Afterwards I would personally go into Child’s pose to rest the neck for a while and then continue with the practice. We can even add a twisting adaptation afterwards to loosen up the neck and upper back some more. After few breaths there we can do Vajrasana to release the stress in the neck, upper back, lower back, and mobilize the neck and shoulders. How do we do that? First we need to get the neck into a neutral position by coming out of Camel pose and getting into Virasana. At the very least we need to give your neck a chance to regroup and release the stress of one movement, before going to the next. We need to be very mindful when we place it in extreme positions like that. We have no interest in doing that to our cervical spines, right?! The neck is the most mobile part of the spine, which makes it the least stable. this is how you test structural products to simulate the most extreme conditions to make them break,” she says. “Bend it all the way one way, then all the way the other way, repeat. In fact, one of the quotes that I absolutely love is from Mary McInnis Meyer (yoga teacher and a former automotive engineer). This is almost like a slow equivalent of a whiplash from a car accident. So you end up going from one extreme to another – from deep cervical extension to fixed cervical flexion. In Hare pose your neck is bent all the way forward (hyperflexion) with WEIGHT APPLIED TO IT. In Camel pose your head is usually held all the way back (hyperextension), challenging your cervical spine and the neck muscles that support it. But once we take a closer look, we can see a very specific area of accumulated stress – the neck. On the surface, following Camel pose with Hare pose appears legit – we are using a strong forward bend (Hare pose) to compensate for the deep back bend (Camel pose) – so, basically, after bending one way, we bend the other way. Here we come across a slightly different issue and it concerns your neck (nobody had mentioned it in the comments to the original question, which was very surprising to me).

Last week we’ve discussed why the twist by itself is not the best in terms of compensation for back bends or side bends. In response, all sorts of opinions were posted – most teachers did not see a problem, and some suggested a “neutralizing twist” in between. A few months ago one of the teachers in my yoga teachers Facebook group posed a question: would it be a good idea to go straight from Camel pose to Hare pose? Apparently she had attended a class where this was taught.

Leegit bend it git it