Intelligent Yoga: Listening to the Body’s Innate Wisdom

What I am actually feeling is the release of tension that this inhalation necessarily brings into the respiratory system, and the transmission of this release through the bones of the body and into the floor.

The postures are a concentration of mind and movement in which the breath undoes the stiffness and tensions of the body, strengthening its weaknesses and restoring health.

makes the point that when rotation is brought into the side-bending

I do have a problem with the conclusions many anatomists come to regarding movement. There is a tendency to indulge in reverse-engineering, trying to understand movement by looking at the parts rather than understanding that movement starts as an idea/intention in the cortex and is then carried out in the way we have rehearsed such movements throug

Longer legs enabled early mammals to move more easily over objects, and the up and down movements of the spine further developed. The diaphragm and soft belly developed firstly to enable respiration and movement to take place at the same time, and secondly to allow greater flexion and extension of the body – something necessary for swift movement o

We need to move away from the idea that there are postural muscles, respiratory muscles and functional muscles as separate categories. All muscles will, when necessary, be recruited for the task at hand, whether it be a yoga posture or pulling a weed out of a flower bed.

shut down the part of the brain that helps us make sense of internal feelings. In effect, we try to hide from our feelings. Although this may be useful in the short term, because those feelings may threaten to overwhelm us, in the long term it means we become unable to interpret our ‘gut feelings’ accurately.

Information flows into us through our senses, is processed in our brains and then responded to through our muscles, cells and glands. How we process the information will vary from person to person and culture to culture. Consequently, our responses to information will also vary from person to person and culture to culture.

We now know that the motor cortex ‘maps’ movement patterns that are frequently used. Nowhere is there a one-to-one relationship from motor neuron to muscle. As yoga teachers, this should make us think. Is there any point in trying to target specific muscles when the brain is not adapted for

Somewhere in this thinking is the notion that a hamstring has ‘become short’, a hip has ‘become stiff’ or the core has ‘become weak’, as if these areas have an independence from the rest of the human being and have decided to behave in an unhelpful way. This is nonsense. If an area of the body appears tight or weak or stiff, it is generally because