So, we know how valuable yoga is for all areas of fitness… not matter what you are looking for. It helps with strength, flexibility, and even adding to your cardio endurance with all of the long-term poses that can be held.

Now, there is much to consider with bow spring yoga as we have looked at already so far. It may not be as balanced as traditional yoga poses, and required a great deal more session filled with alternating movements.

The “bow spring” includes an arched low back and an open chest – sitting and hunching forward. While it can be culturally medicinal, it reverses the typically forward rounding pose, hunching our shoulders and closing our chests. Basically, the goal is to improve posture, opened up and strengthening back muscles. It encourages a more proper spinal curvature which then transfers our weight more efficiently; and stretches the muscles, tissues and energy centers of the torso, particularly the solar plexus, sternum and throat. 

The benefits of the “bow spring” are remarkably similar to Cobra Pose. Cobra is an extremely important single yoga posture, strengthening the muscles of the back, stretching the chest, and also also compressing the kidneys and adrenals, reducing stress. The “bow spring,” like Cobra, would be an excellent alignment for one posture, or even a series of several postures. But one would not claim that Cobra Pose makes a complete physical practice. And I don’t think that the “bow spring” facilitates a balanced practice either.

Also stretching your hips in all directions and rotating them helps improve strength, flexibility and energetic openness. In order to achieve its exaggerated lumbar curve, the “bow spring” requires a forward tilt of the pelvis, which in turn creates a shortened front side of the quadriceps. This will create tightness in the hip flexor area (top front of the hips), which is already a common cultural problem due to all the sitting we do.