Yes, you can get injured doing a headstand… especially if you take the name literally.

We can often gather information from the name of a posture. Sometimes embrace the quality or energy of the name, like Virabadrasana (Warrior). Sometimes the name is exactly what we should be doing. Shoulderstand comes to mind. It’s not neck stand after all is it?

Sometimes the English name is a little misguiding though. Headstand is one of those posture names that we probably don’t want to take to literally. We don’t really want to put all of our weight on our head do we? No, we don’t, if we do, we might end up being a statistic in a New York Times article.

When we think of headstand we should think that what we’re really wanting is to do a forearm balance with our head lightly touching. This is very hard to do as a beginner but we can certainly look at the anatomical components that create a firm foundation and steady posture.

Hand positions

The great debate is often which hand position to use? For me the answer is simple, the one that keeps the student the most steady and weight off of the head and neck. There is the classic interlaced finger where the palms are open and the top of the head is placed in the hands. The area above the forehead is what we place on the floor. This is the way I do my headstands.

In terms of popularity, this technique has been overtaken by the most popular hand position at present, which is to press the hands into a single fist and then place the top of the head on the floor between or on the forearms. There are variations in the arrangement of the pinky fingers, but either way, a closed fist headstand seems the more popular of the two.

I think the main reason for the popularity of the closed fist hand position is for the sake of alignment. If the head is in open hands then the back of the neck must shorten to place the top of the head in the hands. If you place the top of your head between your forearms, the neck stays in a neutral alignment. This would seem to transmit the force in a straight line through the head and neck.

That seems like a good reason to put the head between the forearms. After all we need a straight neck to do a headstand. Don’t we? Well, if you’re going to put your body weight onto the top of your head, then I couldn’t agree more, keep your head and neck straight so the weight passes through it in as straight a line as possible. But what if there’s no weight in your head? Does it matter?

In Practice

When I come across students who are doing headstand, I don’t change anything if they have built a strong and steady foundation. If they can hold headstand and not have very much weight on their head, then I don’t change it for the sake of having them do it the way I want.

The students that attract me to their headstand are the ones that either can’t do it at all, and have been trying for some time, or those that look wobbly. The wobbly ones make me a bit nervous and need some help. At first, I look to see what it is that is making them wobbly. Of course, I usually start at the foundation of their headstand. What hand position have they used?

I look at the base of a headstand from both a geometrical and anatomical point of view. My personal observation of one of the main changes between the hands being open and the hands closing to make a single fist is where the shoulders end up in relationship to the elbows below and the body above it. The further forward the head goes, as in the open handed set-up, the further forward the shoulders go. When the hands close to make a single fist, the head naturally moves back in space and the shoulders go with it.

At the moment, I firmly believe that this is one of the critical changes that accounts for whether or not someone is wobbling as they are up in their headstand as a beginner to the posture. I’m assuming for a moment that someone has developed or has enough strength in their shoulders to successfully do a headstand. I specify beginner because and advanced practitioner can usually do headstand with either hand position and just has a preference for one or the other.

Notice where the shoulders are relative to the elbows

Notice how the ribs have also popped out

There are two elements at play between these two types of hand positions. One is the shoulder position as I just mentioned. The second element is the head and whether it is up or down. As it turns out, they are intimately connected together.

I’ve already asserted that what we’re really after is a forearm balance with the head lightly touching. As a beginner to a forearm balance would you do it with your head up or down? I’m going to guess that your answer is head up. If you tried to hop up into a forearm balance with your head down in a straight line with the rest of your body I can imagine how easily you would go over your hands and onto you back. Can you imagine a similar thing happening in a handstand? The head looking forward and being up becomes a counter balance. I think there is a similar principle at play in our headstand.

