Introduction to a New Perspective
After becoming a senior yoga teacher, heading up London's largest group of hot yoga studios and mentoring aspiring yoga teachers on their personal journeys, I had a profound, humbling awakening, a turning point, demolishing age-old preconceptions about the way we practice yoga.
It was akin to realising I had embarked on a journey down the right road but in the wrong direction.
Rabbit pose, in particular, highlights various key aspects of this awakening.
The Misunderstood Rabbit Pose
For those of you pursuing a healthy, strong, flexible, pain-free, agile spine, I guarantee what I’m about to explain will be a game-changer transcending traditional boundaries.
I'm going to outline a fresh, more transformative and rejuvenating perspective on how to engage the body in Rabbit pose.
Deep-Core Spinal Muscles: The Unsung Heroes
It's all about reeducating and awakening the brain's communications with deep-core spinal muscles, which, in a healthy spine, quietly go about their business without any fuss, stabilizing the spine as we move.
These deep core spinal muscles form the foundation of all unrestricted, powerful, pain-free moments in life, such as skipping, walking, or playing with your dog in the park.
When the lines of communication between your brain and these vital muscles begin to diminish, your movements are compromised, resulting in instability, poor posture, discomfort, and injury.
This is why, in the high-end world of sports performance, a lot of work is dedicated to cultivating and fine-tuning these inner spinal connections.
Revolutionizing Rabbit Pose: An Expansive Approach
While Rabbit pose is thought to contribute to the development of a healthy spine, its effectiveness when performed in the standard way is highly questionable for various reasons, specifically in how it deactivates the communication lines between the brain and spinal cord, rendering it largely ineffective for enhancing spinal health.
I will now outline an alternative approach to Rabbit pose that truly strengthens the brain's connections with the deep-core spinal muscles. I will then explain the far-reaching benefits of this approach compared to the standard method of doing Rabbit pose.
It does require more targeted effort than passively rounding down, and it will take a little bit of time to master. But once you’ve got it, you’ll never go back.
Okay, let me walk you through it, so you can feel how it feels.
Before we start, I need to highlight one vital aspect of all yoga postures that is often brushed over. That is the importance of preparing the body for action, just like a sprinter on the starting block waiting for the gun or a baseball player waiting for the pincher to throw the ball.
During this preparation phase, the neuromuscular phone lines with the deep core spinal muscles are established, ensuring the spine is open, primed, and ready for controlled action.
Step-by-Step Guide to the New Rabbit Pose
1: Priming the Body
We start by kneeling. Feet together under the hips, sitting upright, as we would normally do.
Exhale, palms out, arms up while expanding the chest open.
Then, take a deep inhale and start to exhale slowly and feel the body release surface tension.
Then, as you continue exhaling, you drive the chest up away from the hips elongating the spine while lifting the hips a little bit off the heels.
Arms down and tuck the chin in.
The whole body is now primed, dynamically engaged and ready for action; you're on the starting block, poised and ready to go. You're not in a passive state. You have established muscle communication, ready for coordinated, controlled spinal movement.
Now that the body is primed and open, you're ready to round down, but not with a mindset not of compressing inwards but of expanding outwards.
2: First Movement Phase
Take a deep inhale.
Then, start to exhale and feel all the surface superficial back muscles relax and loosen up.
Keep exhaling, targeting your efforts on expanding the chest, driving the chest up away from the hips, as you then round down, forehead toward the knee.
Imagine there is a giant force field pulling your middle spine up to the ceiling.
It's not important if the forehead physically touches the knees because what is far more important is the expansion of the spine while keeping the superficial back muscles relaxed.
If your surface back muscles are not fully relaxed, your inner core spinal muscles will find it impossible to maintain a truly elongated open spine.
Once down, you inhale, holding that expansive open position, as you loosely grab the feet.
I'll come back to this point at the end, but your grip must be loose, never tight.
3: Second Movement Phase
Inhale.
Next, start exhaling; once you feel all the surface superficial muscles relax, you engage, expanding the chest open like a balloon, exhaling fully, as you roll forward.
You are now in the final expression of Rabbit pose.
4: Holding Phase
All you need to do now is breathe.
During every exhalation, relax all the surface muscles and fully expand open the chest, as if you are a puffer fish or a peacock opening its feathers.
When inhaling, you are to simply hold and maintain that expansion.
As you exhale and expand your chest, you’ll experience incredible spinal elongation. Thanks to something known as the kinetic chain, you will also notice your shoulder and hip joints naturally open without any negative, compressive forces.
Don't target all your effort on expansion. Half your effort must be on keeping the body relaxed. You have to be equally relaxed as you are engaged. The more relaxed you are, the more engagement you will achieve. It's the yin and gang of movement. This is powerful stuff.
