Close

yogaanatomyacademy

Malasana: How to Overcome the Struggle in the Deep Yoga Squat

how to get into garland pose deep squat butt to heels

Here’s a comprehensive guide to getting more comfortable in Malasana Plus, if you scroll down far enough, 7 Steps to Better Ankle Mobility We at Yoga Anatomy Academy love malasana and are on a mission to make this deep squat more accessible to more humans. The motivation is this: a large chunk of what we […]

Read More

5 Actions to Get Your Foot Up Between Your Hands

stepping your foot between your hands in yoga, from downward facing dog or down dog

The Instagram is full of fluid movers, yogis who can gracefully place a foot between their hands in slow motion, usually on the way down from a single arm hand balancing feat with a glass of wine between their toes. Not a drop spilled. What is less common: actual instructions in yoga class on how […]

Read More

Two Tips for Rotator Cuff Strengthening in Yoga

The rotator cuff (RTC) is a well-known group of muscles that are important in stabilizing the shoulder, basically no matter the activity. When it comes to keeping the arm bone centered in the “socket”, these are the guys for the job. The larger the weight or force that an arm lifts, the more important the […]

Read More

Balancing the Science & the Mystery in Yoga

Teaching anatomy for yoga practitioners is about much more than relaying the nuts and bolts (muscles and bones). In order to understand anatomy in the context of the vastness of yoga, we must understand how yoga, yoga classes, and yoga teaching influence bodies and fit in to a larger conversation about the intersection of yoga […]

Read More

Do We Serve the Poses or Do the Poses Serve Us? (Science Yoga Sundays episode)

Julie Tran of Science Yoga Sundays graciously invited me to speak on her program. I chose a topic that has been on my mind a LOT lately — Are we serving the yoga or is the yoga serving us? “We are here to enhance our lives, we are not here to bow down to some […]

Read More

Yoga Anatomy to the People: a Manifesto

In case you haven’t noticed, yoga is undergoing a revolution. This revolution is a natural ricochet from dominant paradigms of physical asana practice that have included: 1) overly prescriptive alignment and/or 2) lack of alignment plus excess repetition, but that 3) in nearly all cases discouraged critical thinking, deviation from your teacher, and incorporating modern […]

Read More

The Hidden Pulling Actions in Chaturanga or The Problem is Never the Pose

Amid the growing awareness that yoga asana is not always an infallible and complete physical workout, has been a tendency to dismiss certain poses (for example: wild thing, sleeping pigeon, chaturanga) as culprits of injury. The real culprit In reality, the culprits of injury — no matter the physical pursuit — are excessive repetition of movement […]

Read More

Three Elements of Intelligent Sequencing

Yoga Anatomy Academy is about to throw down (a.k.a. post) our first yoga sequence on this blog. We thought we’d preface it with a behind the scenes break-down of how we think through creating a sequence. There are as many ways to sequence a yoga class (or personal practice) as there are individuals practicing yoga, and we have so […]

Read More