Unit 3: Strength, Flexibility, and Movementmedia.yogaanatomy.net/fundamentals-new/unit-3... · Unit...

Unit 3: Strength, Flexibility, and Movement

Module # Topic Timestamp Page #

3.1 Somatization: A Little Movement in a Lot of Places 00:01:02 1

3.2 A Joint is a Relationship 00:07:10 1

3.3 Geek Out: Anatomy of a Synovial Joint 00:11:07 2

3.4 Articulating vs. Moving Through Space 00:18:14 4

3.5 Balanced Joint Space 00:19:42 4

3.6 The Knee: More than Hinge Joint 00:35:32 6

3.7 Muscle Contractions 00:37:24 7

3.8 Muscle Relationships 00:41:39 8

3.9 Range of Motion 00:52:04 10

3.10 Flexibility: Nature or Nurture? 01:00:24 13

3.11 Proprioception: Expanding the Definition 01:12:05 17

3.12 Workshop: Forward Bends & Distribution of Movement • One-on-One: Leslie & student who feels “tight” • One-on-One: Amy & student who feels “tight” • One-on-One: Leslie adds a breath experiment • One-on-One: Amy & student who feels “floppy” • One-on-One: Leslie adds a breath experiment • Group Movement Experience

01:21:40 01:22:33 01:31:40 01:42:46 01:45:46 02:00:45 02:04:03

18 19 23 25 26 30 32

3.13 Why Do Your Yoga? 02:11:23 32

Review Unit 3: In Review 02:14:20 33


[Timestamp 00:00:00]

Narrator: Welcome back to YogaAnatomy.net Fundamentals. This is Unit 3, Strength, Flexibility and Movement. In the previous units we’ve set up the foundations of our anatomical knowledge. We have looked at connective tissue, bones, and muscles and learned about how they interact. In this unit we're going to look at how these tissues come together in our body to create movement and provide support.

Module 3.1 Somatization: A Little Movement in a Lot of Places


Amy: So lie down on your backs with your knees bent. And you might just want to stagger yourselves a little bit if you're near anything. See if you can have room to sway your knees side to side. Then, as you get yourself settled, turn your attention inward. Feel the weight of your bones, your fluids. Feel the movement of your breath. See where you notice the movement of your breath. Is there one spot you notice the most movement? Is there one spot that seems to accumulate all of the movement? Is it possible to instead spread the movement out? What do you engage and what do you release to spread the movement of your breath through your body?

Bring your attention to your spine. See what you feel or imagine of your spine in this moment. Then sway your knees to one side. So if your knees are together and your feet are apart you might bring your feet a little closer to each other, and then let your knees fall to one side or sway a little bit. They can go as far as you want. And then bring them back. This question is gonna be about doing the movement and noticing where in your spine you feel the movement that results from your knees going to one side and then to the other. So they might come all the way to the floor. They might not come all the way to the floor. Wherever it feels like an interesting amount of movement in your spine, see, do you feel all of that movement in one area? Can you entertain the idea of doing a little bit of movement in a lot of places along the length of your spine, so that there is not one place that moves the most?

If you find that when you do the movement a certain size, like, if you do a big movement, that all of the movement in your joints happens in one place, you might make the movement a little smaller. You might contain the overall movements and see if you can distribute those little joint movements to other places. Maybe to less familiar places. So you may feel less movement in the places where you usually feel a lot of movement. It may diminish your overall range. But you might also find that doing less movement in the places where you usually move a lot lets you find more movement choices where you don't usually move and might, without increasing the sensation of movement, actually increase your range.

When you feel balance between the two sides, find your way back to the center. Observe the movement of your breath here again. Then find your way back up to sitting. Okay.

Module 3.2 A Joint is a Relationship


Leslie: To begin our discussion of joints, let's look at the word ‘joint.’ It really is just another way of spelling the word ‘joined,’ and that tells you something very important about a joint. It tells you that it's not really a thing. The word itself, we tend to use it as a noun, like, here is the knee joint or here is a knee joint. Well, it's a model of a knee joint, which is clearly a thing, an object I can pick up and put down. But

YogaAnatomy.net Fundamentals—Unit 3: Strength, Flexibility, and Movement Page ! of !1 34


it's actually more of a verb, joined. What that means is that a joint is a relationship. This is very important. All of the attributes that make any kind of relationship healthy apply to the relationships that we call joints in the body.

This brings us back to the terminology we developed earlier of sthira and sukha. What does that mean? Well, a joint in the body is a relationship between two or more elements that are connected and yet have some movement available to them. The ways in which they are connected provide both limits and possibilities. Limits to movement and possibilities for movement. So we could say that the space within a joint is the sukha, hopefully, the good space. Or, as Amy will tell you, the balanced space in a joint. The sthira is the stability. It's the boundaries. It's the limits. It's where a joint will not go or maybe should not go, and, for many of us, cannot go because of restrictions that are built into the structure of the particular joint we will be looking at.

So this is a very important overall concept to keep in mind. That a joint is not a thing. A joint is a relationship. It is a joining of two or more elements. If you think about what makes any relationship healthy, it's a balance between the sthira and the sukha. It's a balance between the space and the boundaries. Think of your interpersonal relationships and how, when they are working well, there is a sense of self and containment. This is where I begin and this is where I end, and this is where the other person begins and ends and this is how, from that place of knowing what our limits are, we can have a relationship. That's very different than the thing that often gets referred to as co-dependency, where you lose that ability to know where you begin and the other person ends.


When this happens in a physical structure like a joint in our body, what happens is we lack the clarity of what that joint is capable of and what it's not capable of. We run the risk of pushing it into areas where it may not go in a healthy way. If we keep doing that, over time, it will start breaking down. It will start altering its structure, at first to try to accommodate what we're trying to do with it. The body is always rearranging its material in response to the stresses that we are continually putting on the body. It will try to thicken and reinforce areas that are under constant stress. But it will also break down areas that are taken out of the weight bearing process.

So when you think of a joint and what makes it healthy, just think of what makes any relationship healthy. That will go a long way toward bringing more awareness into how we're using our body, and all of the marvelous, wonderful joints that make movement possible.

Module 3.3 Geek Out: Anatomy of a Synovial Joint


Leslie: So having understood that joints are relationships, let's geek out a little bit on the details of what goes into a joint. Most of the joints we'll be dealing with, and mostly what we're thinking of when we think of joints in the body, are what we call synovial joints. There are other types of joints in the body, like sutured joints, which are relatively fixed, like we find in the skull. But mostly when we say joint, in this course, we are referring to one or another kind of synovial joint. What do we mean by a synovial joint?

Well, the knee is an example of a synovial joint. What we have here is a fairly rough, more schematic diagram, of a synovial joint. A synovial joint is defined by the fact that there is a capsule surrounding the elements within the joint. The capsule is comprised of connective tissue, which is fairly tough and permits



and limits movement. We can think of the ligaments that bind the bones together as really just thickened regions of the capsule itself that are thickened and directed in various ways to stabilize the joint in various vectors of movement. The inner surface of this capsule is lined with a tissue called synovium, and the synovium is very important because it secretes synovial fluid. Synovial fluid is a viscus, slippery, lubricating medium that both lubricates and nourishes the surfaces within the joint.

Another feature you will find within a synovial joint is that the ends of the bones are coated with cartilage. This is called articular cartilage. It's very, very smooth and very slippery. At least, it should be. If it starts getting less smooth or slippery, or roughened up, then you have issues like osteoarthritis. But in a healthy joint you have very smooth, very slippery surfaces being lubricated by a very slippery fluid called synovial fluid. That's produced by healthy synovium.

What's interesting to note is that all of these surfaces inside the capsule are, for the most part, in most joints, isolated pretty, much from your circulatory system. The nutrition and the health of those tissues depends on the health of the synovial fluid. The outside of the capsule is actually fed by the circulatory system. So nutrients and blood and oxygen and whatever else gets delivered to the capsule from the circulatory system. But then it's up to the synovium. It's the job of the synovium to take all of that and translate it into healthy synovial fluid.

So that's a synovial joint. If we wanted to get a little more detailed, and here we have a more detailed image of a knee joint, we can see that there are other elements that contribute to it. For example, in the knee joint, you don't just have the articular cartilage covering the ends of the bone. We have what's called the meniscus, which is a fibrocartilage ring that cushions and guides the movement of these two rounded bits here called the femoral condyles. In fact, the meniscus in the knee is the equivalent in the knee of what we call the labrum, which we find also in the hip socket and the shoulder socket, which is a cartilage ring that actually deepens the surface that a rounded, bony end will sit in. So we have a labrum in the knee as well. There’s two of them because there are two rounded surfaces that comprise the knee joint.

We also have fat. You find the fat packed in around the joint in various places where cushioning is needed. Another way of cushioning a joint is to have a little fluid filled sac called a bursa. So when someone says they have bursitis, that means there's an inflammation of the bursa. Bursa we usually find more in the relationship between a tendon and a bone. It's like a padding between the bone and the tendon to provide a little bit of cushioning for that relationship. Here we can see in yellow that there's fat packed in in various places in the front and in the back of the joint. So those are some of the other elements we will find in a joint like the knee, but also in other synovial joints.

Now, here's an interesting geeky thing about joints. If a joint is a relationship between two or more elements that have connection and movement available, I'm going to encourage you to think of the relationship between your various organs as joints. Think about that for a moment. That means you have joints in your lungs, where the various lobes of the lungs have a relationship where they sit on each other and are connected, but also need to be able to slide and spiral. Think of the relationship between your liver and the bottom of your diaphragm, or the liver and your stomach, or the stomach and your spleen, or the backs of your organs and your kidneys. These are all sliding surfaces, all of which are mobilized by the breath motion, by the spinal motion, by the diaphragm. There are an enormous number of joints in the body.

Other joints you can think of that aren't actually synovial joints, but are very related to breath motion, have to do with the joints where the rib will end, connect to a strip of cartilage, fibrocartilage, which will then connect it to the sternum. Each place where there's a transition of tissue, we can think of that as a joint. So if you start counting joints in the body and include all of these other kinds of joints, you quickly get into many, many, many joints and many joints that we ordinarily don't think of as joints.



So if a joint is a relationship and you want to geek out on joints, think about all of the things that have a connected relationship and yet move in relation to each other in the body. You will see how many joints there are and how many joints, potentially, can be involved in a simple act like breathing and moving at the same time. So that's our geek out on joints.

