Bridge Pose-Beginner Yoga Pose

Western Name: Bridge Pose

Sanskrit Name: Setu Bandha Sarvangasana (SAY-too BAHN-duh shar-vahn-GAHS-uh-nuh)

 “Setu” means  “Bridge” and  “Bandha” means “Lock”

Preparatory Poses:

Bhujangasana

Virasana

Urdhva Mukha Svanasana

Follow Up Poses:

Sarvangasana

Bhujangasana

Chakrasana

Urdhva Mukha Svanasana

How to perform Bridge Pose?

Step 1:

Lie on the floor with the support of your back, bend your knees and place your feet on the floor. While keeping your hip wide apart, slide your arms alongside your body, while your palms are facing each other. Your fingertips should be slightly touching your heels.

Step 2:

Press your feet, elbows, and shoulders towards the floor. Look straight in the upward direction.

While bringing your shoulder blades onto your upper back, wrap your outer arms in the direction of the floor.

Step 3:

By pressing your feet firmly towards the ground, try to lift your hips up towards the ceiling while rolling your spine off. Stretch your tailbone towards the back of your knees.

Step 4:

 You are required to straighten your elbows and place your hands underneath by interlocking your fingers. Do these steps by drawing your shoulder blades deeper into your upper back, while doing so keep the tops of your shoulders in line with the base of your neck.

Step 5:

Press the center of your head towards the floor gently, expand your collarbones and raise your chest, fetching your sternum towards your chin. Now withdraw your chin away from your chest while maintaining the space between the neck and the floor.

Extend your knees as you lift up your sternum. Do it simultaneously. Take 3 to 5 rounds of deep breaths while doing so.

Step 6:

To release from this posture, exhale and unlace your fingers, slowly lower your spine back to the floor.

Benefits of Bridge Pose:

Strengthening of the Legs and Feet

When you start performing this posture, make sure that your hips and feet should be placed at a distance from each other while your toes should be pointed towards straight. When you go upwards while performing this pose, your hamstrings get strongly activated to lift up your hips.

You will be able to pull your thighs towards one another very energetically, which will make your adductor muscles strong. This is one of the best poses that you can perform for training your feet and pressing them firmly down into the floor which assists you in your lift.

Mastering this posture will be beneficial for all other postures where your feet are required to stay on the ground.

 Open Hips

 According to research, 99 % of the people remain in sitting position throughout the day which causes excessive tightening in your hips flexors and also lengthens your muscles in the lower back. This may result in different kinds of imbalances in skeleton structures and result in several kinds of pains.

 This asana helps you in reversing the flexions of your hip flexors, opening your hips, and lengthening where it is needed. This is a great pose to perform after office hours; it will also help you in relaxing after a stressful day.

Open Shoulders

 As mentioned above, people spend most of their time sitting for long durations in office, this also affects the shoulders. Your shoulders may go round and droop forward because of continuous sitting.

 This can also cause pain in the chest and can weaken the muscles of the upper back and neck.

 When you practice the Bridge pose, your shoulders will be rolled onto by you and pressing them into the ground firmly while keeping your chest open with extended arms.

 While this pose strengthens your upper arms, this pose is also very beneficial for those people who face droop in their shoulders.

 Plants new awareness in your lower back

 If you have performed yoga for any length of time then you must be aware that squeezing of butts is not an easy task. When you practice this yoga pose, the first thing involved is the squeezing of your butts.

This will help you to build stronger legs, hips and auxiliary muscles which will enable you to develop a new and deeper awareness of the muscles in your legs.

Provides calmness to the mind

This is one of the most relaxing poses which give a cooling effect on your body. It may not feel cool literally, as it takes a lot of muscular strength but psychologically it leaves a cooling effect on your mind and body.

Some Additional Benefits:

This yoga can be considered a perfect remedy for thyroid; it provides a natural massage of the neck and regulates the functions of the thyroid gland which helps in generating thyroxin hormone.

 If you are continuously facing backaches, then this asana can be very helpful as it creates a backward movement in the spine, this pose provides you with correct stretching which is beneficial in relieving backaches and strengthens your back.

 It provides relief in your neck pain.

 It exerts an effective stretch in your elbow hence it is very beneficial for people who are suffering from tennis elbow.

 A healthy and flexible spine is good for overall health and a better nervous system.

 This posture improves balance and flexibility in different nerves which results in better coordination between body and mind.

 It creates stretching in the body and offers natural massage to various abdominal organs, especially colon.

 It helps you in reducing stress, anxiety, and depression.

 It makes your buttocks stronger.

 It improves the functioning of the digestive system.

 When one performs this yoga, it enlarges shoulders and horizon of the chest, this further lead to the expansion of lungs.

 The menopause problems are also reduced with the help of this posture.

 The weak, tired, and misbalanced legs can also be corrected through this yoga.

 Precautions while performing the Bridge Pose:

 This posture can also create some side effects. Below are some cases where we suggest you to not to perform this pose:

 If you are suffering from neck pain, then you should avoid this yoga. It relieves neck pain but we suggest you take recommendation from a professional trainer.

 In several back injuries.

 In case you face knee pain.

 Avoid it if you have come up with any kind of shoulder injury.

 Do not move your head right or left while performing this yoga.

 Complications that can arise from performing Bridge Pose/Wrong Posture of bridge pose:

 Bridge pose is an inversion that can be used at the end of class because everyone gets warmed up and easily perform this pose.

 It is liked by most of the people because the basic steps of this posture are very easy and completely accessible. Those who perform this yoga usually deal with tight chests and hip flexors.

 So if you are doing yoga on a regular basis, we suggest you try this pose for hip flexors.

 Although the basics of this pose are very easy, still there are many issues that should be kept in mind while practicing this yoga.

 When you try this Yoga, make sure that you should lift up your shoulder blades together and roll on to your arms. This creates a room for your chest for lifting it up.

You should keep your arms and hands pressing down towards under the mat. You must think of opposing energy for feeling a continual lift in your chest.

Be careful about your knees, moving them out to the sides and tipping inwards can cause a strain on your knees.