How do we deal with physical limitations holding us back in our yoga practice? One approach is to push through them – keep training until you’ve overcome the limitation.
However, this is not the best approach to safely making progress in our practice, says Clinical Kinesiologist and yoga therapist Dr. Gill Solberg. Training is not enough. The brain has its own ways. If there is a limitation in the body, the brain takes the movement where it is easier to make the movement. This is what we understand by kinetic chains – the brain will always take the movement to the place of least resistance. This happens unconsciously and it is counterproductive to the alignment we seek in the postures.
In this video excerpt, Dr. Solberg goes through some of the most common kinetic chains yoga students encounter in their practice, and why they can hurt instead of help if not properly addressed.
This is a 20-minute video excerpt from Dr. Solberg’s online course: Yoga for Posture Improvement – The Kinesiology of Alignment and Biomechanics of Healthy Aging. You may also be interested in Dr. Solberg’s free download: Free Download! The Kinesiology of Yoga – Mapping the Factors that Affect Alignment in Yoga
This post originally appeared on Yoga U Online and is republished with permission.
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This is very interesting! As I start to do more meditation practice, good posture is certainly something that I’m finding to be a point of challenge, or at least something that I have to keep tabs on.
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This is really cool, i found that my posture has improved when combining my regular yoga classes with cycling, i don’t know if its because i’m combining it with a different type of movement but my electric bike was the SECOND best thing next to attending my weekly yoga I’ve done for my health.
This really good and informative. I enjoyed the video. Thanks for sharing.
I think it’s best to work around the injury, to above all ‘do no harm’