Intelligent Yoga: Listening to the Body’s Innate Wisdom

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.

certainly developed as a result of the early lizards having to twist their way over obstacles in their path.

paying attention to things we have previously left unacknowledged and that we take for granted – the sensations we have when we practise.

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.

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.

every healthy human being learned to move without studying anatomy – as do all animals on the planet. While I have no

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.

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.),

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.