Some time ago I wrote a newsletter article titled “So you want to do a handstand”. In this article, I discussed head and shoulder positioning and even connected a part of it (the pelvis) to a headstand. Think about these three postures I’ve mentioned, headstand, forearm balance, and handstand. Can you see a relationship between them that is a progression? If you were going to make a sequence of development, with which pose would it begin? I think it would go headstand, forearm balance, handstand, no?

When you are a beginner to any of these three postures, it’s easier to do the postures by allowing the shoulders to move further forward. As one advances it may be possible to have the shoulders back further. For instance, in handstand an advanced practitioner may be able to align their shoulder with the line of their arms below and body above. I’ll guess that when they started their shoulders were out in front of their wrist a bit. They evolved or progressed to the more advanced alignment. I believe this process to be true of either forearm balance or headstand as well.

As I said, there are two elements, the shoulder and head position. If the shoulders go forward so does the head. If the head lifts and goes forward so do the shoulders. If we place our hands behind a closed fist our shoulders are naturally further back than they would be if our hands were open. With the shoulders further back and the head pointing down it the shoulder is sitting right above the elbows and the body aligned right above that. I think that in this case it is much easier to end up going over your head and crashing down.

There is an anatomical proportion at play here. It’s simple enough and divides the world into those who can more easily do either one of the two types of hand positions in their headstand. Those with proportionally short upper arms relative to their lower arms will usually have a much easier time doing the type of headstand where the hands sit behind the closed fist. Because the upper arms are shorter it still takes the shoulders forward enough to engage the right tissues in the shoulder complex. If they were to open their hands and put the top of their head in them, their shoulders might actually end up too far forward and throw off balance in that direction.

The opposite is also true. If you have long upper arms relative to your shorter forearm you will probably have an easier time with an open handed headstand. In this case, if you were to put your head on the floor behind a closed double fist, your shoulders might end up so far back that you begin to teeter on your elbows. In a sense, you become too aligned for the tissues to be able to engage and counteract any tilt forward or backward.

For those of us with more or less equal proportions we can probably do either of the two hand positions. Possibly depending on slight differences in proportion we will have a preference for one or the other.

Shoulder Forward

Why does the shoulder forward have so much importance? It really has to do with how it causes our body to respond and react. In the handstanding newsletter as well as the Chaturanga newsletter I wrote at length about serratus anterior muscle. Revisit them if you need to. As our body moves forward through the shoulders the body has to engage the muscles to prevent us from collapsing forward at the shoulder joint. I might compare it to how the body uses the quadriceps in warrior pose to prevent us from falling forward through our front knee. There is a natural pushing back and engagement that happens at both of these places. This push back creates stability and strength. What it really is, is our response to body weight and gravity!

If however our shoulders aren’t forward, then this pattern isn’t triggered in the same way. You can see this in the beginners to headstand sometimes when the top of their head is on the floor between a double fist and they go up into a headstand. If they are totally wobbling around then their shoulders never really engage in a stability kind of way. Even though the idea is that they will not be placing weight on their head, they are completely putting weigh on it, and it’s obvious because the elbows are coming off of the floor sometimes. This is a definite indication that something has to change.

There are other effects on other tissues that also get missed. For instance I never let beginners go over to a wall and kick up into headstand. They miss out on using their abdominal muscles. Then when they need them they are not there.

Anatomical Components

When we say we need arm strength for headstand, what do we mean? Where does the strength come from? What is the foundation that is established to physically allow us to do a headstand as if we were doing a forearm balance with our head lightly touching?

The shoulder complex is the source of strength at the foundation. Once we put our hands into the headstand position we are upwardly rotating and protracting our scapula. If you followed along in the handstand article then you know that the strongest muscle for these actions is the serratus anterior. This is exactly why we need to orient our perspective to see how similar headstand, forearm balance, and handstand all are to one another.

When we hear or give the instruction of moving the scapulae down the back for a headstand, what we really mean is the anatomical movement of protraction and upward rotation. Because of our positioning, when we do this it lightens the load on our head and at the same time does draw our shoulders down relative to the line of our body. The feeling of drawing the scapulae down the back is what it feels like, but the anatomical reality is just slightly different.

