Backbends Are Not Just Aesthetic – Strength, Spine, and the Stories We Hold
- Brainz Magazine
- May 27
- 5 min read
Kasturbai Azcona is a traveling photographer and movement facilitator raising her young kids in the farmlands of Guadalajara, Mexico. She specializes in mobility training and the nervous system, intuitive and creative sequencing, arm balancing, inversions, contortion & more!
The posture of our times: We live in a world that pulls us forward physically, emotionally, and energetically. We’re curled around our phones, slouched at our desks, protecting our organs and heart without even knowing it. It’s not just bad posture. It’s a byproduct of modern life, of bracing ourselves against time, urgency, and overstimulation.
Backbends call us out of this collapse. They invite us to look up, lengthen out, and take up space. They reverse the gravitational pull on the body and spirit. In a world where everything is drawing us into flexion, backbending becomes an act of quiet rebellion. We rise through the chest. We soften the front body. We reclaim our verticality.
More than flexibility: It’s strength and activation
Backbends are often misunderstood as pure flexibility, but in truth, they require deep strength. There’s nothing passive about an intentional backbend. The glutes, hamstrings, spinal extensors, shoulders, and arms must all work in harmony. There’s precision in the alignment and courage in the expression.
When I practice backbends, I feel everything come online. Glutes, hamstrings, spinal muscles, shoulders, and breath. I’m not throwing my body into a shape, I’m placing every piece of myself with care. That care travels with me after the pose. It lingers in my posture. It weaves into how I stand in line, how I play with my kids, and how I hold my camera when I work. It’s not just a pose. It’s a pattern I practice.
We don’t just need to stretch. We need to awaken. Backbending reminds the backside of the body that it exists and that it holds power. That it can support us, not just from the front but from behind.
Speaking safety to the nervous system
When we’re scared, we curl in. When we feel unsafe, we fold. It’s instinct. It’s biological. Our bodies are hardwired to protect our vital organs. To draw the belly inward, to shield the heart, to lower the gaze. That posture of protection happens subtly, all day long. Rounding forward protects our most vulnerable areas: our heart, our belly, and our throat. But when we backbend, we do the opposite. We open our front body and expose the organs we’ve evolved to protect.
So when we open the chest and expose the front body, something deep in us takes notice. The nervous system listens. It scans. And when the environment is right, when the breath is steady, the earth is beneath us, and we feel held, it says yes. Yes to opening. Yes to softening. Yes to releasing the armor. This can feel raw. Exposing ourselves, even in the safety of a yoga mat, is an act of vulnerability. And yet, it’s also a profound way of telling the nervous system: I am safe here. It’s okay to open.
That’s why backbends feel so emotional sometimes. Because they’re more than movement, they’re a message. A declaration of safety. A reclaiming of trust. In this way, backbending becomes more than a posture, it becomes a dialogue with our inner landscape. A way to gently rewire what it means to feel safe in our openness. A practice in nervous system regulation, grounded in movement, breath, and presence.
Where we hold our stories
The body holds memory, especially the parts we don’t move often. The pelvis, the jaw, the hips- these are storage spaces for what we haven’t fully felt or processed. These parts of us hold tension that words often can’t reach. They store years, even generations, of silence, shame, and survival.
Most of us sit for hours a day. When we sit, our hips stay flexed. Our pelvic floor tightens. The genitals are hidden. The jaw clenches without us realizing it. That tension is not accidental. It’s a protective strategy. A way of keeping ourselves guarded in a world that doesn’t always feel safe to be fully expressed. We tuck away emotion, tension, shame, sexuality, and fear- hiding them in the folds of fascia and forgotten muscles. Backbends, especially those that involve the pelvis and hip extension, invite all of that to surface.
There’s a reason certain postures make us cry. There’s a reason the breath catches. These are the stories we’ve tucked into our tissues, emotions we’ve silenced, parts of ourselves we’ve been told to suppress. I’ve felt my jaw unlock in the middle of a camel pose. I’ve seen students cry without knowing why.
These moments don’t need to be explained. They need to be felt. Witnessed. Honored. This is where movement becomes medicine and posture becomes a doorway into an awareness and a release. This is where posture becomes a portal into something far more sacred than just shape.
A practice of listening, not performing
Backbends look dramatic, sure. They’re flashy. They stop the scroll. But the real practice is not in how far you can bend. It’s in how deeply you can listen. Can you feel your feet? Can you trust your breath? Can you notice the part of you that wants to rush, or prove, or escape the discomfort?
Practicing backbends taught me that being open is not the same as being exposed. That vulnerability can exist within strength. That sometimes, the strongest thing we can do is to soften. This isn’t about how deep your wheel is. It’s about what you feel when you enter it. About how you breathe when your heart is open and exposed. About how you exit the shape and how it shapes the rest of your day.
This kind of practice asks us to listen. Not to the voice that says go deeper or make it pretty, but the one that says go slower, trust your timing, you don’t have to push to be powerful. That is the kind of strength I’m interested in. Not the strength to impress, but the strength to feel.
Not just a pose, a pattern shift
Backbends can change the way we move, the way we breathe, the way we exist in our bodies. They shift us from collapse to expansion, from hiding to revealing. You don’t need to be hypermobile to access their power. You don’t have to touch your toes to your head to feel the effect of a backbend. You just need presence. Curiosity. Willingness. Willing to feel. Willing to shift. Willing to trust your body’s timeline.
Let your backbend be a conversation. Let it say what words can’t. Let it be a story, a release, a reclaiming, because you can be open and protected at the same time. Soft and strong. Vulnerable and powerful. All at once.
Read more from Kasturbai L Azcona
Kasturbai L Azcona, Movement Instructor & Photographer
Kasturbai is a certified yoga teacher and fitness instructor for English and Spanish speakers around the world. She teaches with intention for hypermobile yogis and advocates for strength within flexibility. She is also a traveling photographer who documents retreats and events of all kinds!
