Seated Forward Fold Pose
Begin by sitting on the floor with your legs extended. The yoga wheel should be directly in front of you. Bend your knees until your feet are flat against the ground, then take the wheel and place it underneath your legs and against the back of your calves. Grip the wheel securely as you lean your torso forward and scoot your hips back. You may feel a stretch if you have tight hamstrings. If not, then you should easily be able to rest your torso against your legs.
Back Roller Wheel Faq
What size yoga wheel should I get?
Each wheel size provides a different pressure. The larger wheels are better for beginners as they help ease into the stretch without overstretching tight muscles. The smaller ones are better for deep tissue and muscles that need extra pressure and for posture correction while you sit.
Can you crack your back using a yoga wheel?
Rolling on the yoga wheel and massaging the muscles around your spine can definitely help you crack your back. You may also feel your vertebrae pop back into place . This will be a good sign that your spine is flexible and getting movement.
Can you use a yoga wheel for neck pain?
Yes, you can use a small yoga wheel to roll over your neck muscles, massage, and stretch them while decompressing your cervical spine. The Excellent Chirp Wheel comes in 3 sizes, and the smallest one is perfect for neck pain release.
Whats your experience with back stretch wheels? Share with us in the comments below.
To your health and happiness,
The Back Pain Relief Products Team
Wheel Assisted Boat Pose
Sit on the ground and rock back into the boat pose. To get into the proper alignment, make sure your core is engaged, lower ribs tucked in, and sit bones pressed down firmly. Lean the roller into the left lower part of the leg. Then, move the right leg just below the wheel, fingers pointed to the wall. The left foot is flexed, and the opposite arm is turned to the ceiling. Your spine is erect and the chest is reaching forward. As the yoga wheel helps you keep the balance, you can solemnly focus on breathing and deepening the pose. If you are a beginner, you can keep your arms on the floor. The most important thing about this pose is to avoid leaning back. This advanced posture is well-known for its core strengthening and stress-relieving benefits.
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Urdhva Dhanurasana Wheel Pose
Full wheel is an advanced backbend. It can be challenging to do, but using a yoga wheel will help you build up to it. Use the yoga wheel to add support and stability to your spine.
Start seated, with your knees bent and feet flat on the mat. Set the yoga wheel behind you so it is in line with your spine. Lean back against the wheel and let your back drape over it. Exhale and press through your heels to lift your hips. Bring your arms over your head and place your hands on the mat by your ears.
Allow the wheel to support your upper body. Engage through your glutes and thighs. Press firmly into your palms. Stay here for three to five breaths.
To come out of the pose, lower your hips back to the mat. On an inhale, slowly roll up to seated. Repeat two more times.
Spinal Massage & Thoracic Spine Extension
How-To:
- Start in a seated position with your knees bent and facing up.
- Place a yoga wheel at the base of your spine.
- Gently roll your back onto the wheel on an exhale. Rest your arms with your palm up by the sides. Relax your neck down to the mat.
- For a deeper stretch in the arms and chest, extend your arms overhead and let them fall onto the floor behind you. Alternatively, grab the yoga wheel with your hands.
How Long:
- Hold for about 5-10 breaths.
Tip: Play around with rolling back and forth on your yoga wheel to find the sweet spot. Similarly, experiment with different leg positions: place the soles together in Reclined Butterfly, extend the legs straight for the stretch in hip flexors, or drape your body over the wheel with the legs in Hero Pose.
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It Can Help You Wind Down
If your evening HIIT sesh leaves you feeling completely wired come bedtime, Lucy suggests swapping it out for a go on the yoga wheel, ‘It’s perfect for winding down after work and encouraging TLC.’
A Harvard University study even concluded that certain yoga practises can reduce the impact of exaggerated stress responses and may be helpful in combating both anxiety and depression, and anything that helps us sleep easy gets our vote.
Best Yoga Wheels To Ease Muscle Tension In A Jiffy
The Chirp yoga wheel improves balance, flexibility, and strength by stretching and massaging your thoracic and lumbar muscles. It has a penetrative effect that goes deep to help prevent injuries and relieve and divide pressure on your spinal discs and shoulder blades. Chirp uses a unique trigger point technology that targets tight muscle fibers. Correcting the curvature of your spine to maintain the right posture, this yoga back wheel has a molded rigid core able to withstand up to 500 pounds of weight. The outer is covered with anti-skid padding, staying resistant to bending under pressure.