The way I often express this to students to get them to do what I want is to ask them to try and lift their heads off the floor without it coming all the way off. Give it a try and you’ll probably see the scapulae move as you want them to. Sometimes words can get in the way and when you’re upside down it’s harder to understand directions to move parts up or down.

There is always more to say about headstand but I wanted to put this part of it out because we can miss out on seeing the individual for who they are so easily as we teach. Neither hand position is right or wrong, we should stop thinking that things are so black and white, they’re not. In both of the images above I have the same amount of weight in my head, almost none! Steady as we go in headstand; establish the appropriate foundation for beginners of headstands. Complete beginners of yoga have no business doing this pose anyway! They’ll also end up as a New York Times statistic!

It is disheartening to see the New York Times come out with yet another article that seems to completely miss the point of yoga. I think this one is worse than the last, which described a woman going to yoga and eventually realizing that cross training would lead to smaller sized clothing than if she only did yoga. I can only imagine how these NYT articles are put together and why. Picking quotes and statistics that fit the agenda of the author perhaps? What is the point exactly of this article, to warn people to not try or practice yoga? Is it to break up certain myths surrounding yoga?

A couple of students have asked me to weigh in on this, so here we go.

The first thing that I noticed was that yoga was simply reduced to an exercise method. They might as well have been talking about aerobics, spinning, or just a general fitness class. This part by itself is not surprising, and slightly less concerning than the rest of the article. But, if you’re going to reduce it to the context of exercise, then please compare the injuries, their percentages, rates etc… along with those of what you, the author of the article, has reduced it to. I wonder what the stats are for injuries in other sports? I found this list rather quickly on the web.

The following table of injuries is based on 2006 data compiled by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS).

In the article they listed the worst of injuries from a WORLDWIDE study of yoga in 2009 and found a total of 734 (I added them together) serious injuries. I don’t know what that number would rise to compared to the 2006 numbers above, which were limited to the US and included more than just serious injuries.

There is something else that is underlying all of this in my opinion. It is the perceived purpose of asana. Is it exercise? Is it therapy? Is it a spiritual practice? The worldwide winner seems to be that it is therapeutic exercise. The idea being that you can do yoga to heal your injuries. This certainly isn’t completely false. In fact, practicing yoga asana may very well get rid of a number of injuries or physical issues that you have. I wonder why there weren’t any statistics or interviews with people who have actually gotten better from doing yoga? Probably too many people to interview.

However, the exercise therapy side has been exploited and sold to the masses. Creating the idea that if one feels any sensation when practicing asana, it’s “wrong”. If an injury occurs while practicing asana, you’re an “ego-maniac” and you must not understand the first thing about “ahimsa”. Such stories go around. At the end of the day, it is a spiritual path that uses a physical practice (body), and has a side benefit of being therapeutic.

Isn’t the real purpose of asana to prepare the body and mind for meditation? We could take this one aspect much deeper. If you start off with the mindset that its purpose is therapeutic than it is ridiculous if someone says that have injured themselves doing therapy. In this article, they don’t even give yoga credit as something therapeutic but it seems to be underlying the mindset of the teacher if not the author. There is this sense of “how dare yoga injure anyone!” “How appalling that injury could or should occur when doing something as therapeutic as yoga.”

Well… um… it’s kind of an intensely physical activity, so the likelihood of physical injury tends to go up if you’re doing intensely physical things. Whether it’s yoga or not.

Can you get injured while doing yoga? Yes of course you can, why does everyone pretend that you can’t. Do we try to injure ourselves in practice? Of course not! Does it happen, sure. Hopefully it doesn’t happen regularly and if it does, check yourself or find a new teacher!