Module 3.4 Articulating vs. Moving Through Space


Amy: One of the points I’d like to add to the discussion about joints is that we need to be clear in talking about movement whether a joint is actually articulating, or if it is moving through space but not articulating. The difference would be, if someone said to me, "Move your wrist," I might do something like this. I am certainly moving my wrist. My wrist is moving through space. But my wrist is not actually articulating. Articulating would mean that the bones themselves are changing their relationship at that joint. So this would be articulating the wrist joint. This would be moving the wrist joint through space. One of the important things about that is, if the wrist joint is moving through space but not articulating, something else is articulating. While we might call this a wrist movement, it's actually, in this case, the shoulder joint that's articulating.

So when we set out to see what's moving, which relationships between bones are actually changing, it's important to distinguish between what's articulating and what's moving through space. This also becomes significant when we look at muscle actions, because muscles relate to how the bones are changing their position or not changing their position.

Module 3.5 Balanced Joint Space


Amy: So when we look at our choices about movement in a joint, what kinds of movement happen in that relationship between two bones that is movement, one of the basic ideas that I use a lot that has come out of Body-Mind Centering® ,


and Leslie now uses as well, is the idea of balanced joint space as our criteria or barometer, or a way of understanding healthy choices about movement in a joint. What's she doing with the toy? So all of our joint surfaces are curved in some way. We have no flat joint surfaces. So some of the usual language we hear about a joint being a hinge, things like that, it doesn't really work like that. We are not mechanical. When we look for the possibilities of movement in a joint, then, we have to look at how curved surfaces relate to each other. The possibility for balance, then, in curved surfaces is greater, actually, in a way, than in flat surfaces. Three dimensional means we have more choices, more ways to find balance.

So one of the things that we mean by balanced joint space is that, in space, we can find curved surfaces in relationship with each other, like the curve of this kind of socket on the toy and the curve of this ball. We're gonna have these other curves in relationship to each other. As it rolls, they stay in relationship to each other. But they move. The other thing that is true, then, or another piece of the conversation, is that when we look at the curve of, say, the socket of the toy, that we might have a little more closeness on this



side. We might have a little more closeness on this side. We might have a little more closeness on this side. We might have a little more closeness on this side. That there are all these places where we can be a little off center, a little asymmetrical, but still find balance. Part of that comes from the fluid support in the joint, that there's fluid between those two surfaces. Part of that comes from the adaptability of the bones and the hyaline cartilage, that they are responsive, that they can take a little compression and respond to that. We can become more fluid, more or less viscus, really. More or less thick in the fluid. More or less slippery in the fluid. But that also, over time, we can adapt. So this balance in the joint space is also over time. A few times more compression on this side, a few times more compression on this side. Over time, a little bit here, a little bit there, a little bit here, a little bit there, the living, dynamic quality of our tissues can adapt to.

So repetition in and of itself is not a bad thing. Repetition with the same imbalance, with the same imbalance, over time will cause damage to a joint. But a little asymmetry in the joint does not mean it is not balanced. This is one of the ways that our joints are not like a mechanical model. We, our body tissues, arise from fluid. So we have that degree of responsiveness on some level in our tissues to movement. So balance in a joint is not necessarily symmetry, and is over time.

This also has to do, then, with the idea of space in a joint. When we talk about balanced joint space, or when we talk about the balance of the space in a joint, I think we have more accurate choices about how to talk about the range of motion available in a joint. So what I'm getting at in that is that the language that comes up about making space in a joint, where it implies that we want to do something like make space like this, and the way that a joint works is not to work better when we make space like this. I hear a lot of people saying—I hear it in classes and then I hear people come to me and say, "Well, but don't we want more space in our joints?” Then the question is, "What do you mean, more space in the joints?” I don't know that everybody means this. I don't know that every teacher means this when they say it. But I have people come to me saying, "I was told to make more space in my joints, so don't I want to move the bones apart?” What's interesting is that, for strength or for flexibility, balanced joint space is going to be more useful than more joint space.

So it might be that someone would say, "Well, not everybody wants more joint space.” Me, Amy, I have a lot of flexibility. I'm hyper mobile. I need to figure out how to get more containment in my joints. So of course I don't want more space in my joints. But even for someone who experiences themselves as tight, balanced joint space is going to give them more choices about movement than pulling the bones apart. Because in fact, pulling the bones apart is gonna make the edges of the bones—for example, in something like this, like in the hip joint, the socket actually almost surrounds it. So if I pull the femur out of the hip joint, I run into the edges of it sooner than if the head of the femur is deeper in the socket. So more choices about movement in the joint will not come from pulling the bones apart from each other.

But it might arise from getting more balance in the joint. Because then those sliding surfaces can keep being in relationship to each other and getting all of the choices possible. So balanced joint space is one way of talking about space in a joint that is different than talking about—I mean a different thing than making space or making more space in a joint. It's based on the idea that our joints are three dimensional and that our tissues respond as fluids as much as they do as rigid structures.

When we talk about balanced joint space, then, we have more ways, I think, also, for each person to find their own way into an experience, or it is a way for each person to find their way into an experience. Whether they experience themselves as tight or loose, balance could be finding my way in or finding my way out, whatever that might mean, being really broad terms. Because balance, for each person, will be a different experience. So what brings me into balance will be different than what brings you into balance, will be different than what brings you into balance. Then again the question becomes, as a teacher, not to do the same thing, but for each of us to be asking a question about what will bring us into balance. Which



then might, again, empower the students to have their own experience and to entertain the possibility that their experience is right or is successful, or is their own and that's good enough.

So, with those ideas, go back to your mats. I would like you to lie on your side. You can have your knees bent or extended. But I want you to be able to bring one arm up to the ceiling. Yeah. It doesn't matter which arm. If you want to put your head on your hand, you want to rest your head on your arm—you can do whatever you want. So let your body bring as comfortable as possible, and bring your arm up to the ceiling. So if you are struggling to balance, bend your knees. But bring your arm up to the ceiling. Imagine or feel, and you could look up and see too, if your arm is straight up to the ceiling,


in terms of not falling forward and not falling back. Then, can you sense or visualize the top of your arm bone, which is the head of your humerus, settling into the socket of your shoulder? If you can't quite picture what that is, just know that your shoulder blade has a socket on it that, in this position, could very well be facing the ceiling. Then the head of your humerus, the top of your arm bone, is a ball like the ball on the toy. Can it settle into that socket? So if you are used to pulling your arm out of the socket a little bit, can you let it settle in?

Then, with your fingertips, begin to draw little circles so that your whole arm circles. Now, it's easy for this movement to travel into moving your whole scapula. But see if you can keep it in the range of the head of your humerus moving in your shoulder socket. So the circle with your fingers, I mean to actually make your whole arm circle, like your arm is a pencil and your fingers are drawing the circle on the ceiling. Except for that your arm isn't a pencil because it's not wood. It's bone and blood. But with the idea of finding a sense of the head of the humerus in the shoulder socket, then can you feel or entertain the idea of the balance of movements possible in that shoulder socket?

Is there an area where you feel like there's a gap? Is there an area where you feel like it's crowded or jammed? In the jammed place, can you think about balancing the joint space instead of pulling out of the socket? In the place where there might be a gap, can you think about balancing the joint space instead of tightening up a muscle or pulling something in?

Because for every one of us who feels a gap or a spot that's too open, there will be somewhere that is tight or compressed. For every one of us that feels a tight spot, there will be somewhere where there's movement happening. So how do you find, in your own body, the balanced range of movement choices in your shoulder joint, where your humerus meets your shoulder socket?

Then come onto your back and bring both arms up to the ceiling. Try a similar drawing circles with your arms. See if you feel a difference between the arm that you circled already and the arm that you didn't circle. Certainly, some of the difference in the arms will be that one has been moving and the other hasn't been. But has the inquiry about balanced joint space shifted your experience of one shoulder relative to the other? I didn't tell you to pick one shoulder or the shoulder. So you might have already tried this on a shoulder that already moved a lot, or not so much. There are all kinds of other circumstances underlying what your experience might be in this moment.

Then let your arms come down. Take a moment now and consider, what would your shoulder joints like? You can pause the tape and take a few moments to explore further what might balance your shoulder joints, or what you might do in the other shoulder joint to find balance. Thanks.

Module 3.6 The Knee: More than a Hinge Joint




Leslie: So continuing in our exploration of this concept of balanced joint space, I’d like to use the specific example of the knee. We heard Amy mention that conceiving of the body as a series of gears and levers and hinges and fulcrums, as appealing as it may be to use that sort of reductionistic, mechanical analysis of what the body does, it really doesn't hold up in the actual anatomical design of the body. The knee is a classic example of that. It's often referred to as a hinge joint, when in fact it is—well, let's see. How many movements can we ascribe to the knee? It looks like a hinge, but when it looks like it's hinging it's actually both gliding and rolling. There's kind of a mismatch in the amount of surface area here to the size of the socket that it fits into. So in order for it to stay congruent and balanced in that joint space, it has to roll and slide at the same time. If it didn't slide and just rolled, as soon as the femur moved it would roll right off of the tibial plateau. So there's a complex movement just in what appears to be a hinge. Add to that the fact that these two surfaces are different sizes and the sockets are different sizes, it's an

asymmetrical rolling, gliding joint. Add to that the fact that it also can rotate. You've got

something much more complicated than a simple hinge that you would find on a door

somewhere.

Module 3.7 Muscle Contractions


Amy: When we look at how muscles actually create movement in the body, one of the basic points we need to understand is that what a muscle does when it activates is that it pulls. The action of a muscle is of pulling, or of intending to pull, in such a way that one end and the other end move towards each other. Muscles don't push in the sense that, within one muscle fiber, the two ends don't get pushed apart. They only pull. The amount of pull that they generate, then, affects what kind of contraction is created and how the muscles relate to each other. Because different layers of muscle can pull different amounts. The overall combination of pulls will either move the two ends towards each other, allow them to move apart or leave them in the same relationship.

We're gonna take a look at how those muscles that we looked at in Unit 1, all those layers of fibers, actually are described in their movements. When we talk about a muscle being active, what it does is contract. One of the tricky things about these ideas is that a contraction, when we're talking about muscles, can either be a shortening contraction, a lengthening contraction, or an action where the length of the muscle does not change, but it is still active. The words for these three kinds of contractions are concentric, eccentric and isometric.

