what is possible. Seeing what is possible. Breathing possibility into being.

Including when there is fear. Especially when there is fear.

Not risking injury, rushing, or getting greedy. But…with patience and spaciousness, welcoming everything. Making friends with discomfort alongside deliciousness.

Yoga is both.

One body-mind-soul.

One and every possibility.

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