I really enjoyed the teacher’s remedy for people getting injured… make the class ridiculously hard! Really? I guess I understand his intention, to get people to take responsibility for their own actions in their practice. This was another observation I made. All of the injuries were a result of the person doing the asana. Yet the person is never blamed, only the asana. in this case, yoga in general is blamed as the culprit. Not the individual’s physical history, their age, weight, general health. None of that is ever mentioned to put the individual and their injury in perspective relative to the asana that is blamed for their injury.

The truth is that the asana, the method, the system, is completely neutral. It is us who colors all of these things with our understandings, misunderstandings, physical limitations, attitude etc… The asana doesn’t exist until WE do it. WE are ultimately responsible for what we choose to do with our body.

I think students often do WANT too much too quickly. This is an important part of why people are getting injured practicing yoga. Not to mention that there are just simply more people doing yoga! The other is that it is also the responsibility of the teacher to teach students according to their individuality and lifestyle and stop people from doing things that they and their body are not ready to do safely.

Ah, I said it, the safe word. Safety, safely, safe. It’s an illusion. No one can predict what’s going to happen to someone, either in a good way or a bad way. The same pose that can heal you can also harm you! The difference is YOU! Sometimes injuries happen unexpectedly, accidently, and all we can do is make up stories about how it happened and why.

If you want to know how to do asana and yoga in general as safely as possible than maybe this list will help.

First, as the scriptures say… find the most qualified teacher in your area. This is not necessarily the one who can do the most tricks, sound the most spiritual, and be the most popular one on youtube. Although they might be good teachers also.

Second, study and practice with them as deeply as possible.

Third, Also go to their teacher

Fourth, stay as present as you can with what you’re doing.

Fifth, see that it’s you that creates everything, including the asana.

Sixth, practice consistently, and don’t make yoga an exercise regime that you do once or twice a week.

Seventh, BREATHE!

I could go on about the state of yoga in the US. Read Eddie Stern’s response to the article as he talks about the Mcdonification of Yoga.

This article simply went too far. So far it’s actually ridiculous. Don’t let it shake your faith and dedication to your practice. There is nothing here except for exceptions to the norm, and the norm is that yoga when practiced consistently leads to personal evolution. If you’re stuck worrying about the physical, then there you are, stuck worrying about the physical. So says the anatomy guy! HA!

I wasn’t going to make this a “post” but I’ve never gotten so many email replies to a newsletter.

Here are a few additional Links that aren’t in the official newsletter as it went out.

Oz’s Facebook

Where she taught in London

Her Bubble of Happiness website

 I guess I should say… Happy New Year!

I’m in a rather reflective mood and a little bit down. I know that many of you are on this list because you want some yoga anatomy information. You’ll have to accept my apologies this time around because I don’t have an anatomy article for you. Actually, I have one, but it remains in a word file. You’ll have one next month, I promise.

A friend of mine from London, Ozge Karabiyik, “Oz” passed away on New Years day. A few days earlier while in India, she fainted, hit her head, slipped into a coma and then within a few days slipped away completely.

With this event surrounding my New Year, the thought of sending out a newsletter that spoke of the gross anatomy felt small, simplistic, and perhaps even a bit fake. What about the bigger yoga?

After all, we’re all aspiring yogis and yoginis aren’t we? This tragedy makes me think about a theme that has come up in my life over and over again and how it relates to our yoga practice. The theme is the balance between being a spiritual being and being a human being. In this case the spiritual side of me, knows that Oz has simply changed states or form, not destroyed, not gone just perhaps expressing itself as a different aspect of consciousness, who can really say for sure.

This perspective is certainly comforting. But then there is the human side. I would not call myself a particularly emotional person but I definitely feel the sadness that has come along with Oz’s passing, the thought of my own mortality perhaps and the questions that then arise about my life. How will the spiritual and the human parts of me live out the rest of my life?

I think that Oz’s last gift to me personally was this reflective mood. She has unknowingly reminded me that my spirituality and humanness are of course intertwined. I know that if I come too much from the spiritual side, I lose some of my human quality. I can seem aloof and uncaring; I know this because it’s been reflected back to me more than once. The fact that I feel this sadness might be a good indication that I’m more balanced at the moment.