In a concentric contraction, we might have two attachment points, the muscle fiber between them, and when that muscle activates, when it fires up, the attachment points move towards each other so that the distance between the two attachment points in a concentric contraction gets smaller.

In an eccentric contraction, we have the two attachment points. We have the muscle fiber between it. That muscle fiber might engage,


but the distance between the attachment points will, for some other reason, increase so that the actual distance between the attachment points get further apart and the muscle is described as getting longer.

In an isometric contraction we have two attachment points, the muscle fiber between them. The muscle engages, fires up, is active, but the attachment points don't change the distance between them.



So in a concentric contraction the two attachment points slide towards each other and the muscle point gets shorter. In an eccentric contraction the muscle is contracting, but some other force, the weight of gravity, a pull from another muscle, some other action is drawing the two ends apart. Even though the muscle is engaging, the attachment points move apart from each other. In an isometric contraction the muscle is firing, the fibers are active, but the activity generated by the muscle does not outweigh whatever other forces are in action. The actual length of the muscle does not change.

Module 3.8 Muscle Relationships


Amy: When we look at how the muscles work, aside from what kind of contraction they make, we need to take into account their relationship with the nervous system and the idea that muscles, when they contract, they don't actually bunch up. But they slide in relationship to each other. So in the sliding of muscle fibers. In the discussion we had in the first unit about muscle fibers, which are long muscle cells being bundled together with layers of connective tissue, and then those bundles bundled together and those bundles bundled together, wrapped in connective tissue, connected then via the tendons to the bones, we have those layers of connective tissue all able to slide in relationship to each other. In that sliding, then, they are able to pull on the bones they attach to or whatever other maybe soft tissue, tendon, diaphragm, they connect to.

When we look at those sliding relationships, then, they can either slide the two ends towards each other in a concentric contraction, the two ends away from each other in an eccentric contraction. Slide in such a way that the two ends don't change, but the muscle is still active, and all of those relationships of sliding and the amount of energy or contraction that goes into creating that action, is all calibrated in the muscles by the nervous system. So the nervous system sends the signal to various groups of muscle fibers within a muscle to say, "Engage," and to say how much to engage. So the amount of engagement in a muscle, either in its resting state, which might be called its resting tone, or that the effort or the energy it puts in to activating, to respond in some way to stimulus, that amount of activating might be enough to actually move what it's attached to. It might only be enough to move it a tiny amount. It might be enough to move it a lot. How quickly it moves it. All of that is not in the muscle tissue itself, but is controlled by the nervous system and how much, how often, how strong the signal is from the nervous system, and how many fibers within a muscle are signaled. Because it might be 10 fibers signaled. It might be thousands of fibers that get a signal from a nerve.

So the nervous system is guiding, regulating, coordinating this enormous, and sophisticated and sometimes really tiny and nuanced conversation between the muscles. So when we talk about a muscle acting, we are really talking about what's happening in the conversation between the nervous system and the muscles. That conversation is even more elaborate because it's a dialogue in the nervous system between the sensations we receive from all kinds of tissues. Information we get from our skin and our bones and our joints, and our muscles and our tendons and our ligaments and our organs. The ideas and expectations we have in our brain, our memories and our kind of preconditioned responses. Those all affect what kind of instruction goes back out to the muscles to respond.

When we talk about muscle memory we're also talking, really, about the patterns that exist in the nervous system about gathering all the information that we get and responding to a situation through the muscles. When we look at the complexity of that conversation, then, it doesn't really play out in the nervous system that an individual part of the brain, or that we can, with our individual intention, control one muscle. The central nervous system doesn't work in that way, that we know what a single muscle—that we know how



to engage a single muscle. It doesn't care about engaging a single muscle. It cares more about engaging with the relationships between muscles and really in producing the response that's desired.

So when we set out to say, "Engage your quadriceps," what we are actually saying, if we get really—fill all the blanks in, or fill in all the assumptions around a statement like that, is “Do the action that

produces the sensation that you have learned to call engaging your quadriceps.” So at some point in our training we learned to do an action, or we did an action, and we were told, "Call that," or “That is,” but really what we were told is, "Name that ‘engaging your quadriceps.’” Then we learned that. Then our nervous system knows how to recreate that sensation. We then call on whatever pattern of complex relationships in our central nervous system we need to recreate that sensation, which we call engaging our quadriceps or engaging the trapezius, or relaxing the abdominal muscles or engaging the abdominal muscles. All of those names of muscle descriptions are not the actual single muscle engaging. Because a muscle never works alone. A muscle never works, not in relationship to other muscles. They are always talking to each other and they are always responding to each other.

If we look at some of the ways that these specific muscle relationships are named, more naming, we can name them in three different ways. We can look at three different aspects of the relationship between muscles that might give us a hint of the complexity of what we're talking about.

One way is the agonist—antagonist relationship, where we look at the muscles on either side of a joint. So if we have here some generic bones, they kind of look like finger bones, but they're not meant to be anything in particular. If these are each synovial joints, leaving out all the details of the hyaline cartilage and the synovial fluid and the joint capsule, then the muscles on either side of the joints could be paired with each other and called the agonist and the antagonist. That relationship, or the picture, implies that there's one single pair of muscles. But, in fact, in any three dimensional joint, and all of our joints are three dimensional, we’ll have muscles all the way around the whole circumference of that. So in looking at how muscles work around a joint, we can pull out and name one relationship of agonist, antagonist, where the muscle that is doing the action that generates the movement, the actor in it, the agonist, would be the one that is either concentrically or eccentrically contracting. That would be the controlling element, if we use that word. The antagonist, then, is the one that modulates that. So if we were to do a movement where these two bones were moving towards each other and this muscle were concentrically contracting to create that movement, this could be described as being the agonist and then this muscle on this side would have to lengthen for that movement to happen. If it doesn't lengthen, if it's not in a conversation with this muscle over here, the movement won't happen, or it will get jammed up or there will be too much pressure in the joint, or something won't happen in a gradated way. There won't be balanced joint space.


So this muscle is as important in its role in the conversation as an antagonist as this muscle is as an agonist.

The other aspect that we can look at in this is chains of muscles, which is also really important to look at. We can look at those as kinetic chains, which is that muscles also communicate with each other over several joints. So we might have a muscle or a series of muscles that talk to each other. So this muscle will, in the nervous system, be communicating with this longer muscle, which might then also be in communication with a longer muscle heading on up to talk to another muscle. So in that idea of kinetic chains we have shorter and deeper muscles that coordinate with longer muscles to carry information over several joints. Then, within that idea, we also have the idea of layers of muscles and we can look at the communication right at this joint between this little muscle that might cross one joint and this longer muscle that might cross two joints, or several joints. All of those muscles then, together, all of that conversation between the muscles is a part of how we create either a simple movement or a complex



movement. Movement at one joint or at many joints, and articulating in a joint or moving it through space involves many muscles talking to each other.

Module 3.9 Range of Motion


Leslie: Okay. So with all this muscle stuff we’ve been talking about, what's that got to do with range of motion and being more flexible? Isn't that what we're after?

Amy: Isn't that what we're after? It's a really interesting assumption, right?

Leslie: Yeah.

Amy: That we're after getting more flexible and that that is, in some way, more desirable. The assumption that we want to get more flexible by getting our muscles to be able to be longer, and the assumption that that somehow implies the sensation of stretching, is a really interesting one. I mean, that question unpacks into all kinds of things. Also, what is the functionality of greater range of motion? And does greater range of motion necessarily go along with having the sensation of stretching? I think we get really attached to the sensation of stretching, and it might not have anything to do with getting a more functional range of motion in our joints or in our muscles.

Leslie: Yeah. It reminds me of the time you came into my office when you finished the revisions to the second edition and you were so excited, because number one, you were finished. But number two, you were even more excited about having removed a specific word from that section. I said, "Really? What's the word?” You told me..?

Amy: Stretch.

Leslie: I went, "What? Really?"

Amy: Yeah.

Leslie: This is a book on yoga. What are you doing?

Amy: Yeah. But you bought it, right? Once I explained it you went along.

Leslie: We had a really great conversation about it. It was, like, that makes so much sense and thank you for figuring that out.

Amy: Yeah. You're welcome. You’re welcome. So assuming that we need a greater range of motion is not necessarily true. There's just one thing. The other is that the sensation of stretch is necessarily tied to a greater range of motion. That is also not necessarily true. Then, if we go back to the little bit of movement in a lot of places, and all of the different ways that these muscles relate to each other, and then all of the choices we have about getting balanced joint space, then we might not get the sensation of stretch as we get more movement. The sensation and the range of movement are not necessarily tied to each other.

Leslie: Would you say that the sensation of stretch, in many cases, is the resistance to a range of motion that the body is offering?

Amy: A resistance to a range of motion? Well, what do you mean by range of motion?



Leslie: Well, sitting this way and coming forward. So getting from here to here. Maybe wanting to get my chest on my thighs or my hands to my toes.

Amy: So that's a particular movement. I mean, I think it's actually interesting for us to unpack the idea of what a range of motion is, because range of motion by itself, it doesn't mean anything. I mean, it means doing the range that a movement happens in. There is a range that you have. Then, I think implied in the term is this idea that there is a better range of motion you should have, or there's some ideal range of motion that involves being able to touch your toes, or that involves being able to do some movement, which then is not actually about the range in any one joint. Because then we also go to that, well, reaching forward to touch your toes, what you were showing, involves...

Leslie: Lots of joints.

Amy: ...Like, 75 joints.

Leslie: At least. Probably more.

Amy: 100 joints. And your breathing and all of that.

Leslie: If you include the interfaces between my organs, which are sliding surfaces as joints...[Amy sighs] Right?

Amy: Yeah. Exactly.

Leslie: So how many can you even count, if that's the case?

Amy: Yeah. You can't count them.

Leslie: Countless joints.

Amy: Countless joints.