Pros
With UpCircleSevens yoga wheel, back stretches are about to become a breeze and oh-so-relieving. If you happen to suffer from chronic back pain, say hello to your new best friend that also helps in building strength! One of the most effective yoga wheels for back pain, this product features extra thick foam padding that cushions and conforms to your body shape for a good experience. This means you can also use it all over your body to alleviate pain. The non-flexing ABS frame coupled with medium firmness is bound to give your muscles the time of their life, whether you are a beginner or an advanced yogi.
Pros
Now that weve looked at some of the best yoga body wheels out there, lets learn how you can pick out the right one for yourself.
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Yoga Wheel Helps In Customizing Your Practice
Every person has their strengths and weaknesses. The word challenging is a subjective word because of our unique strengths and weaknesses. Some people may find one yoga pose challenging while some may see other yoga poses challenging.
The challenges faced by the people depend on various factors. Whatever your challenges are, the use of yoga wheel can assist various practices by helping you work with your current flexibility limitations.
The yoga wheel can be used for backbends, hero poses, bridge, pigeon, and so on.
How Should I Be Using My Yoga Wheel
Although the wheel has yoga attached to it, this doesnt necessarily mean that it can only be used for yoga purposes. While yogis would certainly benefit from having a handy tool that can help them advance in their practices, others could also reap the wheels benefits. You can use it for stretching your back and limbs before a workout session or after youre done with high-intensity training. A yoga wheel can also be used for developing a good balance and learning how to do a headstand. If planks are a part of your exercise regimen, a yoga wheel can be incorporated into it to improve your core strength.
A lot of us struggle with back pain, which is especially common in office jobs when you have to keep the same posture for 8 hours. This is not healthy for your back and it often results in you having to book massage appointments to fix the issue. With a yoga wheel, you dont need to spend money on expensive treatments. You are able to bend your back by rolling your spine on the wheel and thus relieving the tension. It doesnt require a particular skill but can be proven to be more effective than other treatments if done correctly.
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How To Use A Yoga Wheel For Stretching
One of the newest trends in yoga is the yoga wheel. But what is it, and how do you use it?
From assisting you as you learn new yoga poses, to deepening stretches, to creating new balance challenges, the yoga wheel has something to offer everyone. Its versatility makes it great for general stretching and exercise as well, so you dont even have to be a yogi to reap the benefits.
In this blog, well show you how you can use it to assist and deepen stretches for pain relief and improved greater flexibility.
Most people experience tightness and in their chest, shoulders, and back. The size and shape of the yoga wheel is perfect for helping to open up these tight areas for a more relaxed body. You can use these stretches to prepare for your yoga routine, or to improve recovery time and keep muscles limber after any strenuous workout.
Here are 4 simple stretches you can do to relieve tight muscles:
Shoulders& Upper Back
- Kneel on the floor with the wheel in front of you, and place hands on wheel with palms facing toward each other.
- Keeping back, hips, spine and neck aligned in at line, extend arms until you feel a stretch in upper back and shoulders.
- Relax and breathe deeply, extending further on the exhale further when ready to deepen the stretch. Hold for at least 20 seconds.
Chest Opener
Back Extension & Massage
Utthita Parsvakonasana Extended Side Angle Pose
Adding a yoga wheel to extended side angle pose is another way to strengthen your arms and side body.
Start in warrior II pose with your right foot forward. In warrior II, your hips are squared towards the long edge of your mat. Your back leg is straight and the outside edge of your back foot is parallel to the short end of the mat.
Your front knee is bent, with the knee over the ankle and the foot pointed forward. Arms are in a T position.
Tilt your torso forward and extend both arms toward the front of the mat. Position your arms so your biceps are alongside your face. Hold the yoga wheel in your arms and keep your torso parallel to the ground.
Hold for three to five breaths, then repeat on the other side.
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Wheel Assisted Tiger Pose
You can do a couple of cat-cow stretches as a warm-up exercise for Vyaghrasana. Starting from the tabletop, inhale, lift and straighten the left knee so it is aligned with your trunk. As you bend the knee, pull the sole of the foot to the crown of your head. Extend the right arm forward. Then use that same arm to hook your left toes into the wheel. Twist the upper body as you extend the right arm, at the same time, actively raising the left knee. The left arm is firmly planted on the mat, pressing into the fingers and knuckles. Focusing on the micro-movements of the left arm and the right leg will help you stay still in the posture. Keep both of the hips parallel to the ground to experience the full benefits of the posture. Breath normally and hold the pose steady for as long as you can. Push the arm and the leg in the opposite directions, as if someone is pulling you apart.
How To Choose A Yoga Wheel
- Size
You can avail wheels that are small, medium, and large. Larger wheels range between 12 and 13 inches in height with a 5-inch width. This is the one for deep back poses and advanced asanas. Taller people or those that have lower levels of flexibility can enjoy this size.