I feel like our yoga practice reflects this interaction between spirituality and humanness. There is the obvious physical work and rigor, reminding us just how human we are. At the same time this physical work opens up and stimulates thoughts of the spiritual component of who we are as well. Reflecting back the balance of the two in our lives.

Whenever anyone that we know passes away it can make us reflect and take stock in what we have, what we want, what we don’t want, what is important to us, etc. Oz was young and vivacious and although her life was rather short, from my point of view she lived a full one.

I recall a number of conferences with Sri K. Pattabhi Jois where he would say something to the effect of: “You taking life, taking man’s body, DON’T WASTE!”

Oz didn’t. Her passing has forced me to ask myself how I can be more. More loving toward my wife, more compassionate toward those in need, more giving with my gifts, more fruitful in my endeavors, and generally being a productive spiritual and human being.
Oz always struck me as someone who gave, who shared and offered herself to those around her without really wanting anything in return.

I’ll just remind you (and myself) to use our asana practice as a vehicle and a tool. Don’t be limited by it, get stuck in it, or feel like it is the ultimate practice. It isn’t, life is! Live it to your fullest, whatever that is for you! Oz did. She will be missed by many.

Om Shanti,
David Keil

This month’s newsletter article comes out of a recent trip to the Midwest. I was at a new studio with new students and hosts. This piece is actually a request from one of the hosts, Evan at Tapas Yoga Shala. As always on the first day of practice, I mostly watch and get a sense for what I want to work on with any of the students over the course of the 5 days of mysore classes.

From my point of view there is nothing more interesting than the work of observing the person, their practice, its quality, clarity, focus or complete lack thereof. I watch through the lens of my own experience and understanding of both the practice and my anatomical education and understanding. By nature I’m a problem solver, just ask any of the hosts that have had me fix their computer, network connection, or printer trouble on top of my normal presentations of anatomy or Ashtanga Yoga. It’s a similar approach that I took when doing bodywork and therapy with clients in chronic pain. I would try to understand the problem, and treat it, not just the symptom.

In terms of the practice however, I don’t see things as broken and must be fixed. Things are not so black and white. In the practice and development of asana practice there are stages, levels, understandings, realizations, and deeper awareness on many levels. Instead of black and white issues, I see patterns. Patterns that are either assisting someone in their personal evolution through their practice or getting in the way. This point of view allows space for the individual’s own progression through an individual asana or an entire practice.

It’s when patterns are getting in the way at any level that I decide I want to do something about it. These are patterns that for one reason or another I want to shift, nudge, or completely change based on a number of factors. They can also be on any level, physical, mental, emotional, or energetic. Enter the over squeezed buttocks!

Now, I’m guessing that Evan won’t mind me using his name in print, and hopefully I’m right. The truth is, he’s an advanced practitioner and any changes to his practice were simply detailed nudges that I wanted to make, not major changes at all. The nudge and the work required, subtle and simple changes. As we all know, subtle work in yoga practice can be the most difficult.

The only pattern that I really noticed was “squeezing of the buttocks”. It is a common enough pattern to observe in our own practice or in our student’s practice. Some teachers say to squeeze your bottom tightly in your up dog, others to totally relax it in your up dog. My question is why do either? What are the reasons for advocating either and more importantly, how does it relate to the rest of the practitioners practice?

On that first day watching Evan go through his practice, I realized that I would probably just adjust him in some of his more advanced asana and support what he was already doing. I did notice that he contracted his buttocks kind of strongly in his up dog, but was happy enough to wait and see how things evolved. After all, squeezing to that degree may actually be exactly how Evan needed to do his up dog.

It wasn’t until I saw him doing his backbends and then his drop-backs from standing into a backbend at the end of his practice that I realized that I would intervene and nudge this pattern a bit and see what happened.

