The videographer in me likes to keep things short and sweet. I have bored my share of innocent bystanders with lengthy depictions of some vision I had that I just had to share with someone else. This explanation is your warning. This is what I consider a boring video. It's more than 15 seconds long and documents a progression of unimpressive movements that eventually culminate in something really cool. You may want to just skip to the end if you're looking for a demonstration of "advanced" asana.
Okay, you've had your disclaimer. For the geeks that are still with me, I made this video for you. You asked me how it's possible for me to have a big back bend and a strong inversion practice. You asked me what postures and progressions would lead you to a happy back bend. Besides the obvious answer (Ashtanga) my typical answer is a marriage of yoga and acrobatics, discipline and play. Solitary physical strength and interpersonal surrender of ego. This is reflected in my asana practice. My baseline is Mysore. I build other aspects of my practice alongside it. Most of my videos are of extra curricular play.
This particular video happened after I was stuck in the car for a couple of hours and every muscle in my hips felt like it was glued to the bone, especially the psoas. I had about 30-40 minutes to stretch before getting right back into the car for another couple of hours. I challenged myself not to cut to the juicy, exciting bits where I look like I just walked in the door and jumped into an enormous back bend. Rather, I thought I'd show you my preferred path to get to that juicy, exciting back bend.
And I thought I'd include the follow up video that happened after the warm up; kapotasana and handstand scorpion.