Cactus Pose Posture Exercise
71Cactus Pose Posture Exercise from Yoga
Improves Posture and Strengthens Back
Yesterday's yoga class reminded me to remind you of this simple and overlooked pose we can use to improve our posture and strengthen our back. The cactus pose is:
- Convenient
- Easy-ish
- Corrective
- Functional
How To Pose
- From sitting, standing, or anything in between, begin by activating your core via flexing your belly button towards your spine.
- This pulls your would-be tail under you slightly.
- Point your thumbs up, face palms forward, and raise your arms up until you look like a letter 'T' (shoulder abduction within the frontal plane of motion).
- Spread your fingers out, pretend they're webbed or sails that catch air or water, point your thumbs up.
- With palms forward, thumbs up, bend your arms at your elbow and make yourself look like a field goal post (see photo below)
- At this point roll your shoulders back, feel them roll back and away from your neck and ears while your neck gains length from your body.
- Activate the muscles between your lower scapula (wings) and squeeze them down towards your pelvis and together to lift your chest up. It will feel like an effort to bring your lower ribs up towards your sternum.
- Strengthen your core by flexing your belly button towards your spine to prevent your lower back from over-arching.
- The final movement if you feel no pain, tilt your hands back at the wrist as if someone walked behind you and pulled your hands back at the finger tips. Hold this until fatigue or 30 seconds. Go longer if you feel like you're awesome.
Fingers Spread
Cactus Pose Improves Posture and Back
We westerners might as well dub this field goal pose. Regardless of name, perform this pose several times a day to condition your neuromuscular system to sit up straight and strengthen your posture muscles. If you feel fatigued or too tired to continue sitting up straight, lay down and rest instead of sitting in couch. The best way to re-condition ourselves to align properly is to remember that behavioral conditioning is something that works - humans are no exception. Thus, the speed you recondition your posture depends on the amount of attention you put into it.
At first your body will feel like you're not doing it right because incorrect posture is what feels correct. We might say the same for those of us who choose abusive partners and feel weird when someone good comes into our lives. Be aware of our body's resistance to change, it does not last forever and eventually passes. The result will be a healthier, happier, less-in-pain you!
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Thanks for the encouraging words, Fay! If I am doing any exercises in the morning that seem applicable, I'll remember to make a quick hub about them. Just learned another one today about shoulder mobility that's absolutely amazing. I'll post it tomorrow. Good on you for getting back into exercise. You can start anytime, anywhere, it can be anything. A little bit of something is a lot better than a lot of nothing. It's cliche, but it's true :)
B you left your window open and I just read your post. Good stuff man, but what are you doing taking pictures of your back with your shirt off on the internet :P
-Z
Thank you for posting this. I have been a yoga instructor for several years and this is something that has recently been in my mind a lot. This concept was introduced to me late into my practice and I have therefore unfortunatly developed many bad habits that are now hard to reverse. So mindful awareness of the placement of my shoulder blades on my back is something that i have been trying to figure out. When your not used to it, it feels quite awkward. I'm excited about doing cactus pose myself and also incorporating it into my classes, as i find this concept difficult to teach. I have a question though, since i have been trying to be aware of this my neck has become stiff, I think it's hard for me to keep my neck relaxed while i'm doing this cause i feel tense in my Sternocleidomastoid muscles. do you have any ideas about this? Thanks
Hello Asana, thank you so much for writing :) It's such a fun pose. One thing my instructor reiterates is to visualize bringing our lower ribs up through and into our sternum. We may not move our necks and we must continue to look higher and higher without moving our chins, but instead by continuing to bring our lower back ribs up into, through, and out our sternum. It's truly a great pose and very therapeutic when taking our time with it.
I'll call my instructor tomorrow before giving you a complete answer. If I could see movement patterns it would be easier to suggest corrective exercises. For now can I ask if you had any injuries or do you wake up with a stiff neck after you sleep? If it's a sleep thing which is something I struggled with because I have a long neck, I bought one of those donut pillows that my grandma used to have and that's the one thing I do look forward to using more of when I get older :)
Perhaps consider incorporating resistance training. You can assess yourself with seated cable rows that have separate handles. Try bringing attention to your upper traps, sternum, and where your humerus sits in your shoulder socket.
Tight or overactive upper traps may cause your neck to jut forward and the head of your humerus joint to poke forward on the pulling motion of the seated row if it is indeed a contraindication. To correct it, stay light, and visualize pulling each cable back with your lower traps and rhomboids while at the same time, pulling your right scapula into your back left pocket towards your butt, and your left scapula into your back right pocket towards your butt.
The crisscross visualization in your back helps your brain clear up some dusty neuron pathways. Once activated, your sternum will rise, which will make your lower back arch (correct this by flexing your belly button in towards your spine, maybe even slightly tucking your tail under), your chin and neck will pop up, your head will sit up higher, and the forward neck and tight sternocleidomastoid will either make itself very apparent, or the pieces will fit together. Everything affects something with our body's. Training muscles is less the issue now and training movement is what we're after.
My boss and I mixed in the attention and posture from the yoga pose then slowly, over a period of a few weeks, retrained our neuromuscular system to activate different muscles during different movements.
My colleagues continue repeating that to make a movement feel like second nature, it requires about 5000 repetitions. You can significantly shorten that time period with the amount of focus applied when not in the gym to all movement patterns. With your experience and expertise you will find no trouble in doing this.
Back to the topic at hand; I'll call my instructor tomorrow and forward your message in a text and see what she says about it seeing she knows a ton more than I do.
Hey Asana,
Writing from work. I talked to the woman I take yoga classes from and she said in order to suggest more she would have to see how you move in person as well as make sure that you don't have any shoulder impingements that may contraindicate posing like a field goal post. Check with ye ol' doctor or physical therapist to get a green light. If that's something you've already done, ignore everything I just said :)
voted up, marked useful, bookmarked this hub of yours.
Cool beans. )
Beans are indeed cool :) Merci buckets!
enjoy it with the beer ;)
Haha that is a recipe for eating alone :P
Bronson_Hub,
Wow! thank you for your wonderful description and follow up. I do indeed have multiple injuries from yoga, climbing, and dance as well as potentially an auto-immune disease that definately complicates things, but with unfortuntely not having health insurance these are the types of things I have to work out on my own. It gets complicated b/c due to wrist and shoulder injuries any weight/lifting type workouts are out of my scope and have been for about 3 years. So everything has become more complicated as I have gotten weaker and weaker in my back shoulders and arms b/c gripping anything (like weights, or gripping handles to pull on weights) is totally untolerable, therefore, i have to find ways to correct things that don't involve my wrists. Infact, at this point in writing this my wrists are getting to their point of exhaustion. Regardless, the visualization keys that you stated were awesome and I'm going to work on this a lot. I do wake up with a lot of neck pain, I have been told that i have overactive trapps, and my neck does just forward when i'm not staying actively aware. So, you hit a lot of points right on the dot! I really appreciate your insight and taking the time to answer these questions.
Namaste,
Asana
You are a genius. This is such a useful pose and as you said behavioural conditioning works. I think many people fall into bad shape because they can't bear the idea of training programs that they never can stick to. Doing a pose like this regularly is something anyone can do at any age and benefit. You could do a series of these couldn't you with each hub teaching a posture like this. Voted up and useful.
Our posture says allot about us and yet we do not take the time. I see young people even body builders with poor posture. Very sad. Exercise and body consciousness is the key. Great post.
Fay Paxton 15 months ago
I practiced yoga years ago and know its benefits. I'm actually inspired to take it up again. I will be following your hubs in order to take advantage of your excellent advice.