What I noticed in his backbend at this point were common patterns that we see in many backbends. Evan was not doing any of this to an extreme; in fact it was minor but obvious enough to me. The first pattern in the backbend itself was where the knees were in space relative to the feet and ankles. They were in front of them by a few inches. This tells me that there is still work to do on the hip flexors such as the quadriceps, adductors, and psoas as well as the shoulders potentially. In addition, the knees tended to be a bit wide relative to the feet. This is another sign to me that the hip flexors need to be more open.

Why are both of these indications of tight hip flexors? The body unconsciously resists the knees moving toward the shoulder end of the pose when the hip flexors are tight. It does this because the more you straighten your leg with tight hip flexors the more likely you will get compression in your lower back because the tension tends to pull the pelvis down and forward adding to a stronger lumbar curve.

When the knees are falling out a bit it’s a way for the body to unconsciously avoid the tension that remains in the hip flexors. As they fall out, the line of pull that the hip flexors have on the pelvis gets put at an angle, reducing the effect of these tissues pulling the front of the pelvis down and forward. If the knees come into line the tension usually increases and places more pressure on the front of the pelvis, which leads to more pressure in the lower back.

What was interesting is that the same pattern of knees falling out tends to be used as a tool for dropping back from a standing to backbend position. People spread their feet wide (he wasn’t), and let the knees fall out to avoid the pressure in the lower back and the tight hip flexors and even use the outer edge of the foot as a fulcrum for dropping back and coming back up (he wasn’t doing this). His feet did turn out slightly but not near the point of teetering on them.

This type of drop-back is a neuromuscular pattern. It makes the legs go wide and externally rotate. Enter the gluteals and deep external rotators. The most obvious is the gluteus maximus, which is designed for powerful hip extension and external rotation. The deeper gluteals are abductors as well as external rotators when their most posterior portion contracts.

I hate to use the words every time, however, almost every time you find someone with their knees wide in a backbend or a drop back you are going to find a buttocks that is also extremely tight. When the buttocks is overly engaged it will abduct the femur and external rotate it. It is difficult to balance the gluteals ability to help extend the joint and at the same time not adding too much external rotation.

Why Squeeze?

Well there are good arguments to be made on this end. The most obvious is that by engaging your gluteals and buttocks muscles in general, you encourage more hip extension, which is needed for a deep backbend. This is true. The gluteals help create hip extension which in turn leads to a deeper backbend.

I have also heard from a few students, not many, but a few, that squeezing their buttocks actually releases their back. It’s hard to argue with someone’s personal experience, especially when they have an established practice. People do have different anatomy and this may be the simple answer to why people have different experiences of doing the same thing in their practice.

We could also argue for squeezing in another way. We could encourage engaging the adductors of the thigh to undo the overly tight buttocks. The adductors are known for being both adductors as well as internal rotators of the hip joint. The exact opposite of what we find from the gluteals. Perhaps working them together balances the leg in the middle of the two extremes. The idea would be that we take advantage of the gluteals ability to help extend the hip joint, but not let it use it’s function as an external rotator. Subtle, but possible.

Why Not Squeeze?

The answers that come up for me surrounding this question is first, how the squeezing fits into the rest of the persons practice and their own experience of it. In other words, does it lead to other “negative” patterns? Negative is on a continuum here, not a static negative or bad thing.

I might ask other questions or observe other parts surrounding the squeezing of the buttocks. In up dog, does it make it seem like the person is only bending in their lower back? Personally I like to see an integrated movement through the spine, which includes as much upper back as possible.

Does the buttocks contract at the beginning or at the end of the up dog movement? If it’s at the beginning than I see this as the buttocks leading the movement and not accentuating the depth of the up dog as it might if it were happening at the end of the movement.

More importantly, does the squeezing in a place like up dog then train these muscles to contract in places where they either don’t need to? Such as a drop back, or the entire time you’re in a backbend. In these moments does that pattern then lead to a further avoidance of the hip flexors that actually need to be lengthened more anyway?