5: Exit
Exhale, expanding out the chest, as you exit out of the posture, keeping the bum off the heels.
Try it. Give it a go. Feel how powerful and in control the body feels. It does take practice. A bit of rewiring your neuromuscular control. But it doesn't take that long to rewire your body to do this.
At the end of this blog is a full video replay of all this.
Comparing Benefits: Traditional vs. Expansive Rabbit Pose
Now, let's discuss why this expansive approach surpasses the standard mindset towards Rabbit Pose, which primarily focuses on contraction and compression, where you round your entire spine inwards with the intention of getting your forehead as close to your knees as possible.
Rabbit Pose is allegedly said to:
Improve spinal flexibility
Invigorate the internal organs
Induce a sense of relaxation.
But, these benefits don't really materialize when Rabbit pose is executed in its conventional form.
Here's why:
Improve spinal flexibility.
First, let's address the claim of "improving spinal flexibility."
Cutting-edge science has emphasized that you must strengthen the communication phone lines between the brain and inner spinal muscles to enhance spinal flexibility.
When you passively squeeze inward, most of these connections deactivate.
You're not truly engaging the inner core spinal muscles, and without engagement, it won't develop.
As they say, "Use it or lose it."
Also, with a mindset of squeezing inward, the inter-vertebral disks of the spine are very easily over-compressed. The consequences of disc compression beyond its normal boundaries are very well documented, such as back pain and sciatica.
However, when you expand out to the Rabbit pose, you improve the elasticity of the discs without compressing them beyond their safe limits.
Furthermore, by targeting 50% of your effort on keeping the surface superficial back muscles relaxed and 50% on expanding out the body, you get a more informed, energising stretch along the entire spine and into the shoulders.
When it comes to spine health, it's a win-win-win approach.
Invigorate the internal organs.
The other reported benefit is that Rabbit Pose stimulates the internal organs.
That is true, but it’s nothing compared to that achieved with an expansive approach to Rabbit Pose; you'll experience far greater organ stimulation due to the active nature of the body.
Once you've learned how to dynamically expand open to Rabbit Pose, you'll realize how minimal organ stimulation you were getting before.
Plus, when it comes to toning and strengthening the abdominal muscles, you will realise just how passive the standard approach truly is.
Induce a sense of relaxation.
Finally, Rabbit is said to encourage a deep connection with your body and inner awareness.
Yoga is a form of communication, or I should say, a relationship between the mind and the body, and at the heart of all this is awareness.
Expanding out requires far more neuromuscular engagement. The nervous system needs to enlist an explosion of communication pathways. These pathways don't get activated when compressing inwards.
When you actively engage the body expanding out to Rabbit pose, you will feel your autonomic nervous system truly light up, with an awareness that far outstrips the standard approach of squeezing and compressing inwards.
This awareness will make you feel so much more energised and rejuvenated.
Real-Life Success Stories
I have witnessed an 82-year-old with significant joint problems experience profound improvements with this approach, and a young aspiring boxer finally resolve his chronic lower back pain, which was not achieved by their previous mindset toward their yoga practice.
It works. It works for everyone!
I understand that for some, such a u-turn is going to be a hard pill to swallow, as it goes against the traditional approach, but once you experience Rabbit pose with this expansive mindset, you will also, like me, realise just how more body communication, engagement and awareness goes on with this transformative approach to Rabbit pose.
Rethinking Grip: The Power of a Gentle Hold
One final point: typically, we are told to maintain a tight grip on the feet to help you get the forehead as close to your knees as possible and deepen the stretch.
But our intention now is no longer one of forcefully compressing inwards. Our intention now is to be dynamically engaged open.
It's a rooky mistake to hold the bat too tightly in activities like cricket or baseball. If you do, you’ll lack coordination, control and power. It's the same deal here.
You need a relatively relaxed grip; otherwise, you’ll develop shoulder tension, which severely limits your body's capacity to expand open.
Your Journey with the New Rabbit Pose
As you practice Rabbit in this open, expansive manner, you will quickly feel just how much more control and body engagement you have when your grip is loose.
For those experiencing significant shoulder tension when reaching back to grab the feet, consider placing the palms flat on the floor by the knees, fingers pointing forward. Many students find that this alternative hand placement provides better control and a greater spinal extension. Note: This is simply an alternative hand placement—resist the temptation to push down with the hands. While it may feel good, doing so disengages the spinal muscles, rendering the entire exercise pointless.
Again, I stress that this approach requires time to rewire your muscle engagement, to wake up and reeducate the deep core spinal muscles.
Please try it, and in the comment section below, tell me how you got on.
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Bill Thwaites
If you're ready for some next-level insights, check out my workshop. It's time to relearn functional breath control, eliminate tension, unleash your inner coach, and watch your mastery soar.
Let me know how you get on in the comments.
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RABBIT REPLAY