Yoga, anatomy, asana and alignment

Teaching anatomy at Mudra Yoga in London

I teach yoga classes, and I also separately teach anatomy classes to yoga teachers or people training to become yoga teachers. Those classes are different from each other even though they overlap. Here are my thoughts on anatomy and its place in yoga.

Yoga is a practice of self-discovery and transformation. A key tenet of this practice is increasing awareness of our unconscious patterns of behaviour (in Sanskrit called samskaras) and replacing those that do not serve us with different, conscious patterns in order to prevent future pain from manifesting (as instructed by Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra 2 verse 16). The modern, westernized approach to yoga centres asana as its main tool but that is not the only tool at our disposal as yoga practitioners (think also of mantra, pranayama, kriya etc). Since asana is a physical tool involving the body it is useful to know about anatomy and physiology as a way of:

• deepening our self-knowledge

• understanding experiences that we may have during an asana practice

• potentially limiting the likelihood of any injury arising (since any movement discipline can give rise to injury…. But we also know that as a general rule your body wants to move and is much happier when it does!). 

Since each person’s body is different, the way they express and experience each pose will be different. No two people will look or feel the same in triangle pose, or warrior 2. So there won’t be any alignment cues that any teacher can give that will work for every single person’s body. But these types of cues can help you:

• learn to observe unconscious patterns in your body (eg do I normally lean all my weight on to the outside of my front foot in trikonasana/ triangle pose?) 

• learn to potentially replace them with conscious patterns (eg can I instead keep my weight centred on that front foot by anchoring down through my big toe and engaging the outer arch of my foot?)

• learn more about your body and how its different parts work, both separately and as part of the whole system (eg when I engage the outer arch of my foot can I feel how that also switches on tissues around my ankle, up my outer shin and all the way up to outer hip?)

We can also relate this theme of replacing old patterns with new, more useful ones to overuse injuries that come up in the body and will only be solved by changing what we’re doing.

This is how anatomical knowledge can serve the practice of yoga. Movement and making shapes are in no way the entirety of what this vast and ancient discipline can offer or the end goal in themselves.

Yoga is an ancient practice that has been handed down from teacher to students over generations. I’ve had many wonderful teachers, some of whom teach yoga and some don’t. I’ve been guided in forming these views by two of my main yoga teachers, Jason Crandell and Bridget Woods Kramer.

Your feet

We've started this year by focusing on feet. There are two techniques we've been working with: firstly, imagining three main points of contact between the sole of your foot and the floor (the base of your big toe, the base of your little toe and the centre of your heel) and feeling how the weight is distributed across those three points. Secondly, trying to feel the arches in your feet - particularly your inner arch (on the image here called your medial longitudinal arch) and outer (aka lateral longitudinal) arch and seeing if we can engage the tissues in the arches of your feet. If you’re not sure what it feels like when your arches engage, try this: place your foot on a tea towel or small cloth. While keeping your toes and heel on the cloth, try and scrunch the cloth up using your toes and then flatten it again. Keep doing that for perhaps 30 seconds or so and see if you start to feel the muscles in the sole of your feet switching on. You can also try rocking your weight from inner to outer edges of your feet without letting your toes lift. As you roll to the outside of your feet can you feel inner arches lifting? And vice versa?

There have been some postures where lots of people in class have found similar patterns of how they've been accidentally leaning on to one side of their foot or the other. Here are the three most common ones that have come up:

Triangle pose

In triangle pose, turn your head to look at your front foot. Notice if you’re leaning more or one side or the other. Slightly more common is to lean on to the outer edge (ie little toe side), but leaning on your big toe isn’t unusual either. If you feel like you’re leaving on one side of your foot, can you engage the arch on that side of your foot and press down through your opposite toe? So, for example, if you find yourself tending to lean on the little toe side of your foot can you try to engage or lift your outer/ lateral longitudinal arch and press down through the base of your big toe joint?

Revolved triangle

Again, turn your head to look at your front foot. From the bodies I’ve observed over the years, it seems more common to lean on the outer edge (ie little toe side) of your front foot. Do you feel that in your body? Is your front big toe lifting a bit? If so, try to engage or lift your outer/ lateral longitudinal arch and press down through the base of your big toe joint. See if working your front foot like that makes you feel more balanced. And perhaps when you try this posture on the other side, set your feet in that way before you twist and see if the posture feels different.

Reverse warrior

In reverse warrior, the opposite pattern of weight shifting is more common compared to that we saw in revolved triangle. Come into this shape as you normally would, and then take your attention to your front leg. Does it feel like there’s more weight on your front big toe? If so, it might indicate that your front knee is leaning in a bit. If you feel that, try pressing down your little toe and seeing if you can engage or slightly lift your inner arch. And when you do the other side, before you reach your front arm up and back perhaps try working your front foot in that same way to preempt your front knee turning in. Or if you’re not sure if your front knee turns in when you do this pose, try videoing yourself doing it to see. Set your camera at the front of your mat for the best angle!

Let me know if you found any of the same patterns in your body and if the above tips helped. Or comment below if you have any questions 🙂

RESOLUTIONS FOR 2021

Tbh I’m not amazing at keeping New Years resolutions. I normally make them at the beginning of the month and they gradually drift by about March. So this year I’ve taken a bit longer to think about them, and since today is meant to be Blue Monday (the depressing day in January, not the New Order classic 🎶) I reckon if they seem like a good idea today maybe these ones will last. I’m setting myself three, and have added the names of the wonderful teachers who they’ve been inspired by in case you want to check them out too:

• Do more training with teachers that don’t look like me and/or have different backgrounds to me - first stop will be Kallie Schut for part two of her course on decolonising yoga

• Keep working on my teaching skills so that my classes are increasingly accessible for people with injuries/ conditions/ something that limits them, while still being interesting for those who like a challenge - for this I’m studying with Alexandria Crow throughout 2021

• Stop saying ‘namaste’ at the end of class, after having listened to and read work by Susanna Barkataki.

And since it is Blue Monday, just a reminder that if you’re feeling blue and fancy joining class but can’t afford to atm, please send me a message 💙