Tying it Together

So it’s what I see in the bigger picture that directs me to make changes on a pose-by-pose basis. There are two main patterns in the bigger picture that tend to make me work with people and relaxing their buttocks more. The first is the bigger back bending picture and the signs are what we’ve already discussed.

The second is for those students (usually beginners and often runners or athletes) who have really tight hips. As I’ve already shown in the lotus prep video, the gluteals and deep rotators are highly involved in lotus type postures. Every time these students contract their buttocks in an upward facing dog or a backbend, they are encouraging tension into the very muscles that need more softness and length to do the lotus type postures.

For Evan, who is already aware of and has already done loads of work on this pattern, the question becomes can we un-train that pattern of buttocks contraction to the next level. The start of the undoing can happen in upward facing dog. Is it necessary to squeeze your buttocks there? No. I don’t think it is. Does this mean you shouldn’t? No. It doesn’t, it’s about how and when you do it that is creating a pattern and whether or not that pattern is manifesting itself negatively in other places. If it were a brief squeeze at the end of an up dog, I wouldn’t change a thing unless the person had some complaint or injury that might be related to it.

Could Evan shut off his gluteals when he was in his backbend and/or dropping back? Yes he could. Did it reduce the amount of outward rotation and abduction in his legs as he dropped back? It did. Was it harder to do this way? Yes, especially when it’s different than the way you’ve been doing it for years. Could he maintain that without my hands helping to hold his thighs in and internally rotated, not sure but at least he has something to work on!

With this method the group of students each practice at their own pace without being guided through each pose by the teacher throughout the class. It’s not a led or guided class where everyone is doing the same pose at the very same moment. Everyone still does the same poses, just at his or her own pace. This allows for a deeper connection to develop between teacher, student, and the practice. With only four students in the room there is plenty of individual attention that is given to each student. It’s almost like having a private lesson in a group setting. Over five days of daily practice the student begins to go through a process and grows within their practice, this comes from the amount of attention, the discipline and the dedication of practicing daily, the effects will encourage and inspire you. Knowing the practice of Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga is not a requirement, only being open minded and receptive to learning is required.

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Interviews About Mysore – What it is etc…

These elements are vinyasa/breath, bandha, dristhi, and asana. It’s one thing to know what these words mean, and another to have an experience of them. We will be doing small pieces of practice to illustrate the concepts and practices that lead to an actual experience of these elements. We will also take a look at why this method is so often misunderstood. Bring your skepticism and judgements if you wish.

The intention in this workshop is to create a perspective and understanding of the practice that allows us to appreciate it. The practice is mostly misunderstood by people who have not practiced it. When I use the term practice, I don’t mean going to a led primary series class and thinking that one has practiced it. What I mean is a minimum of 5 days of practice in a row, with a teacher who can transmit the essential points of the practice that leads one to an EXPERIENCE of the practice.

Ashtanga is much more than doing the postures in a particular sequence.

This is a lecture based workshop and aimed at those who have an open mind and a desire to understand the system in a way that enhances whatever method of practice they choose to participate in.

In this segment of the workshop we will first take a broad perspective of what the purpose of yoga asana is and how bandhas fit into it. In order to do this we will look at the physical aspects of the bandhas as well as access points in the practice, and how breathing relates to creating the energetic fuel for the bandhas. All of this will be employed through practical exercises to have an experience with.

If you can understand this layer of the practice, a whole new level of discipline and focus can be accessed. A new appreciation for the method and its intricacies and what you’re doing relative to the practice will be understood.

In this workshops we’ll spend time learning how to count, and how we can use it in the practice to bring yet another level of focus and depth to what we’re doing.

The intention is not that everyone leaves being able to count the whole of primary series. Instead we plant a seed of inquiry and just enough experience that one can go off and learn the count if they choose.

