Camel Pose (Ustrasana)

Pronunciation and meaning

Ustrasana: oosh-TRAHS-uh-nuh. The first sound is a soft oo, and the stress sits on TRAHS.

Ustra means camel and asana means posture, so the name is camel posture. In the full shape the front of the body arches up and back from the knees, and the hands rest on the heels.

How to do Camel Pose

1. Kneel with your knees hip-width apart and your thighs upright, hips stacked over your knees. Tuck your toes under or keep the tops of the feet flat.
2. Place your hands on the back of your pelvis, fingers pointing down, and draw your tailbone gently toward the floor.
3. Breathing in, lift your breastbone toward the ceiling, so the chest rises before anything bends back.
4. Keeping the hips over the knees, lean back only as far as feels controlled. If there is room, reach one hand and then the other to your heels.
5. Keep the neck long: look forward or up, and let the head drop back only if the neck feels comfortable and supported.
6. Stay for three to five breaths. To come up, bring your hands back to your hips, press the shins down and lead with the chest, then rest in Child's Pose.

Make it easier

• Keep your hands on your lower back the whole time. This is a complete pose, not a lesser one.
• Tuck your toes under to bring the heels higher, or stand a yoga block on its tall end outside each ankle for the hands.
• Fold a blanket under your knees if kneeling is uncomfortable.
• Practise facing a wall with the fronts of the thighs touching it, to feel the hips staying forward.

Pregnancy and after birth

Pregnancy. Avoid. A deep backbend stretches the front of the abdomen and can be hard on balance and the lower back during pregnancy. Ask your OB or midwife about gentler chest openers you can do seated or standing.

After birth. Avoid. Leave deep backbends like Camel out in the early months after birth, because they stretch across an abdominal wall that is still recovering. When your OB or midwife has cleared you, start with the hands on the lower back and only a small lift of the chest.

Wondering about yoga safety in pregnancy? Joahnna Lee covers it trimester by trimester.

Common mistakes

• Letting the hips drift back behind the knees, which turns the pose into a squeeze in the lower back.
• Dropping the head back first and hanging from the neck.
• Throwing the hands back to the heels before the chest has lifted.
• Coming up by pulling the head forward rather than leading with the chest.
• Knees set too wide, so the thighs splay and the lower back pinches.

Camel Pose is a kneeling backbend that asks for patience. Most of the work happens in the thighs and the upper back, not in the lower back. It belongs later in a practice, once the body is warm.

In a Vinyasa yoga class the thighs and the upper back are usually warmed first, so the backbend has somewhere steady to come from.

If Camel becomes comfortable over many months, its bigger relative is Wheel, a backbend pressed up from lying down, but there is no need to go there at all. The full list of backbend yoga poses, in order of effort shows where Camel sits among them.

The belly-down version of this deep front-body stretch is Bow Pose, holding the ankles from the floor. From the same kneeling base, one leg can step out to the side for Gate Pose, a kneeling side bend.