So we simplify. I don't know. We make the term mean too much or we diminish it in some way. But I think we're not always specific about what we're talking about when we talk about range of motion. In a way, the range of motion in a joint is the range of motion that you have in that joint. It doesn't actually determine whether you can do a movement like touching your toes. Because Leslie might touch his toes using the range of motion he has available to him in the joints of his spine, where I might touch my toes using the range of motion I have available to me in the joints of my hips. Right? We can both do the functional movement of touching our toes, or the body gesture of touching our toes. Whether or not that's functional is a whole other question.

Leslie: Well, if you want to put your own shoes on or take your socks off it is.

Amy: Without bending your knees. Sorry. I am assuming in that touching your toes, that it's without bending your knees.

Leslie: Oh, that's the right way to do it.

Amy: That is the right way to do it. If you can't do it like that you are a bad yoga person.

Leslie: I suck.

Amy: We'll just let that one sit there. [laughter]

Leslie: You're supposed to say, "No you don't!"

Amy: No you don't, Leslie. You don't suck.



Leslie: Okay. Thank you.

Amy: You don't suck. But you can't touch your toes. Yeah, see? You can put your shoes on just fine. Anyways. But that is that functional question. If we're talking about functionality, can you get your hands to your feet and put your shoes on is a different question than do I have flexible hips? I think then we come back to the question about—and I think you would frame it in another way around sthira and sukha.

Leslie: Right.

Amy: But I would talk about, can I do the task without loading up too much in any one joint? Can I find balance in my joints? Can I find a little bit of movement in a lot of places so that no one place has to do all the movement, and that I might not even notice that I'm doing it. Right? Because some of what happens is that, when I do a movement and there is no restriction, which might be what you were getting at before. If I do this movement of folding and unfolding my arm, I don't feel any stretch. Things are getting shorter. Things are getting longer.

Leslie: There's lengthening and shortening going on.

Amy: There's lengthening and shortening going on, but there is no sensation of stretch. Then someone else might do the same movement and feel a sensation of stretch somewhere. That's not about the range of motion in the bony joint. That might be about the restriction, or, not restriction. That might be about the connective tissue and it might be about the muscle activating.

Leslie: It could be about the nervous system. It could be about a habit they have.

Amy: It could be about the nervous system. Nervous system habit that might fire up a muscle and say, "Oh, I'm gonna look for the sensation of resistance in stretch, so I'm gonna engage the muscle to get in the way of doing the movement. Then I get the sensation of stretch.” But it has nothing to do with actually getting my arm folded in.

Leslie: So it's possible that a lot of the increases in flexibility that people experience as they attempt poses, as they go through their yoga practice, has to do with all of that changing, and the actual range of the joints hasn't really changed at all. At least, the range of motion that's possible to them.


But what’s available to the joints has changed because the nervous system has changed, the habits have changed, the patterns of coordination have changed.

Amy: Right. That our absolute range in the muscles is not set by some length of muscle thing, but set more by our habits and our expectations. Yeah.

Module 3.10 Flexibility: Nature or Nurture?


Leslie: So...

Amy: Okay. So, here. Starting point.

Leslie: Do the other one.



Amy: Well, but this... Okay.

Leslie: So I want to come from my wrist, but that would be cheating.

Amy: That would be cheating.

Leslie : So if it's just my fingers, that's about all I get.

Amy: Right, and that's what I get. Hey!

Leslie: Wow.

Amy: Are you trying to break me?

Leslie: Not possible.

Amy: So we wanted to have a conversation about what we come into our lives with as a kind of genetic inheritance around flexibility.

Leslie: Yeah. I got the stiff body.

Amy: You got the stiff body. You got…Well, let's back up and say that flexibility is a combination. What we talk about is a whole big picture thing about flexibility is a combination of muscles and the shape of our bones, and our connective tissue's adaptability. And so when we start looking at flexibility as just lengthening muscles, we are grossly oversimplifying it, as we do so many things.

Leslie: Yeah, yeah. Not all of that is etched in stone, so to speak. A lot of those tissues you mention do change, some of them more slowly than others. For example, changes in the nervous system can be instantaneous. We have seen that over and over again.

Amy: Yeah.

Leslie: Changes in the shape of bones or the length of certain denser connective tissue can take a lot longer.

Amy: Yeah.

Leslie: So it's not like change isn't possible. But change is available within certain limits set by our genetics.

Amy: Yeah. It's interesting. A few years after I started doing yoga I was talking to my mom, who was in her 60s at the time. She got interested in yoga, went to a yoga class. She went to a yoga class and she had never been much of a mover, very interested in moving. She went to a yoga class and she bent forward and she put her hands on the floor. The yoga teacher was, like, "Oh, that is so good! You are so good at yoga.” She came home and she told me, "I'm really good at yoga.” I'm, like, "Of course you are, mom. But why do you think you're really good at yoga?” She said, "I'm really flexible. I can put my hands on the floor.” I said, "That's not because you're good at yoga. That's because we, as a family, have this kind of connective tissue that moves really easily, that doesn't come in with a lot of tone to it, a lot of resistance to it.” So when I go to move, my joints already just open up a lot. That's not something I cultivated. So I don't think of that as part of the practice of yoga. Because it's something I came in with. What I do with that, for me, the yoga practice was about learning to organize myself and not go to my most stretchy connective tissue place.

Leslie: Sure. How bummed out was your mom when you broke the news to her that she really wasn't good at yoga?



Amy: Well, that her flexibility wasn't what made her good at yoga.

Leslie: Oh. You may be good at yoga, but it's not because you're flexible.

Amy: It's not because you can put your hands on the floor. I was trying to be really—she was happy to know that she and I shared something in that flexibility. So it made up for that. Cause we had a mother daughter bonding thing.

Leslie: Oh. That was cool.

Amy: But I think it's interesting how much we load onto flexibility and how much we think that it's about lengthening muscles, when it might just be about what our connective tissue is capable of doing. The connective tissue responds to stress differently than muscles do and differently than bones do. So some of it’s what we come in with and then some of it’s what we learn.

Leslie: In your opinion, how much of what we do to try to lengthen connective tissue is actually having the opposite effect, because it's aggravating it in such a way that it's gonna respond by tightening up to that load that we're constantly putting on it? Because I see this happening a lot of times with the way people approach their stretching.

Amy: Yeah. You know the interesting thing is—it’s interesting because connective tissue responds to being pulled on by reinforcing that direction of pull. But connective tissue doesn't respond to being pulled on by contracting, unless you have pulled so much that it's damaged. Then it gets inflamed. That causes this ancillary shortening from getting swollen.

Leslie: Right.

Amy: But it doesn’t, connective tissue doesn't shorten in response to getting pulled on. Muscles, if you pull them further than what they think they are supposed to do, then they contract. Muscles have this protective mechanism in the nervous system where the nervous system decides what length feels safe. Then, if you go past that length, we get a message of stretch, which is actually kind of a danger message when it's coming from the muscles. Mild danger, maybe. But a message that we are going forward than the muscle thinks is safe. Then the muscle sets out to contract. So that's where the muscle reacts to being pulled by trying to shorten. The connective tissue reacts to a pull by getting denser and more consolidated along that line of pull. But when we're doing something like stretching a joint or doing a stretchy feeling movement... Like, the term becomes kind of meaningless, right?

Leslie: Stretchy feely? I like that.

Amy: When we're doing a stretch, and I don't know what that means anymore, right? But when we're doing something that someone might call a stretch, we're engaging with the connective tissue and the muscles. The sensation we get from muscles is different than the sensation we get from connective tissue.

Leslie: Well, that's where I was heading with that question. Yeah.

Amy: Yeah. But we might not tell them apart. We might call it all muscle sensation. We might call it all connective tissue sensation. But that reactivity of the muscles to the lengthening, where they decide, "Oh, this is where I have to shorten or this is where I have to stop the lengthening," that's set in the nervous system. That's a learned thing. That's not a genetically inherited thing.

Leslie: Right. So we inherit both genetic components that determine not just the density or laxity of our connective tissue in general, but also the shape of our bones...

Amy: Yes.



Leslie: ...Which also, in particular joints, can limit the range of motion simply because you're gonna hit a bony stop sooner or later than some other people. I found, interestingly, that in certain people you have very loose connective tissue, but bony stops that will limit the range of motion before they reach the limit of the connective tissue, or vice versa, or in some joints and not others.

Amy: Right.

Leslie: This ability to distinguish between the sensation of a muscle being lengthened to its limit and the connective tissue being engaged to its limit is part of this, I would call it svadhyaya. This introspection. This ability to reflect on your experience in a more nuanced, detailed way. To use some viveka, if you want to use another Sanskrit word, in terms of our experience. So much goes into a perceived range of motion when we're looking at that in other people and in ourselves.

Amy: Yeah. Well, I think a piece of that is also that—you said that someone might--and I think this happens a lot in people with connective tissue that has more mobility, and we can use the term hyper mobile and I get to use it a lot. I think that, really, we're on a continuum. I would probably be classified because of that range in my joints as hyper mobile, but I have more looseness. You have less looseness in your connective tissue. But all these things are in relationship to each other. But anyway, people who have that more range in their connective tissue, they might not get sensation. You just said this, but they might not get sensation before the bones have gone past what balanced joint space would be. So if we're only listening for the sensation of stretch to tell us when we've gone...

Leslie: Too far.

Amy: ...too far, we're not gonna have all of the barometers that we need. Then when we add onto that, I think, the idea we have in our muscles about position. You said the environmental things we pick up about movement patterns, and that's what our muscles are so responsive to. We’ll pick up our parents' movement patterns. That's a muscle pattern that has manifested partly because we come in with bones and connective tissue that have certain capabilities, and then the muscles learn this thing is right or not right, but familiar or habitual, and then they keep recreating that situation, which gives us a whole set of sensations that is, in some way, familiar, even if it's not comfortable.

Leslie: Right.

Amy: Right? Then we keep recreating the familiar situation.

Leslie: The familiar discomfort.

Amy: The familiar discomfort, yeah. Whether it's stretch, whether it's balanced joint space, whether it's ease, all of those things end up becoming part of what we create for ourselves about our own flexibility.

Leslie: So to bring this discussion back to some of the other bigger yogic concepts like sthira and sukha, you know, stability and mobility, or an alternate way to express it, space and boundaries.


I have experienced, with some students, that the way they pursue range of motion seems to be the desire for space without boundaries, which is just as damaging, potentially, as the desire for boundaries without space. You know.

Amy: Yes.

