Functional Anatomy of Yoga: A Guide for Practitioners and Teachers - Softcover

Keil, David

 
9781644116272: Functional Anatomy of Yoga: A Guide for Practitioners and Teachers
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1644116278 ISBN 13: 9781644116272
Verlag: Healing Arts Press, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

A full-color illustrated exploration of the body in motion during yoga practice

• Examines anatomical patterns and body mechanics in specific asanas, such as forward bends, twists, external hip rotations, arm balances, and back bends, to inspire confidence in students, deepen practice, and prevent injury

• Provides detailed images and photos overlaid with anatomical diagrams, allowing you to see clearly what is happening within each asana discussed

• Explores how various yoga postures interrelate from the perspective of functional anatomy

In this full-color illustrated guide, David Keil brings the anatomy of the body in yoga asanas to life. Writing in an accessible, conversational tone, he outlines how practitioners and yoga teachers alike can utilize a deeper understanding of their anatomy and its movement and function to deepen their yoga practice, increase confidence, prevent injury, and better understand their students and their challenges.

Providing detailed images and photos overlaid with anatomical diagrams, allowing you to see clearly what is happening within each asana discussed, Keil shows how the muscles, joints, tendons, and structure of the body work together to support integrated movement. He discusses the basics of functional anatomy, exploring the workings of the foot and ankle, the knee, the hip joint, the pelvis and SI joint, the spine, the shoulder, and the hand, wrist, and elbow. He examines anatomical patterns and body mechanics in specific asanas, such as forward bends, twists, external hip rotations, arm balances, and back bends, such as, for example, how a wide-legged forward bend shifts the position of the femur and the pelvis, allowing students with tight hamstrings to accomplish a deep forward bend--something they struggle with when the legs are together. Keil also shows how various yoga postures interrelate from the perspective of functional anatomy.

Revealing in detail how everything in the body is connected and how your anatomy functions holistically during yoga practice, this book helps you to understand the body better and connect and integrate yoga postures in a completely new way.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

David Keil is an experienced yoga teacher and longtime practitioner. The creator of the YogAnatomy DVD series, he was introduced to yoga in 1989 by his Tai Chi Chuan instructor and later studied yoga in Mysore, India, with Sri K. Pattabhi Jois and his grandson R. Sharath. He was an instructor of Kinesiology at Miami’s Educating Hands School of Massage from 1999 to 2003, and since 2000 he has been presenting yoga anatomy workshops. He lives in Miami, Florida.

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From Chapter 3. The Knee

Making our way up the body, the knee is the next major joint we come to. The femur and tibia, the two longest bones in the body, meet here to create one of the more complicated joints. Knee pain and dysfunction are almost as common as good old back pain. But what else should we expect from a joint that has to perform the type of demanding tasks that we ask of it?

In every workshop I have ever done, the knee is high on people’s priority list. I can’t say I blame them, since the ideal image of yoga in most of the world is someone sitting in Lotus. Therefore, Padmasana becomes a measuring stick for a person’s yoga practice. Of course, there is nothing less in line with a true yoga practice than a determined beginner trying to get into this pose and destroying their knee(s) in the process.

As my teacher John Scott points out, yoga has been plucked out of its cultural context and placed here in the West. In India, sitting on the floor has been a way of life for a long time. Although this is slowly disappearing with Western influence, you still regularly see women squatting to cook, or workers squatting to build things. And let’s not forget the Eastern toilet: beautifully laid porcelain in the floor requiring that you squat to use the toilet! With all of this squatting and sitting in everyday life, Indian hips and knees stay more flexible than ours in the West. Therefore, it is practically assumed that Lotus can be done. Lotus variations are the norm in the culture in which yoga was created.

In the West you will find something completely different. Unfortunately, the transplantation of yoga into our culture often results in suffering knees. It doesn’t mean that we can’t do yoga or Lotus, of course. It just means that we may want to keep cultural differences in mind as we try to plant our own Lotus seeds. We have a different culture, and Lotus is not a natural part of it. It is important to understand all the components of the posture, work with them over time, and let your Lotus grow at its own pace.

The Broader View

The knee is highly influenced by and connected to the joints above and below it, namely the foot and ankle joint below and the hip joint above. Often when injury occurs at the knee, there is some level of dysfunction (excess tension or weakness, or even a previous injury) in one or both of these surrounding joints.

