Intelligent Yoga: Listening to the Body’s Innate Wisdom

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

What previous researchers had noted as a discrete muscle twitch was in fact the tip of a movement iceberg. It was the pursuit of an anticipated concept – direct neuron-to-muscle relationships – that had stopped them seeing the overlaps they were getting for what they really were:

an improvement in the responsiveness of the respiratory system, enabling it to meet the needs of changes in effort, emotions and posture; and finally a greater sense of wellbeing that has something to do with the way we engage with the nervous system – both in the way we respond to our internal, physical promptings (hunger, thirst, tiredness etc.),

When a movement is carried out in such a way it is considered to be compliant – the body complies with the person’s wishes in the easiest possible

Our response will be noticed in our muscles, which will tend to tighten when our environment discomforts us, and relax when it nourishes us.

What we want to find out is whether the body adapts the breathing to the pose effectively or not. What we do not want to do is to try and control the breath in some supposedly idealised way while we practise.

There are three major components to our anatomy that are of particular interest to us as yoga teachers (and students): muscles, fascia/connective tissue and bones. In a very straightforward way we can say that muscles generate forces to move us, fascia resists tensile forces and shapes us, and bones transmit forces to take the burden off muscles.

To help it to survive, the nervous system is partially ‘hard-wired’ at birth, with breathing and the heartbeat occurring automatically, but this is not enough to ensure survival. The baby also needs to eat, and so it arrives with a rooting instinct: an ability to nuzzle in search of the nipple and, once it finds it, to suck. In fact, the instinct t