Leslie: So what of a situation with someone that has very loose connective tissue and a lot of range of motion in the joints, and how their nervous system would respond with a certain amount of tone to manage that more actively, because the more passive structures of the ligaments and so on aren't stopping



them. So what would you say about that space boundary thing and how people manage their range of motion?

Amy: You mean that the nervous system would put tone in the muscles?

Leslie: Well, put tone in the muscles.

Amy: The nervous system controls tone in a variety of systems, right?

Leslie: Sure.

Amy: Yeah, I agree. I think that it's great to frame it in a sthira and sukha or something, that it's not about one tissue versus another tissue. Because if I have more movement in my connective tissue, then the muscles that are really quickly responsive can over work because they're not talking to each other. Or they can be dialogue with each other. I can bring up the tone of my connective tissue also. I can bring more awareness to my bones and balance things out that way. But I think that when we look in a broader way at ideas like space and boundaries, then we are not making one tissue bad and one tissue good, and we're not just looking for flexibility and we're not just looking for strength, but more that idea that I think has come out when you have talked about sthira and sukha. Also, that they both need to be present for balance to happen.

Leslie: Absolutely. Sure.

Amy: That stability and mobility, they are not mutually exclusive. They co-exist. In fact, it's how we get balanced movement, balanced joint space, ease, satisfaction, absence of injury.

Leslie: Sure. Flexibility without instability and strength without rigidity.

Amy: Exactly.

Module 3.11 Proprioception: Expanding the Definition


Leslie: So Amy, I was reviewing one of the videos that I use when I'm teaching about proprioception. It's a very fascinating video. You have heard of it. “The man who lost his body.” It's about a fellow who had a very rare viral attack on his nervous system that knocked out his proprioception, which is often referred to as a sixth sense. In conversations like that we hear about proprioceptors, about these mechanisms that live in various bits of our connective tissue and muscles and tendons and so on, that have their connection to the nervous system delivering proprioceptive information about our bodies in space and movement and so on. I know you have an opinion about this, and I would like to hear it.

Amy: Well, I think that it's very interesting to go back to the original definition of proprioception, which I found a couple of months ago now when I was looking up what the word actually means. Because when I have heard the general definition of proprioception that's out in the world, it’s what “tells us where we are.” They are usually categorized as just being the nerve endings in our muscles and our joint capsules and our tendons.

Leslie: Ligaments, too.

Amy: Ligaments. Right. Well, joint capsule ligaments. So just the nerve endings found in our muscles, our joint capsules, our tendons and maybe our ligaments are included when they’re part of a joint. So that information, actually, when you go back to who coined the term, he was talking about, because it was a



he, was talking about how we sense the movement that we make ourselves, which is made by our somatic body, our bones and muscles in our limbs. So he was talking about the volitional movements that we make. Like how I feel what I'm doing when I choose to reach out and touch something or put my hands down, or walk across the room. It was not actually meant to include the whole way I feel myself, because that group of nerve endings, then, leaves out information we get from our organs, information we get from our skin about temperature, tickle, touch, vibration, and it leaves out information we get from our eyes and our ears and our nose. So the categorization of proprioceptors as being how we feel ourselves in the world, that broadening of the definition is problematic to me because it has broadened from the original very specific to include a lot of things, but not everything that actually tells us about where we are in the world.

Leslie: So either it's that very specific definition, or it has to include all those other senses?

Amy: Or I think it has to include all those other senses. Because the nervous system doesn't say, "Oh, that's proprioceptive nerve information. I'm not gonna include that in my understanding about the temperature in the room.” So part of what tells me I am in this room is the quality of the light and the sound from the street and the smell and my sense of space, and how I feel myself in the room, and how much space I have to move. All of that is a piece of how I know like I'm in this room, which is one of the things we bring into this sense of proprioception. Or even how high I’ve lifted my arm. It also has to do with, oh, I ran into someone. All of that information tells me something about myself. So I think that then proprioception should be broadened as a term, so much as to be meaningless, because the nervous system takes all of the information that comes in. It doesn't distinguish in its sorting out a motor response. It doesn't distinguish in its deciding how to respond between touch and pressure in a joint. Touch in the skin or the temperature and the pressure. It can distinguish between the sensations, but it doesn't value one more than the other in deciding a motor response.

Leslie: So if we speak of someone as having compromised proprioception, what are we saying? What are we observing in somebody when we come to that conclusion? Or they need to work on their proprioception?

Amy: Well, I think that, I hear that term used. It's not a way I use the term very much, but when I hear that used I think that what people are thinking about is the sense of ourselves. Like, how do we feel ourselves? How do we know where our hands are on the floor? I see, you see, people put their hands on the floor and they will be all cattywampus, and they will think they're even.

Leslie: Cattywampus? That's a word I don't use very often.

Amy: I don't use proprioception. You don't use cattywampus. Fair enough. They’ll put their hands down…

Leslie: You be the judge.

Amy: …and it will look from the outside like they don't have a sense of how to organize their bodies, or they don't have a sense of themselves. When I think of someone not having a sense of themselves it's that they can't tell what they are doing. They can't perceive what they are doing. I might use perception rather than proprioception as language, but I think it means the same thing. But I think then when we're talking about that, and I would be curious because I think you think in those terms more, that we're talking about a lot more than just joints and muscles, right?

Leslie: Oh, sure. Well, to bring it back to some of the teachings, one of the interesting concepts that Krishnamacharya brought in to his teaching methodology, actually from the Yoga Yajnavalkya, is an alternative definition of pranayama. There's the famous prana apana samayogaha, where you're bringing the inhale and exhale into relationship with each other, but there's also this idea that pranayama is the



concentration of prana within the bodily limits. The idea that some people, in a state of ill health, or perhaps cattywampus, have their prana actually projecting outside their physical bodies. That leads to a compromised ability to feel what's going on inside them and thus inability to control their bodies in space somewhat. We would experience, as teachers, a student having this problem when, for example, they may not only want to be told the right way to do a pose, but, "Okay, now what should I be feeling?"

Amy: Yeah.

Leslie: You see? So that's how we run into it quite often as yoga teachers. We may interpret that as, "Oh, this person needs to work on their proprioception.” But in the bigger conversation it's about, can you bring your attention into this body of information that's available from inside?

Amy: Yeah, yeah. It's so interesting. I wouldn't think of that inquiry, like, "Oh, what am I supposed to feel now," as a proprioceptive issue. Actually, I also hear people say, "Oh, I feel this. Is it right?” So I think also people have feelings, but they don't know if they're having the right feeling.


Which is also this idea about not being able to decide for yourself what your experience is, and that's this bigger question about, do I have permission to have my own experience? But I think that not being clear about where I end and the world begins is such a huge question, and it's such an interesting thing to get into when we're talking about people and their bodies in anatomy, and the difference between how we name something and how someone actually experiences themselves. Do we make them wrong because they don't know the outside name? Do we empower them to call it what they want to?

I think that's one of the ways where having a different thing than the Western anatomical paradigm, a different set of language, like the language that you're using, is really useful for helping people experience their bodies in a way that is in that broadest sense, proprioception. Like, perception of myself. But isn't about getting the right feeling or the right name for the thing, or having the same experience everybody else in the room is having.

Leslie: And sometimes it's not about a lack of perception of what's going on inside. Sometimes there's so much that's going on that it's overwhelming and you don't know what to focus on, or which details are more important than which others. So sometimes it can be an overwhelm of information, as opposed to a lack of information. And sometimes that—I don't know which is more common, but I know that they are both possibilities.

Amy: Yeah. Definitely.

Leslie: Cool.

Amy: Yeah.

Leslie: All right.

Module 3.12 Workshop: Forward Bends & Distribution of Movement


Leslie: So we're looking for mobility. We're looking for people with whom we can work, looking for mobility. So we're gonna try to give a contrast, both between folks who experience themselves as having somewhat restricted or limited mobility, and people who experience themselves as having a lot of



mobility. We're also going to contrast the different ways in which I would work with people like that and ways that you would work. So I think we should probably start with the lack of mobility discussion.

Amy: Sure.

Leslie: Okay. So we have a couple of volunteers, maybe, in the lack of mobility department. Okay. All right.


One-on-One: Leslie works with a student who feels “tight” in forward bends

So why don't you come on up in a forward bend. How about a standing forward bend situation, okay? Yeah. So if you can just, yeah uttasana. Nothing fancy. Okay. Knees nice and straight. Say a little bit about what you experience and where in this position.

Student: I feel it in my upper, especially on this leg, upper hamstring. Like, imagine the hamstring attachment and then a little bit behind my knees, but mostly way up high.

Leslie: Okay. So upper hamstring attachment, especially on the left and behind the knees on both sides.

Student: Yes.

Leslie: Okay. This has pretty much been consistent with you throughout your yoga experience?

Student: Yeah. I think maybe I think the left, I might have pulled it at some point. But, for the most part, it has always felt tight back here.

Leslie: Okay. All right. So are you intentionally keeping your knees straight, or is that just a habit?

Student: It's probably just a habit.

Leslie: Oh. Okay.

Student: Should I bend them?

Leslie: Well, I'm just asking. If you do bend them, as you just did, does that change where you're feeling the restriction or the sensation?

Student: Yeah. Actually, it makes it a little worse.

Leslie: It makes it a little worse?

Student: Yeah. It does.

Leslie: Up at the attachment here?

Student: Yeah.

Leslie: How about behind the knees?

Student: Maybe a little better behind the knees, but not substantially. It's more comfortable this way.

Leslie: It's more comfortable with the legs straight?

Student: Yeah.



Leslie: Does that surprise anyone?

Student: No.

Leslie: Would you have expected the bending of the knees to actually put some slack into the situation and take some of the pressure off?

Amy: Mm-hmm. It's certainly what gets said.

Leslie: It's usually what gets said.

Amy: Bend your knees to release your hamstrings.

Leslie: This is a perfect example of a case where the standard kind of instruction may actually not work, or have the opposite effect from what you expect. Which is kind of interesting. Right? Now, we could guess as to what the structural reason for that is. But let's just take it at face value and say that's not the adaptation for you. So I notice that you keep lifting your head a little bit. Do you notice that, if you release your neck and let your head hang, does that change the sensation anywhere in the back of the legs?