The idea is that the teacher is like a conductor of an orchestra, keeping pace and rhythm for the entire group. This happens through what is known as Vinyasa Krama or Vinyasa counting. Sanskrit is the language of our teachers from India and the entire class is counted in sanskrit including the names of the postures.

This is a very traditional rendition of the primary series that will inspire discipline, focus and an awareness of your breath like you’ve probably never experienced. Not for complete beginners.

The information is always presented in a simple and straightforward manner, as opposed to many other anatomy workshops students have attended. This workshop gives participants an opportunity to understand concepts and principles that apply directly to yoga and are often talked about but less often fully understood.

It begins with a fundamental shift in how the body is constructed and how it is discussed in Western scientific terms, which has both its positives and negatives. It’s important to understand how the Western concept of the body can be used to help clarify and process what we’re doing in our asana practice. Combining that understanding with yogic principles makes for a well-rounded perspective of what’s happening in our bodies and why it may benefit us.

The beginning of the workshop also creates a sense of how well integrated the body is and defines the four components that allow, restrict and create movement in the body, namely the skeletal, muscular, connective tissue and nervous systems. Just understanding the nature of these components and how they function together creates a very dramatic shift in understanding movement and the practice of asana.

In the second segment of the workshop we explore the leg as a whole as well as looking at the major structures that make it up, including the foot, ankle, knee, and hip joint.

In the foot we look at the arches, how they develop and play themselves out in our practice and what they represent. With the knee we focus on structure and function of this somewhat vulnerable joint and to that end we look closely at its dysfunctions, how they show themselves in the practice, and what to do with it in the practice to prevent further dysfunction.

In the third segment of the workshop we bring our focus to the center of our body’s structure, the spine and the psoas. The spine is the central structure of our torso and the line along which the energetic centers of the body align themselves. As a result, understanding the movements, structures and functions of this joint become essential on all levels of the practice of asana. Movements of the spine and the asanas that go with it can have a significant impact on the movement of energy in the body.

Tying into this idea is the psoas muscle that would be considered the single most important structural and postural muscle of the body. It is located around some of the most important of the energetic centers, and sandwiches the spine on either side, initiating flexion or forward movement of the legs.

The last segment of the workshop covers breath and arms. Breathing is fundamental to life as only a few minutes without it can put is in a very precarious situation. Breath is also an important focal point for concentration and meditation and is one of the most commonly used elements used to bridge together mind and body.

The shoulders and arms are our most mobile elements, with increased range of motion comes a loss of stability and more muscular effort to find it. Understanding the complicated combinations of joints at that create the shoulder girdle is the main focus here until we get down to the hand and wrist where common strain may be a problem for practitioners.

Outline of Workshop

Anatomical Ideas

• description of basic movements in the body and examples in yoga
• connective tissue as a system and its various forms and purpose
• how connective tissue intimately relates to flexibility
• muscular system overview, its workings, function and dysfunction
• integrated view of nervous system and muscular system
• overview of the skeletal system

Exploring the Leg

• discussion of the feet including the arches, ankles and how this feeds the standing postures
• overview of the knee, its major functions and dysfunctions including the four major ligaments: ACL, PCL, MCL, and LCL
• the knee and lotus, how it often gets into trouble in this pose, what to do, and how to help others
• structure of the pelvis including the SI joint
• The hip joint and what makes it so tight and how that effects the knee and spine

Psoas and Spine

• naming the various parts of the spine
• what movements happen where in the spine
• the discs, their functions and dysfunctions
• learn exactly where your psoas is
• find out what the real relationship is between the psoas, energy and movement
• lean how to integrate the psoas into your practice

Breathing and Arms

• anatomical breakdown of the shoulder girdle
• rotator cuff muscles, their function and location
• the integrated movement of the clavicle, scapula and humerus
• dealing with shoulder and wrist problems
• diaphragm anatomy and function
• relationship of the psoas and breathing