This constant complaint from both my novice and long-practicing students was becoming a matter of concern for a while. In fact, in general, I have heard many complaining about back pain with the practice of ‘Kapalbhati’.
Please note Kapalbhati is ABDOMINAL BREATHING.
Hence, some connection did seem to exist between back pain and abdominal breathing.
The yogic world swears by the practice of ‘Abdominal Breathing’ for wholesome well-being. The logical argument goes like this – a newborn, born with an unfiltered natural rhythm of breath, breathes in and out exclusively from the abdomen. As they are yet pure and not affected by lifestyle mismanagement, an obvious inference is concluded that abdominal breathing is the most natural and effective mode of breathing.
If it is so, why are practitioners experiencing back pain with it?
It took me a while to trace the root. The results proved to be an eye-opener:
Wrong postural assumption was the obvious issue. When this was corrected, it did reduce the back pain but did not eliminate it completely in many cases. Despite postural correction, students with weak back and core muscles continued to complain. The understanding that dawned was – practitioners without a strong core and back resort to ‘slouching’ after some duration into the practice. This directly results in back pain.
As the name indicates, abdominal breathing predominately engages your abdomen. There is no involvement of the spine. The spine needs to remain neutral and firm throughout as strong support. On the contrary, however, repeated forward expansion of the abdomen during inhalation unconsciously ended up engaging the lower back too into a forward pull, thereby causing lumbar misalignment. With practitioners who have extra flab around their tummy, this process of unconscious forward pull of the lower back becomes even more prominent and stressful, leading to back pain.
Coming to the popular example of abdominal breathing by a newborn – a newborn’s spine is ‘C’ shaped compared to the ‘S’ shape of an adult. The ‘C’ shape seems more conducive to abdominal breathing. Not only that, but the abdominal breathing for a newborn also happens in a lying-down position where the back has broad support from the bed. If an adult chooses to do abdominal breathing lying in a supine position, they might be able to do away with this complaint.
Tackling this issue so that it is not a constant and recurring struggle is of critical importance. The Posture, The Core, The movements need aligned coordination.
Discover Yoga, Discover Yourself
Obviously the title is very wrong and unjustified.