Student: I think, I’m not sure if it does or I just imagine it does. I feel like the additional weight feels like more weight forward. But I don't know that it actually does change the effect. I think I'm just […]

Leslie: But your instinct may be to keep your head lifted to keep that extra weight from hanging at the end of your spine, which actually loads up more the areas that are feeling a little stressed.

Student: Exactly.

Leslie: Okay. Speaking of stress, why don't you come out of that? That was a long time. I don't know any class where you would be asked to hold uttanasana that long while having a conversation. Right?

Amy: The conversing part, yes.

Leslie: The conversing part, yes. That was stressful.

Student: Am I red?

Leslie: No. I mean, it's something I wouldn't ask a student to do under normal circumstances. But these are hardly normal circumstances. Okay. Let's contrast that, if we could, with your paschimottanasana.

Student: Okay.

Leslie: The shape of the body is very similar, obviously, but of course your base of support is very different. Oh, was your butt flesh in the way of your sitting bones?

Student: It's probably a habit.

Leslie: That is a habit, isn't it? Isn't it, like, oops, oops? Right? So, okay. I'm gonna let you do that for now, because we want to see what is normal for you. Let's see how your seated forward fold is. Okay. Ah-ha. All right. So are you feeling more or less the same stress points in this position as when you were standing?

Student: It's better on the back left hamstring. This feels much more even.

Leslie: More even?

Student: So there's stretch, but it's not as […].



Leslie: The sensation is more dispersed and less gathering in specific points when you're in this position.

Student: Yeah, exactly.

Leslie: This is still exploration. I don't necessarily have a solution here. This is part of exploring. If you could sit up for a minute, and could you replace your butt flesh under your ischial tuberosities? Your sitting bones? Your sitz bones? Okay. That's it. Just get some padding under there, right?

Student: Got it.

Leslie: Okay. Good. So with that one little change, please come forward and see if that has any effect at all on your experience.

Student: Yeah, actually. It does.

Leslie: Oh, does it? Can you describe the change?

Student: It's more comfortable. It's less pressure. Even though this is still better than paschimottanasana, than uttanasana, this is still less pressure on the hamstrings.

Leslie: Less pressure on the hamstrings just by putting your butt flesh back under...

Student: Where it belongs.

Leslie: ...Where it belongs. Where it wanted to be when you sat down.

Student: Yes.

Leslie: That is interesting. So now we—look, everyone around the room is trying their butt flesh thing. That's cool. That is such a little habit that I think is just so much of the way that is taught. I always wondered, if you've got some nice cushioning there to make the relationship between that bony bump and the floor a little more comfortable, why would you take it away, right? Particularly since that's a stress point where people feel a focal point of pulling forces that could eventually turn into a chronic irritation or an inflammation. Hmm. I'm totally coming up with this on the fly. What would be the standing equivalent of keeping your butt flesh on your sitting bones in uttanasana? Amy is, like, uunh. Okay. So stand up.

Amy: I was gonna stay that. That's what I was thinking.

Leslie: I don't have a solution. Ah, it's Amy's thing. Sorry. You'll have to come up with your own.

Amy: That's okay, no. That's okay. I'll have to come up with my own.

Leslie: I have no idea how you're gonna do this, okay?

Student: Okay.

Leslie: But you can even use your hands if you want. What would be the standing equivalent of keeping your butt flesh...

Student: Down?

Leslie: ...Down on your sitting bones as you come forward in uttanasana? However that plays out in your experience.

Student: Needing more of my heels.

Leslie: So it makes you want to take your weight more to your heels?



Student: For sure.

Leslie: Okay. That's interesting. Does that in any way redistribute the stresses that you were experiencing in your legs?

Student: It does.

Leslie: Oh really?

Student: Yeah. I feel much less in that left side.

Leslie: Wow. Interesting.

Student: I'm pretty far back on my heels.

Leslie: Okay. So that's interesting. Now, can you let your neck release? Does that load up those areas as it did before?

Student: No, actually.

Leslie: Okay. So can you keep that feeling of more dispersal of the sensation as you bring your weight more toward the center of your foot?


See what may need to engage, what may need to release, as you do that, in order to keep that better distributed feeling of sensation in your body.

Student: Yeah. If I come more to the front, to the middle of my foot, and engage my quadriceps more.

Leslie: So something in the front of your leg wants to respond to that shift of weight?

Student: Yeah.

Leslie: Okay. But you're still a little more comfortable in the back of your body as a result of that?

Student: Yes. Mm-hmm.

Leslie: Excellent. Cool. Okay. Come on up. Ah. Just move around a little bit. All right.

Student: It's interesting.

Leslie: It is interesting.

Student: I really do do that every time.

Leslie: Right. I think we also do the equivalent of that in uttanasana, that standing thing, where we're sliding all that energy up the back to create more of a pivoting in the front of the hip...

Student: Yes.

Leslie: ...Which is where that movement is so often being coached to arise from.

Student: To come over your hips. To move forward.

Leslie: Exactly. That, I think, for a lot of people, creates the experience of loading up on those structures in the back of the leg.

Student: Yeah.



Leslie: Which, in fact, over the long run, is gonna end up making you a little less flexible in that range of motion, because everything is gonna get inflamed and react there and then you're gonna have all that resistance to deal with, right? So, that was my idea.

Amy: Okay.

Leslie: We love doing this to each other. This is like tennis. Okay. Asana tennis.


One-on-One: Amy works with a student who feels “tight” in forward bends

Amy: So I might say similar things. One of the things that I was thinking was happening, and I think that you just said in talking about what you've told, is that the idea of this forward bend is that it's all hip flexion. Even as you do it, it's, like, "Oh, let's flex at the hips. But the spine is extending."

Student: Yeah.

Amy: So we do this thing in talking about asana where sometimes we talk about an asana being about a single joint action, like forward bend being about moving in the hip joints and it's all in the hip joints. Which, the implication of that, and one of the things that feeds into that idea is taking your sit bones to the ceiling, which also loads up that back of the hip joint. I think that's a piece of the scooting the sit bones back and opening up, where you look at maybe the tissue getting inflamed and taking the cushioning away. I also see the way that this emphasizes movement in the hip joints. What I saw as you shifted that was also that there was more movement in some other places in your spine, in other places in your body, where that little bit of movement in a lot of places could get distributed. So can you do again the first version you did?

Student: Yeah. The first..?

Leslie: Uttanasana.

Amy: The first. Yeah. So come into uttanasana and reach your sit bones to the ceiling. Go to that place where it hurts.

Leslie: Really?

Amy: Just for a moment. I would like you to also look at whatever you can see of what's happening in her spine. It's actually different now. You haven't gone all the way back to what you were doing, and I don't want you to really hurt yourself.

Student: Okay.

Leslie: Who could blame her, really?

Amy: I don't think you could. But the distribution of the curve in her spine was not so even. There were some spots that were more flat. There were spots that were more curved. So what I saw was that there were spots was there was not so much movement, and then some areas, a few areas, where there was a lot of movement. So a lot of movement here. I'm gonna say I saw a lot of movement here and a lot of movement at the back of your hamstrings. I mean, at the back of your hip joints, where your hamstrings are. So come back up. Then it made sense, to me then, if that was the idea that too much was being asked of your hip joints, that bending your knees, which you would think would release your hamstrings from what you might know of the hamstring attachments, actually doesn’t. Because the problem isn't the



hamstrings. The problem might be that you are asking too much of your hip joint and bending your knees actually makes you fold even more deeply into your hip joint.

Leslie: Right.

Amy: Does that make sense? So the sensation in her muscles is reflecting something about an underlying relationship between the joints.

Leslie: Let me just clarify that. In that position, the focus on bending the knees, what's happening in the knees, but that takes the hip joints into deeper flexion at the same time.

Amy: Yeah. It might take the hip joints into deeper flexion.

Student: I think it really does. It really fires up that hamstring attachment area […].

Amy: Yeah. Exactly. So standing here right now, bend your knees a little bit. As you bend your knees--so the instruction bend your knees involves movement at the ankles, movement at the knees and movement at the hips. So there's just a little bit of undoing in all those joints. You're not holding any of those really in any particular position, though it's going to take muscle effort to be here.

Student: Yeah.

Amy: What I would like you to in there be is a place where you don't really feel them straight and you don't really feel them bent, that in fact you might not get a lot of sensation in those joints. Then can you roll down through your spine, and as you go, look for where you might feel a lot of movement and where you might feel less, all the way down to where your legs and your sacrum meet, and then hip joints and then knees and then ankles. Then can you roll back up with that same idea of feeling a little bit of movement in a lot of places? In the places where you have a lot of movement, do less, so that in the places where you have less movement, you might find more. Then, without saying anything else, I'm gonna just say, let yourself do that again. I'm not gonna...

Though, sorry. Come back up. Even right here there are some joints. So a little bit of movement in each of those... Yeah. So part of the question is, before we even get to the hip joints, have you found all the other places [where] you have choices so that the movement at the hip joints, which is a big, measurable range, is part of the whole pattern? I think that uttanasana is a whole body event. I think that an asana is a whole body event, and if we focus it in on one joint, like the bandhas, we’re diminishing the asana. Then can you--do you want to say anything?

Student: [No].

Amy: Okay. Can you do that one more time? Then, when you get to the bottom, can you extend your legs by feeling a little bit of movement in your ankle joint and your knee joints to bring your legs to what feels like a straight leg? If you end up feeling nothing in your muscles, that's okay. Can you breathe there? Clearly you can, because you're not toppling over. But, to me, I see much more distribution of activity through her whole body, which we could call a lot of different things, and I'm gonna call a little bit of movement in a lot of places. And when you are ready to, find your way back up to standing. How did that feel?

Student: Good. I think I was really overusing my lower back before. I realize I wasn't thinking about my spine at all, and that my spine felt a lot more stretched, in a good way, whereas normally I don't feel my spine at all. I'm just feeling the back of my legs. So it was a lot more looseness and sort of space or freedom in the spine, whereas I think normally I'm sort of using my lower back to compensate for my hips.




Amy: Yeah. Now, here's one more question. Can you do this a few more times? Are you okay?

Student: Yeah.

