Through stretching and mobility drills, comprehensive core therapy also helps your midsection develop the flexibility needed to adapt to a variety of body positions and the ups and downs of deep, unrestricted breathing. Yoga postures train the muscles surrounding your core to operate together without one region overpowering the others by balancing strength and flexibility. This develops a 360-degree cooperative tensioning system that aids you as you navigate the various movements necessary for both your practice and daily life.
Top yoga positions for covert core work
While not exhaustive, the following explanation of some popular yoga positions reveals many of the less obvious ways that yoga aids core work.
Rounded spine
When in Ardha Navasana (Half Boat Pose), your back and legs are lower and closer to the floor than when you are in Navasana while lying on your back and elevating your head and shoulders in a crunch.
The rectus abdominis is where this effort is largely felt, and it frequently results in the pleasurable heat or even shaking that many of us love to detest.
Spine resist gravity
In some poses, there is a more mild anterior abdominal engagement that occurs. You need to use several core muscles throughout this strengthening exercise in order to maintain the neutral spine you experience in Tadasana (Mountain Pose). Without any resistance, gravity would act on our hips and abdomen, causing us to slump into a backbend. You may or may not perceive the rectus abdominis contributing to maintaining this alignment, but it is necessary, coupled with slight assistance from the deeper transversus abdominis to cinch in the waist.
Balance poses
Your core’s practical function is unrelated to static strength. You need the kind of strength and stability that enables you to shift your weight as you walk, navigate uneven or slick terrain, tilt your head in response to noises, and move between sitting, standing, and a variety of other positions without falling.
This type of core training teaches us to embody strength in flexibility, or the sthira (effort) and sukha (ease) that Patanjali mentions in the Sutras and which aids us in finding balance as we adjust to circumstances in yoga and in life.
Backbends against gravity
Being informed that backbends are essential to work can be shocking. Imagine your hands raised off the mat in Salabhasana (Locust Pose) or Bhujangasana (Cobra Pose). They’re not often thought of as core exercises because they put the body in a posture that is typically used to stretch the abs. The muscles of the posterior core, particularly the erector spinae and QL, are strengthened through backbends, which call for you to lift your head, shoulders, or legs against gravity.
Your back’s posterior core muscles shorten and tighten during these positions, while the frontal core muscles extend.
Backbends with gravity
Other backbends have the tendency to pull you deeper into the pose because of gravity and the fixed placement of your hands and feet. In a position like this, eccentric contraction of the anterior abdominal muscles offers the kind of support that decreases low back compression.
Twists and side bends
Your lateral core muscles contract whenever your torso rotates. This is particularly true when you begin the action from your core rather than by bracing your arm or leg against one another.
In these positions, the internal and external obliques on the opposing sides of the body cooperate to pull the rib cage of one side toward the hip of the other.
The internal and external obliques on one side and the matching QL contract together to reduce the waist on that side when doing side bends.
When you turn your body to face the long edge of your mat, you employ these same muscles in a much more subtle way.
Hip adduction
If you’ve ever attended a Pilates class, you may have observed that many of the exercises required pressing your inner thighs together or into the resistance of a prop placed in between them. This is due to the fact that some of the inner thigh adductor muscles have fascial connections with the pelvic floor, making the exercise for strengthening the core more comprehensive.
Breath work and supported poses
Perhaps nowhere in yoga does pranayama or breathwork allow you to explore that equilibrium of effort and relaxation, let alone the practical use of the core. The muscles around the rib cage and belly must also be sufficiently flexible for the torso to extend and provide room for a full inhale in order to use these techniques.
Because of this, true core exercises cannot just focus on increasing muscle strength. Through mobility exercises and passive stretching, these same muscles must also develop suppleness.
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