Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Yoga anatomy

I am a self confessed girly swot. I actually enjoyed school and university so much I even completed a post graduate degree last year through distance learning because I could. Having a thirst for knowledge and learning is one of the reasons I am going to training. To learn more about this yoga I love so much. 

Part of the training curriculum is an anatomy course. This makes sense, you need to know fully what is going on inside and out in order to understand the benefits and assist students with any problems. I've heard the course is designed for complete anatomy beginners, it's easy to understand and the Doctor is fantastic who runs it. Still the girly swot in my would like to go in there being a little bit familiar with muscle names etc. I would also like to be up on this side of things as students are always asking questions as to "why does this hurt, I have recurring issues here, what's pinching there, is it normal?" I would like to be a well read, well informed instructor who can answer these question confidently. (I'm sure this will all be covered at TT)

I'd seen this book, Yoga Anatomy by Leslie Kaminoff, a while back and read other recommendations from fellow bloggers that it's a good read. It arrived on my door step last week and I've got stuck straight in. It has lots of lovely illustrations that appeal to me, I like cross referencing words to images it helps me get an understanding of what's going on. All the poses are broken into different chapters ie. standing, sitting, kneeling etc. 

The first chapter is really interesting and goes into detail about the respiratory system and spine. This book is for yoga in general but there are a lot of the Bikram series in here, some with slightly different names and variations. It still highlights which major muscle groups are being used. I've not done anything slightly scientific for over 16 years but after reading a few of the chapters some of my GCSE biology started to kick in and it wasn't so alien to me. Also during the Bikram class instructors will talk about the medical benefits and name some of the muscles or parts of the spine that are being engaged. So I'm getting mini anatomy classes during class as well!

Anyone interested in the inner workings of the body and relating it to yoga I'd say get this book. It's not too heavy on the words and the illustrations are clear and easy to follow.

1 comment:

  1. i love this book! my mom got it for me as a gift for some holiday and its awesome. she never knew she was buying a great yoga resource for me. cool!

    ReplyDelete