Amy: Okay. But a slightly different thing. Because we don't usually come into, or there are a lot of styles of yoga where we don't come into uttanasana by rolling through the spine, where we fold into uttanasana and we have the spine in some kind of neutral position, which makes it really easy to load up the hip joints, it put it all in hip joints. Much less what we're told. Just the shape of the movement implies everything is still and we're moving right there. So I'm gonna ask you, knowing what you know now in your body, can you keep that sense of all of the joints in communication with each other and fold forward with a neutral spine or a flat back, whatever you think of? But feel that you are not going to then pull your sit bones to the ceiling. But just let your hip joints express part of the conversation between all the other joints. Does that idea make sense?

Student: Yeah.

Amy: Okay. What happens when we do it like that is it starts in the hip joints, and then it spreads through the spine. Most of the uttanasana we're asked to do does end up also with spinal flexion. Right? So it doesn't mean we can't start with one joint being the place where most of the movement happens, because there are certainly asana where it looks like all of the movement is in one joint. But the idea of all of the joints being in conversation with each other can still be the underlying inquiry. Then come up. Can you come up with the same idea through an extended spine? Mm-hmm. So that, whether the joint is articulating or moving through space, which Leslie talked about. Whether the joint is articulating or moving through space, it's in conversation with all of the other joints. How did that feel?

Student: Much, much better.

Amy: It looked different.

Student: Yeah. I feel it much more in the whole back body and the front body more. I think normally I'm not really feeling any engagement in my front body in the standing forward bend, or I'm not as aware of it, because it’s so much sensations in the back.

Amy: In one... Mm-hmm.

Student: Yeah.


One-on-One: Leslie adds a breath experiment for student who feels “tight” in forward bends

Leslie: I would add one more thing to that front body conversation if we wanted to get to the next expression of this movement as it would happen in a lot of practices with the arms extended, because you were doing this.

Student: Yeah.

Leslie: Okay. It's a breath thing. A simple, simple thing. So let's just have you do it the way it would ordinarily happen, with an inhale up, an exhale down and an inhale back up. Okay? With the arms extended it's also more likely to create that big hinge at the hip joint while you're holding the spine in that lengthened position, right? Okay. Good. So there's just a little trick we can do, which is to change the timing of the breath and movement slightly. It's only going to happen on the exhale for the sake of this demonstration.



Student: Okay.

Leslie: Same thing happens as you inhale. The arms come up. But then, you start your exhale for just a moment before you start your forward movement, and see if that changes your experience. So, inhale. The arms come up. Start your exhale first and then come down. Good. Lift with your inhale. Just for the sake of argument, start your exhale first and then lower your arms. There you go. Did you notice anything when you did it that way?

Student: Yeah. The first part of the hinge was, I mean, I was paying attention both times so I was already feeling it more through the whole back body, but I feel like when I started the exhale at the same time, I sort of moved back, whereas, when I started an exhale first, it felt more like I have more engagement to my front body. So it wasn't this motion as much.

Leslie: You weren't back on your heels. You were the first time.

Student: Yeah. So it made a difference.

Leslie: Right. See, embedded in that one little shift is a lot of the kind of correction that people are trying to get at to protect their spines. When your body is lifted here and your ribcage is open, you're holding your body in the shape of this inhale, right? Then I'm asking you to exhale without changing the shape of your body.

Student: Right. […].

Leslie: Basically, you can't do this for your exhale. You can't collapse here. You have to basically squeeze the bottom of your water balloon a little bit, right? So there's the simultaneous upward engaging here that's required by that pattern, which means the counter force of that upper movement in your belly is down in your legs and feet. So it's what I would call a grounding maneuver. Using that exhale to ground the body.

Student: Yeah. Then […]

Leslie: Prior to initiating the movement. There's a movement that precedes the movement. It's a little trick that works quite well.

Student: Thank you.

Leslie: Cool. Well, we just messed with your forward bend, didn't we?

Student: Yes. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Amy: Thank you.

Leslie: Go forth and bend forward. Okay.


One-on-One: Amy works with a student who feels “floppy” in forward bends

Amy: Now, is there someone who feels super flexible and floppy in their forward bend that wants to be messed with?

Leslie: Oh, we've got to have a floppy person here.

Amy: Anybody floppy?



Leslie: No floppy people?

Student: I'm sort of floppy.

Amy: Come here, Elise.

Leslie: Why did I look right at you?

Amy: Okay. Are you okay with being analyzed by our adoring audience and us?

Elise: Yes.

Amy: Okay. So would you do your forward bend? I mean, if I go first.

Leslie: Go, go, go, go, go.

Amy: I've got ideas, maybe.

Leslie: Yay.

Amy: Yay.

Leslie: Whee! Look at that.

Amy: Whee! Okay. So where do you have sensation here, if any? Do you have any sensation here?

Elise: I feel it a little bit in my hamstrings, but’s like, well, I have kind of trained myself to bend my knees a little bit. Normally I can kind of hang out here for fun.

But if I were like this, I feel a little bit more closer to my attachments…

Leslie: By this you mean, if you shift your weight forward on your feet?

Elise: Yeah. If I shift my weight forward on my feet and also unlock my knees a little bit.

Leslie: So wait, you get a better stretch if you unlock your knees?

Amy: She gets it more in her hamstrings.

Leslie: Or you get it in a different place?

Elise: I get it in a different...

Leslie: Okay.

Elise: This is a comfort zone place, this one. Almost. Now I feel a little unsafe. I feel like it's what I have done for a very long time, because of getting more awareness of my flexibility. I move into moving my weight forward and having a little bit of a bend in my knees. But now I'm kind of used to this.

Amy: Now you're used to this too. Okay. Great. So can you stay in that little bit forward place? We can say that uttanasana is about all kinds of things, right? I don't think there is anything that uttanasana is automatically about, and certainly you might come in and say, "It's about hip flexion and that's all it's about.” I don't think an asana should be about just one joint. So some of what I see here that I might want to inquire with Elise about is actually the energy of extending through her spine here, and a little bit right here. There's a little bit, I see, of extension. She's not lifting her head a huge amount, but there's a little bit of extension here. There's a little bit of what feels like extension here. Flattening out, but that's too strong a word for it. Yeah? So I'm curious in something like uttanasana, in a flexibility question, to see, in the places where you already have lots of movement, how can we do less? Can we maybe get a conversation



in the places where you don't have so much? I think you are already in that question with your knees and ankles, with what you know. But, come up and let's see what happens in your spine if we look for that as well. Does that question make sense?

Elise: Yeah.

Amy: Yeah. Okay. So can you find, right at the top of your spine, the movement of your skull tipping forward?

Elise: Mm-hmm.

Amy: And as you go down, I'd like you to notice if anything lower down flattens out. Again, we're rolling. We're not doing that neutral spine folding forward. Can you let... Uh-huh. We might even pause here. Yeah.

Leslie: What just happened with your breath?

Amy: We have so much resistance to flexion because we collapse and we schlump. Even Leslie said, describing something else, "Oh, it's a collapse.”


This is a movement the spine does, and having this curve to the spine is necessary. Can I breathe through this whole movement, which you are doing. Right? Is opening up all these other choices for where movement can happen. So as you come right here, Elise, I'm gonna ask you to pause and just see if there's anywhere in this continuum where you feel yourself pulling together that you could--oh, I'm gonna say it differently. I don't mean that first. Is there any place that feels so pulled apart that you might want to knit it together?

Elise: Is there any place that feels so pulled apart?

Amy: Is there any place that just feels like it's just bursting open that might want to knit together?

Elise: Only from there and above? Because what I feel, actually, is right here.

Amy: For right now, only from there and above.

Elise: Oh. Okay.

Amy: We're gonna head down there.

Elise: Okay.

Amy: It might be down there. I might be asking this question too soon. But I'm gonna ask you to think about if here might feel really open, and what happens if you kind of knit that together? It's not a shoulder thing. What happens if you knit that together but let this open up? Yeah. So we're looking for a distribution of action. That was a pretty subtle little thing to look for. But what we do in the neck ends up rippling down a lot. I'm gonna say keep rolling, and then I'll say this thing. You can keep going now, but you might keep asking that question. So in the spots where you find you are bursting into your mobility, can you knit together a little bit and can you maybe find nearby something that could open up?

Because in those of us who have lots of flexibility, it's easy to keep going to the flexible places. So the invitation is a little bit different one to see not where you can find more movement that you are already doing, but where you're already moving, can you do less so that you can find a little bit of movement in some other places?



Leslie: Is it where you are already moving that you are doing less, or doing something in the opposite direction of the opening?

Amy: I mean where you're already moving, doing less, which might involve actively undoing what you did a lot of.

Leslie: Right.

Amy: But eventually this process would be one of just not going there instead of undoing. But as she finds more places to do a little bit of movement, the places that do a lot of movement won't need to do a lot of movement. Then I'm gonna say, as you come down to the bottom here, can you imagine movement? I know you know where your sacrum is, even through your sacrum, even to your tail. Then from your sacrum into your pelvis and then into your hip joints. You can keep doing that for as long as it's interesting. That keeps shifting as you're doing it, right? But if you're feeling like you need to come up, you can also come up. But what I'm seeing, which, normally, if this were a teaching situation I wouldn't say, "This is what I'm seeing." But because I'm sharing with you what I'm seeing--because I don't want to tell her what her experience is. But what I am seeing is that now this is distributed through her whole body in a different way. I don't know what her experience of it is, but it's a different kind of folding forward experience, and folding is such a strange word because it implies a piece of paper, right? But it's a different kind of coming forward experience that may or may not be so much about the hip joints and the hamstrings.

Leslie: And may not be as aesthetically beautiful as what we're used to seeing in that pose.

Amy: That's a different thing. Sorry.

Leslie: Yeah.

Amy: How does that feel? Then I want to say something about that beautiful question.

Elise: Yeah. It was really different. It really wasn't about my legs at all, except for, actually, it felt more alive in my quadriceps, in the fronts of my legs instead of the backs.

Amy: In the fronts of your legs instead of the backs.

Elise: But really intense for my sacrum, and low back and mid back. Like, the whole back.

Amy: Intense like too much opening, or intense like reorganizing..?

Elise: Like, opening that hasn't been opening.

Amy: Did it feel over stretching or different organizing? I'm planting words in your head.

Elise: It didn't feel over stretching. But all of my attention was there. Like, [wah-ah-ah]

Amy: Yeah.

Elise: Just, really intense focus to that area that wouldn’t—so maybe reorganizing, because that wouldn't have been there before in that way.

