How to Stand Up from a Bridge (aka “Raise the Dead”)

How to Stand Up from a Bridge (aka “Raise the Dead”)

Being able to stand back up from a bridge is a common goal for contortionists and advanced yogis alike - and it’s quite the challenge given the amount of glute, hip and core strength required! But if you can pull it off, it’s a lovely demonstration of active flexibility, strength, and control - plus it looks like you’re a zombie being raised from the dead, which is pretty cool in my book.

Note: This is an advanced skill I would suggest working with a coach on if you haven’t done any form contortion training/classes before to make sure you understand the proper engagement to safely get into deep backbends.

Suggested pre-requisites:

• Comfortable walking hands down the wall into a bridge (or dropping back into a bridge from standing)

• Comfortable holding a “narrow” bridge with your hands 2 feet or closer to your feet, and shoulders stacked over wrists

4 Exercises to Prep for Standing Up from a Bridge

Make sure you’ve done a proper warm up, conditioning, and whatever stretching you need to do to prepare for deep bridge and backbending work before trying these drills.

1. Camel Lean-Back Crunches

This is a great exercise to build the hip, glute and core strength needed to lift your upper body back up to standing. It’s also great conditioning if you’re working to drop back from standing too! Win-win!

1. Start kneeling with knees about hip width apart, hips lifted, and arms crossed in front of your chest

2. Engage your abs by pulling your belly button in toward your spine, and engage your glutes to press your hips forwards before you start to arch back. Keep pressing your hips forwards as you open your chest to the ceiling (stopping if you feel any pain or “crunchyness” in the low back). Lean back as far as you comfortably can without letting your hips fall back toward your feet. Think about lengthening reaching the crown of your head and top of your shoulders backwards, not just leaning back at the low back

3. Use your strong core to help lift your torso back to upright (neutral back). That’s one rep. Repeat for 5-10 reps

Need to make it easier? Instead of crossing your arms in front of your chest, place your hands on the back of your hips to support some of the weight of your backbend (and assist pushing your hips forwards). Although if you need this modification, your core and back might not be quite ready and strong enough for standing up from your bridge, so continue to work on your active back flexibility until you can do this exercise without the hand support.

Want to make it harder? Reach your arms up overhead (see “Straight-Arm Camel Drop Backs” below!)

2. Straight-Arm Camel Drop Backs & Lifts

Now let’s adjust our arms so that we’re in a similar shoulder position to our bridge: arms straight and shoulders externally rotated.

1. Start kneeling with hips lifted and your backside facing a wall, toes about 1-2 feet from the wall (it’ll take a bit of trial and error to find the right distance based on your body proportions and flexibility, so feel free to adjust as you do this exercise to find the best spot)

2. Reach both arms up overhead, externally rotating your shoulders so that your palms are facing in toward each other

3. Engage your core to protect your low back, and engage your glutes to press your hips forwards as you start to arch back, reaching your hands toward the wall behind you. Our goal is to use the wall as a “spot” that we can reach our hands to for a moment before lifting our torso back up to upright. Eventually as you build up the strength and flexibility, you won’t need the wall for support and you can reach your arms straight overhead and arch back to the floor. But for now, don’t be afraid to use the wall!

   • If you can’t reach the wall, scoot your legs back closer to the wall to start

   • If you can easily reach the wall and feel like you could walk your hands lower, scoot your legs farther from the wall so you can keep your arms straight for longer before you reach the wall.

   • If you are quite bendy, you can place blocks at the bottom of the wall and try to reach for the blocks. Or the level beyond that would be reaching hands down to the floor.

4. Once you can touch the wall (or blocks, or the floor), keep engaging your core and your glutes to push your torso back to upright. That’s one rep. Repeat for 5-8 reps

Want to make it harder? Elevate your knees on blocks (toes/feet can still stay on the floor), so that your starting position is lifted higher (and you have to backbend deeper to reach back to the floor).

3. Walking Hands Up the Wall

1. Start lying on your back, top of the head facing the wall. Push up into a bridge near the wall (or bridge-walk yourself a little closer to the wall) so that hands are just a couple of inches away from the wall to start

2. Lifting one arm, press that hand into the wall to start to lift your torso. Follow with the other hand

3. Slowly walk your arms up the wall, leaning into your hands if you need to. You’re also welcome to adjust the position of your feet (closer or father from the wall) if you feel like you get “stuck” part way up.

4. OPTIONAL: walk your hands back down when you get to the top

5. Repeat for 4-5 wall walk ups

4. Bridge Rocks

1. Start in a bridge and walk your feet a bit closer to your hands. You don’t want to be in your narrowest-humanly-possible bridge, aim for something that’s like 75% of how narrow you can go, the goal is to start feeling a bit of “springiness” in your bridge by taking your hands closer to your feet (without compromising strength/form)

2. From your slightly-narrower-than-normal-bridge, start to shift your weight forward and backward, pressing into your feet to rock more weight into your hands, then pressing into your hands to try and rock more weight into your feet

3. If these rocks are feeling good, you can try lifting up onto your fingertips for a moment as you rock toward your feet, or up onto your toes as you rock toward your hands

4. Repeat for 4-8 rocks back and forth

Give it a Try: Rocking Up to Standing

If those bridge rocks (exercise #4 above) are feeling strong, you can try to get enough momentum to rock up to standing! Word of caution: sometimes you really do spring on up with some elasticity/momentum, so I don’t recommend rocking with your toes close to a wall in case you accidentally rock to hard and launch your torso into the wall XD (not that I’m speaking from experience…).

Tips to Make It Easier

While none of these are really great proper bridge technique (in fact, they’re typically the opposite of what we try to do in a nice bridge), these can make rocking up easier:

• Take your feet wider than hip width apart - you can take them all the way out to the edges of your mat

• Let your hips externally rotate and point your toes more towards the outside

• Bend your knees forwards and squeeze your glutes!

• Try rocking with your hands on yoga blocks to start with a little lift to begin with

If All Else Fails… Fake It Until You Make It!

Now it’s time to try to press up to standing from a slightly easier version of our bridge: a tabletop. This still requires a lot of the same hip and core engagement as doing this from a traditional bridge (where we need more of a backbend and more shoulder flexibility), so it’s a good one to try first. It’s also a sneaky alternative if you can’t press up to standing from a “proper” bridge and still gets the job done!

1. Start in a “three legged” tabletop position with one hand on the floor and one arm lifted. You can either press your hips up from the floor, with feet planted under your knees and your support arm under your shoulder, or enter from a bridge by rotating your supporting arm’s fingers in toward your midline, reaching your lifting arm up, and dropping your hips to close the supporting arm shoulder

2. Walk your feet a little closer to your hands (this will make it easier to push up)

3. Pressing into your feet, letting your knees bend forwards, press into your supporting hand as you lift your free arm up and forwards to try and lift. Squeeze those glutes to try to carry your whole body up to standing

Just like with the bridge rocks exercise above, you can make this a bit easier to lift by taking your feet wider than hip width, and really externally rotating the hip (knees and toes splaying out to the sides). You can also start with your base hand on a block to start with your chest more lifted if you need a boost!