Ustrasana (Camel Pose)

Ustrasana, Camel Pose, is a kneeling backbend. Ustra means camel, and the shape of the lifted chest and dropped head is where the name comes from. You kneel with the hips over the knees, lift the chest upwards, and arch back, with the hands either on the back of the pelvis or reaching down to the heels.

It is not a competition to reach the heels. The hands on the heels version is what appears in photographs, and it is the reason a great many people practise this pose badly: they reach, the shoulders round forward, the hips slide back behind the knees, and the whole arch lands in three vertebrae at the base of the spine. The pose is an open chest over stable hips. If the hands never touch the heels and those two things are true, you are doing Ustrasana correctly.

It is also not the same job as Bhujangasana or Dhanurasana, although all three are backbends. Those two are prone, with the abdomen on the floor and the legs behind. Ustrasana is upright, so the whole weight of the trunk has to be held by the back and the thighs, and the front of the hips is stretched with the knees pinned. That makes it more demanding than the prone backbends for most people and it is why it comes later in a practice and later in a student's first year.

Where it belongs is after the prone backbends and before the finishing poses, in a warm body. It is stimulating, so it goes in a morning practice, not into the bedtime sequence. It is one of the poses on the list in yoga for neck and shoulder pain to approach carefully rather than enthusiastically, for reasons the neck section below sets out.

Two instructions carry this pose, and both of them are about what happens before the arch.

Hips over knees. Kneel and press the fronts of the thighs forward so that a line dropped from the hip joints lands on the knees. As you begin to arch, the hips want to slide backwards to make the movement easier, and the moment they do, the arch stops being spread along the spine and becomes a fold at the base of it. Press the thighs forward the entire time. If they will not stay, that is the signal to stop where you are.

Up before back. The first movement is the chest lifting towards the ceiling on an inhalation. Only after that does anything go backwards. Beginners reverse this, going backwards first and lifting afterwards, and the result is a shorter, sharper, lower arch. Practise the first movement on its own a few times: hands on the pelvis, breathe in, lift the chest, breathe out, come down. That alone is a useful pose.

• Knees at hip width, blanket underneath if the floor is hard.
• Toes tucked under if the reach or the ankles need it.
• Tailbone dropping, lower belly firm, so the lumbar spine lengthens rather than folds.
• Elbows drawing towards each other behind you, which opens the collarbones sideways.

This is a pose where props genuinely change what is possible, and blocks beside the feet are the most useful of them. The habit of arranging a pose around what a body can do today rather than around what it should look like is the tradition described on the Iyengar yoga page, and this is the pose that makes the argument for it.

The picture of Camel Pose has the head hanging back and the throat wide open. That is one legitimate version of the pose. It is not a requirement, and for a large number of adults it is the part to leave out permanently.

Cervical spondylosis is common from the middle forties onwards, and taking the head fully back compresses the small joints at the back of the neck while the ligaments at the front are already stretched. A student with a stiff or a sensitive neck who drops the head back for thirty seconds does not feel it during the pose. They feel it that evening. So the instruction in my classes is: chin level, look up, throat soft, and if you want to take the head back, take it slowly and come straight back if there is any pinching at the base of the skull.

The throat stretch itself is worth having, and you get most of it with the chin level and the chest lifted. It is often claimed that this stimulates the thyroid gland. What I can say honestly is that the pose stretches and increases blood flow to the front of the neck, and that people with thyroid conditions frequently find the position uncomfortable. The yoga for thyroid page lists the shoulder stand and the plough among the poses to avoid, and anyone who has had surgery on the front of the neck should keep the chin level here without exception.

The other thing to know is how to come out. Chin to the chest first, then the hands to the pelvis, then lift the chest as you come upright. Coming out backwards or collapsing forward is how people get dizzy, and the dizziness is what frightens them off the pose for good.

Short holds. This pose gives most of what it has in the first fifteen seconds, and the rest of the time is usually spent negotiating with the lower back.

Three or four mornings a week is plenty, with a rest in Balasana between rounds rather than straight into the next one. Practising it in the evening is a reliable way to lie awake, and the practice that belongs at that end of the day is Yoga Nidra instead.

This pose needs a warm body and it needs to come late. The order I use is a few rounds of Surya Namaskar, the standing poses, then Marjariasana to mobilise the spine, then the prone backbends, then Ustrasana last of the backbends.

Afterwards, rest and then fold. Balasana is the counter pose, and forty seconds of it is not optional after a deep backbend: it lets the lower back come back to neutral before you ask anything else of it. Then a seated forward bend such as Paschimottanasana, and a full Savasana at the end of the practice.

A useful pairing is Ustrasana followed by a supported rest with the chest still open, which is where Matsyasana earns its place, though it should be the supported version rather than the deep one if the neck has already had a backbend. If your practice is short, I would rather you did two rounds of Cobra and one of Camel with a proper rest than four rounds of Camel in a hurry.

For a written routine to slot it into, the ten minute morning routine shows the general shape, and Camel goes in where Cobra currently sits once you have three months of practice behind you.

Of all the poses on this site, this is the one where I most often say: take the wall version and be content.

• Neck. Chin level. Always, for anybody with cervical spondylosis, a neck injury or vertigo. The head going back is a decoration on this pose and not part of it.
• Blood pressure and heart. A deep backbend with the throat open is a strong stimulus. Keep the hands on the pelvis and the hold to ten seconds, or take the standing wall version. The reasoning is on yoga for high blood pressure.
• Knees. A blanket under the knees is the first fix and the chair version is the second. Nobody should be kneeling on a hard floor in a backbend with a knee that objects.
• Lower back. Hands on the pelvis, hips forward, short hold. If there is pain today, leave it out. The Cochrane review of twenty one trials in chronic low back pain found small benefits from yoga alongside increased back pain as the most commonly reported harm, with no serious side effects reported, and an uncontrolled deep backbend is exactly the mechanism by which that harm happens.
• Coming back after years away. Give this pose six months rather than six weeks, and read yoga for beginners over 40 first.

If you want somebody to tell you whether your hips are sliding backwards, that is a thing best seen from the outside. Come to a class and be looked at, or start with a first class and have your version of this pose set for you.