Amy: Then, if you do it again... Can you do it again?

Elise: Mm-hmm.

Amy: Without that intensity as you go, but just see what your experience is of forward bending-ness.

Elise: Just going into it rather than..?



Amy: Mm-hmm.

Elise: I feel like I go into it and then I keep on coming out of it. Or, not out of it, but actually curling into it more, curling up into itself and then outward.

Amy: Yeah. Which is a really interesting question, then.

You can come up whenever you want to, or you can stay there and coil in on yourself. But I think it's an interesting question in relationship to what Leslie said, and I kind of stopped him, about the aesthetic of something.

Leslie: Yeah.

Amy: Or something being aesthetically pleasing. Because what is aesthetically pleasing is partly programmed into us by what we expect to see, and if we're seeing what we expect to see, and what we think something is supposed to be about. So if uttanasana is supposed to be about getting as deep a fold in your hip joints and to look like your palms are on the floor easily, there could be a certain look to it that then we could go into and explore and say, "Okay, how do we do that with the sense of balanced joint space?” Or we could say that uttanasana is about coiling in on yourself and maybe forward bending is about going inward and not any one joint. Then a forward bend might be about getting a little bit of flexion everywhere, because the other forward bend has some outward going quality to it with the inward growing quality. Which is not wrong. It just depends on what we think uttanasana is about, and then it sets up our aesthetic expectations, I think. There's a kind of beauty I see to that folded flat kind of thing that I go, "Wow. They are folded so flat.” Then there's another kind of beauty that I see, if we're equating beauty and aesthetic and whatever, if we make that leap. There's another kind of beauty I see to watching you in this inquiry with yourself about coiling in, kind of, that's really interesting. Which one’s right? Impossible to say out of the context of the point I'm trying to make and the experience you might be setting out to have. So can you do one more thing?

Elise: Mm-hmm.

Amy: Or, actually..?

Leslie: Keep going.

Amy: Can I keep going? Please, please?

Leslie: Are you gonna start talking about breathing?

Amy: No.

Leslie: Okay.

Amy: I'll let you do that. But I want to ask her one more question. Can you go back to doing that more flattened out one, but somehow keep in it this question?

Elise: I don't know. We'll see. Okay. So more flattened out.

Amy: I want to make the point that there's nothing wrong about doing this one either. It's a different kind of question. And that there's a way to do this more folded, rather than coiling, if that's how we contrast it. There's a way to do this that also has integrity or inquiry, or something. There is no right way to doing asana. It also means there's no wrong way to do it. I think that the wrong-ness might come when we make an assumption about how it's supposed to be.




How does that feel down there?

Elise: It's interesting because I think a lot of the time, for flexible people, you get this sit bones to heels cue kind of a thing. So I'm used to hearing that for myself. Then this is kind of, like, almost getting a similar effect, but I don't feel like I am pulling anything. So it feels more easy. I mean, easeful. Not easy. But full of ease.

Amy: So it's less about adding effort somewhere.

Elise: Yeah.

Leslie: Yeah.

Amy: So Leslie is gonna add something now.


One-on-One: Leslie adds a breath experiment for student who feels “floppy” in forward bends

Leslie: Oh, just one tiny little thing. Since you're here and you're so comfortable, just place your hands here and just do the move where you inhale and sort of lift your head and chest with your knees slightly bent from this position. Good. Yeah. Bend your knees just a bit more. Okay. So I'm just gonna ask you to--from this as a starting position, just think of making your exhale about twice as long as you're inhale for a few breaths. See how that may want to change the shape of your spine or of your body. Feel what you have to activate to make the exhale longer than the inhale in this shape. Then, on your next exhale, let the exhale finish by releasing your upper spine and head back into that forward folded position. See what the remnants are of that pattern in your body and your sensations, and where they are distributed. When you feel ready you can just come on out of that and maybe share a little bit about what that was like.

Elise: When I was in the extended position it felt like it created all this space in my lower abdomen. It was a little bit harder to do that once I was folded over, but it felt like it was actually, maybe, having a similar effect of widening the back of my sacrum and, like...

Leslie: Yeah. Again, it's about arranging the body in such a way that the only real choice for that exhale, given that shape of the body, is to find something engaging in the bottom of, as we've been calling it, water balloon. So there's a way of teaching bandha without even saying the word bandha, is my point. There's a way of accomplishing a lot of these shifts in alignment or positioning, or redistributing stresses, using simple cues or ideas about the breathing. These are just a few ideas. There are a lot of ways to do it. But the overarching thing, which Amy has been saying, is that healthy movement is well distributed. It's a little bit of movement coming from a lot of places. So we have to be careful with our alignment cues that we give people that may be encouraging them to take too much movement from too few places and then having them repeat that too many times, is an invitation for unbalanced joint space and potential injury.

Amy: Thank you.

Leslie: Yay.

Elise: Thank you.

Leslie: All right.

Amy: Good.

Leslie: Cool.




Group Movement Experience: “What am I curious about?”

Amy: So I think it's also an interesting question if we're asking not only from an injury and health perspective, because you may also be dealing with people where it isn't a question of injury, but just a question of curiosity. I think that this kind of thing where Elise didn't say that she had any injury or any discomfort or any pain, or anything we needed to undo, but maybe just another way to make it interesting.

Leslie: Sure.

Amy: I think also, if we take away the goal of being more flexible, then why are we doing it?

Leslie: To make ourselves more interesting?

Amy: To make ourselves—no, to get interested in ourselves.

Leslie: Oh, to get..! Yeah.

Amy: Yeah. So why don't you all stand up.

Leslie: I knew that.

Amy: You knew that.

Leslie: I knew that.

Amy: You did know that.

Leslie: Yes.

Amy: Find a spot to stand. Then roll forward through your spine. Before you do, see what you're curious about. So the question isn't how to do it right, now. If the question is not how to do it right, what are you curious about? Then roll forward through your spine. If you're still rolling forward, that's great. If you have rolled forward and it stopped being interesting, you could roll back up. If you want to roll up and come forward in a flat back, so-called flat back, you could try that idea. Or, if you wanted to do what Leslie did with Elise and, with your fingers on the floor, extend your spine, lengthen your exhale and see how changing the breath might change your experience.

What are you curious about in this moment? Then find your way back to vertical. Take a few moments to consider how your experience changes when it's about your own curiosity instead of getting it right. Thanks.

Module 3.13 Why Do Your Yoga?


Leslie: I'd like to take a couple of minutes to talk about an issue I think we all deal with in our pursuit of yoga and asana practice, and that is, how flexible is flexible enough? It's a good question, but a question, I think, that can only really be answered in the context of an individual and their life and what they do with their lives, and what their priorities are.



To use myself as an example, when I was a lot younger and doing a lot more yoga, I was able to do a lot more range of asanas to a greater range of motion. Although I was not really blessed, genetically speaking, with a very flexible body in terms of my connective tissue, I was able to do a lot more advanced asana when I was younger. But now in my middle age, which, by the way, is how old I will always tell somebody I am, no matter how old I am, because it keeps pushing the second half back and back and back. For example, if I'm middle aged now I would live to 112. So the question is, how important would it be for me to do enough physical practice to be able to get myself back to some of those asanas that I used to be able to do? My answer is, it's not that important. Right now I have enough range of motion in my body to put my shoes and socks on, okay. To reach and pick things up and put them down and move things around and play basketball and ride a horse every so often, and just do the things of my life that are important.


And also to be able to get up in front of a room full of people and demonstrate some things in asana practice and not make a complete fool of myself. So, for me, that's enough. It took me awhile to come to terms with that, because I always wanted to think that I could get back to, or should get back to, being able to do more advanced asana.

So I guess the way to sum that up is that, at this point in my life, I do my yoga practice to live my life. Not the other way around. I don't live my life to do my yoga practice. In the end, if you think about it, no matter how advanced your practice is, every asana you ever learned you're going to lose, except my favorite, savasana. So if there was a single pose to master, I'd say that would be it. I don't care how stiff you are. You can always do a good savasana.

Unit 3 In Review


Leslie: So in this third unit we looked at some of the basic building blocks of what goes into range of motion, flexibility. What goes into a joint, different types of muscle contractions, and the beginning of being able to talk about things like alignment and safety in asana practice.

Amy: We then did a movement exploration to begin exploring the idea of feeling movement in the joints, where there's a lot of movement, where there's not so much movement, and how you might play with distributing that movement.

Leslie: We then looked at, what is a joint? A joint is a relationship. Then we sort of geeked out a little bit on the components of a joint and what goes into a joint, and the fact that there’s all sorts of relationships in the body that we may not ordinary think of as joints.

Amy: We took that information about joints and looked at the concept of balanced joint space, and how space in a joint is not necessarily about creating more distance between the bones, but about accommodating the three dimensionality of the joints and balancing that space.

Leslie: We took that idea into a specific demonstration of what happens in a joint like the knee when it is locked, unlocked and how that contributes to the ability to be stable, unstable, or at least adaptable to potentially destabilizing forces.

Amy: We talked about muscles, how muscles pull, what muscles contractions are named or how they are described, and also the relationship between different layers of muscles, muscles on different sides of a



joint, and muscles along a length of a body part to look at muscle, blah, relationships and the larger conversation that's happening between the nervous system and muscles.

Leslie: Then Amy and I had an interesting discussion about some of the genetic inheritance that contributes to range of motion and a bunch of different factors, some of which are more changeable than others that would contribute to this overall sense of what we end up calling range of motion.

Amy: Leslie and I had a discussion about proprioception, what it means, what it could mean, and how understanding the perception of movement or ideas about proprioception can affect what we assume or understand about the students in front of us. We then played with some students, worked with some students, experimented with some students about their own experiences of their range of motion, where they feel sensation, pain or discomfort or ease, and how to change that up and have a different experience.

Leslie: Yeah. It was great doing that to see the two different ways that you and I would choose to work with maybe the same issue.

Amy: Yeah.

Leslie: Or work in the same way using different methods or different language. That was really fun.

Amy: Yeah.

Leslie: Then we finished with just a little discussion of how flexible is flexible enough, and whether we do our yoga to live our lives or live our lives to do yoga.


Unit 3: Strength, Flexibility, and Movementmedia.yogaanatomy.net/fundamentals-new/unit-3... · Unit...

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