Medium-sized wheels are around 10 inches high with the same width and are a better choice for people of smaller build. Small wheels come with a 6-inch diameter and help with rolling smaller muscles as you can use them under your neck as a support. It gives an extra-deep stretch and the highest level of pressure.
- Construction
Most yoga wheels are constructed with sturdy plastic and have a separate inner core to give it more strength and accommodate heavier weights. A few have smooth surfaces with a thick layer of padding which is not only good to practice bending but is also anti-skid on most surfaces.
A few wheels have protruding ridges or grooves that offer a precision massage to soothe tired muscles and relieve fatigue. If you worry that plastic might catch sweat and stink, you can choose wheels made of cork as a sustainable option. Otherwise, regular wheels with a water-resistant and odor-resistant coating can help keep them fresh.
- Capacity
There is usually a limit to the amount of weight that yoga wheels can take, ranging anywhere from 270 to 550 pounds. It is better to opt for something with a high capacity as you will be exerting pressure on top of your bodyweight.
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Meet The Dharma Yoga Wheel
Maybe youve seen it at yoga events and festivalsa wooden or plastic wheel the size of a large pizza padded with yoga-mat material. Well, that is a Dharma Yoga Wheel, created by Dharma Yoga founder Sri Dharma Mittra and his son, and it is an amazing tool for warming up and moving safely into backbends, inversions, and other poses. Plus, it is a boatload of fun to use! Heres the inception story of the wheel and a few poses to get you started, from Sri Dharma Mittra himself:
In 1978, I was walking in Chinatown in NYC and there was a store where they had thick industrial plastic cut to all sizes. There was a small pieceabout six inches in diameter from a larger tube that I thought would be perfect for opening the back and stretching the entire body. I brought that home and started using it at the studio. It soon became very popular with the students.
His son, Yogi Varuna, saw how popular the wheel was with the other students at the Dharma Yoga Center when he became a regular student there a few years ago. After Mittra tried to build a prototype himself out of wood, Varuna and his partner Raquel Vamos found a carpenter to begin production. A website, , and PVC versions followed, and 10,000 have been sold to date.
Core Strengthener & Handstand Prep With Plank
Credit: Debra Massaro
The yoga wheel is unique because it facilitates fluid movement during a yoga practice. This wheeling aspect of the nifty prop makes certain poses attainable and expedites the process of getting there.
Specifically, reaching deeper depths of core and arm strength is necessary for arm balances such as Handstand. As for the advanced yogi, the yoga wheel can prepare the body and mind for pressing into Handstand.
Practice Tips: From Plank position, start with the yoga wheel under the shins. Engage the core and pull the knees in towards the chest as the wheel rolls forward and under the tops of the feet. Extend back to Plank and repeat.
For the more advanced yogi working to progress their handstand pose, try keeping the legs straight without bending at the knees. From Plank pose, engage the core and legs as you pull the feet in towards the body. The toes become light on the wheel as the hips try to stack above the shoulders.
Taking advantage of the boost of the prop, try to lift the heels towards the sky into full Handstand pose.
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Is A Yoga Wheel Safe For Back Pain Sufferers
If you are a beginner, start with fewer deep stretches. When using it for backbends, having some extra props handy, such as blocks or blankets, can be helpful and prevent injuries. Also, people with osteoporosis and osteopenia have to be careful when doing extreme spinal movements. In the case of severe osteoporosis, forced spinal flexion can result in a fracture.
Start gradually and work your way up. If you feel more than mild pain and discomfort its time to stop.
more gentle spine stretch
Low Lunge With Quad Stretch
How-To:
- Start in a Low Lunge position with your back knee off the ground and leg extended.
- Place a yoga wheel between your legs, so it sits in the front of the thigh of your back leg.
- Lean onto the yoga wheel with your thigh, and start to slowly lift your back foot off the ground.
- If youre feeling stable and in control, bend the back knee and grab it with your hand.
- Slowly lift your torso and hand up to the sky.
How Long:
- Hold for 5-10 full breaths. Switch sides.
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It Will Stop You From Hunching
Being desk-bound from 9-5 does a whole lotta damage to your back and shoulders, but you can cancel that massage, because the yoga wheel is just as amazing at ironing out knots and releasing that tension.
‘As a personal trainer I see so many instances of clients coming to me with rounded shoulders due to how they sit at work,’ says Lucy, ‘but research suggests that using a yoga wheel is a fantastic way to help reverse this effect. It help clients who have never practised yoga before and aids deep stretching all over the body. Not only is the prop gaining popularity in the yoga, world but also in athletics, because of the way it can counteract those knots.’