The leg can be described as a kinematic chain. This means that the functions of the three main joints that comprise the leg are linked. Stand up for a moment with your book in hand and bend both knees at the same time; notice how the ankle and hip joints also move to accommodate the bend in the knees. Through its role as the central link in the kinematic chain of the leg, the knee is responsible for guiding and directing the movements of the leg in our daily activities, something as simple as walking or as complex as doing advanced asana.

The knee plays two somewhat contradictory roles: first it must be strong, because a great amount of our body weight passes through it. In addition to strength, it must also be flexible enough to deal with the adaptations of the ankle and foot, which change shape and position. It also must adapt to the hip and its role as we walk. When the balance between these joints and their roles (strength and flexibility) goes awry, the knee often receives the forces.

The Knee and Posture

We started with the foundation of our standing posture, the feet. If there are dysfunctions at this level (for example, flat feet), the ankles, knees, and hips (the joints above it) will have to compensate. Now let’s look at the second link in the chain, the knee.

A simple observation to make when studying the knees is to note the direction in which they face. You could look at the kneecaps as headlights and observe where they’re “shining their light.” Whether in Tadasana, Down Dog, or Triangle Pose, the knees tell a story. It may be a story about themselves, but it’s more likely a story about the hip, ankle, foot, or a combination of them all. As we mentioned in the last chapter, problems below have an effect above. The knee is, therefore, the first joint to feel the effect of a fallen arch or pressure from an ankle that is stuck in Lotus.

Let me share with you my own foot/ankle and knee relationship. Remember my story of breaking my right femur playing soccer? I kicked the soccer ball at the same moment that my much larger neighbor was kicking it in the opposite direction. From my recollection, the soccer ball didn’t move and I was vibrating like a cartoon character. The force of that mutual contact actually broke my femur. I wish I still had the x-ray to share with you here, but it has been lost over the years.

That event influenced that side of my body. My legs are slightly different lengths, which you may observe in an image of me in Headstand (see Figure 3.2). This could be a result of a stronger anterior tilt of the right side of my pelvis. My longer leg may be creating, or may be the result of, the slightly compressed arch in my right foot. This arch is visibly lower and more compressed looking. Who knows? My point is that there is an obvious relation between my foot, the arch, where my knee likes to point, and the tilt in that side of my pelvis; whether or not I can pinpoint the cause isn’t important.

Of course this can change on a moment-to-moment basis. If you look closely, you may be able to see a twist below my knee, essentially between the knee and the foot/ankle. If I add a bit of an arch to my foot, you can see how the direction of the knee changes (see Figure 3.3). Thus, due to the knee’s relation to the joints above and below it, it often reflects what’s going on (tension, weakness, injury, or other converging histories) in the joints surrounding it. This is a great example of the integrated nature of our bodies. Looking at the knee by itself does not give you the whole picture any more than feeling the trunk of an elephant gives you a clear idea of what an elephant looks like. To get the whole picture, we must also look at what is influencing it. This doesn’t just mean the foot, ankle, and hip joints, but also the muscles that cross these joints and their influence.

Basic Anatomy of the Knee

Three bones come together at the knee: the femur, tibia, and patella (kneecap). The technical name for the “knee” is the femoro-tibial joint. It is the connection between the rounded ends of the femur and the relatively flat surface of the top of the tibia. Between and around these two bones are the meniscus, the cruciate ligaments, and the collateral ligaments that help support movement and stability around this joint.

The shapes and angles of the bones are part of the determining factor of the function of this joint. We do not often realize the shape of the femur until we take a close look at it. . . .

* * *

Integrating Anatomy into Your Practice

We’re all familiar with the advice to bend our knees when stooping down to pick up a heavy box. We do this to help distribute the weight from the lower back into the legs. This same concept can be used in our transition in and out of standing postures. Straight-legged standing postures themselves do not call for bending the knees, but in a standing forward bend, Triangle Pose, or any other straight-legged standing pose for that matter, bending the knees distributes the weight in the legs.

Play with entering and exiting a number of standing poses with the legs straight and then with the knees bent. Compare the difference. Bending the knees to transition between...

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Verlag
Healing Arts Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1644116278
ISBN 13 
9781644116272
Einband
Taschenbuch
Auflage
2
Anzahl der Seiten
328
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
3584 AA
Niederlande