Pose-itively Yoga

06/04/2025

LIGAMENTS ATTACH BONE TO BONE. Tendons attach muscle to bone. Ligaments are how we hold our skeleton together. This is why we pay so much attention to our hands (and feet) in yoga.
I Love anatomy, so I like to talk about it a lot in the classes I teach.
I always mention the tiny little ligaments of the hands (and feet). Every day in yoga, I instruct the yogi's to REACH through their fingertips, SPREAD the fingers wide, PRESS the hands into the mat. PUSH the mat away. HASTA BANDHA, which is the hand lock on the mat.
**The hand lock is crucial to prevent wrist pain or injury. And when or if you fall, you want strong hands and wrists. Make sense? And prayerfully you can fall into a yoga pose.
Example - if you fall out of Standing Bow, then fall into Half Moon or better yet, Chapasana. The last pic below is 'Chapasana' is a pose we do all the time.
***Check out those tiny little ligaments wrapped around each knuckle. Check out the tiny ligaments holding all of the bones together. Then there are the muscles and tendons that make the hands move.
I'll post feet tomorrow. In the meantime, swallow this crazy pill. You must keep your hands strong so you can grab, hold and open jars. We aren't getting any younger. :)

03/14/2025

YOGA! Today was pretty much BIG TWIST FRIDAY. In fact, I think I will change the name of the Friday Slow Flow Vinyasa Class to BIG TWIST FRIDAY.
Our 'peak pose' today was 'Parivrtta Utthita Padangustasana' otherwise known as 'Revolved or Twisted Hand to Big Toe Pose'. We do this pose without the twist all the time (Utthita Padangustasana), but today I took the yogi's through multiple shoulder, trunk, and hip twists to ready themselves for the Parivritta (twisted version) of big toe hold.
This included teaching them a bit about the lungs, how big they are, and those tiny little intercostal muscles between each rib. Multiple twists are important to open up the trunk for this crazy cool twist. One or two twists before this pose is simply not enough, it's a lot of prep, but the yogi's can and will do it, cause their AWESOME!!
Think about how much you twist every single day, including a simple head check when you drive. Twisting poses are super important and are a huge part of our daily practice.

03/07/2025

I talk a lot of anatomy during the yoga classes I teach. I think it's important.
I always mention the bacon strip muscles in our forearms that morph into the tendons that make our fingers move, and those tendons look like fettuccini noodles.
Tendons are fibrous connective tissue and feel like tough asparagus near the bottom of its stem. That's what it felt like to me during gross anatomy class.
In the yoga classes I teach, we do a lot of hand and wrist, toe and ankle poses several times a week. We have to keep that grip strength in-check ya' know. We aren't getting any younger.
I also mention the 'Flexor Retinaculum' a lot, which is the band around the wrist.
This morning I also mentioned the 'itty bitty teensy weensy' ligaments that wrap around the finger bones (phalanges) and hold them together.
Ligaments hold the skeleton together, then the muscles can attach from joint to joint by way of tendons and then we can move our bodies. Cool beans!
We sprain ligaments and strain muscles. A strain/sprain is both.
One more thing, doctor comes from the Latin word - docere and docere means teach.
Doctor means teacher. TEACH!
I told the yogi's I would post some pics today so they could see those bacon strips and all of those tiny ligaments that keep all of the bones in the hands and fingers together. Enjoy!~

02/28/2025

While teaching yoga, I like to throw out a lot of anatomy, over and over and over again. It's important to know why we do the things we do, then we can become more 'intentional'. This morning during 'Slow Flow Vinyasa' while we were in 'paschimottanasana pose' (seated forward fold), which is the same as 'uttansana pose' (standing forward fold), I was explaining about the 'anastomosis of the elbow and knee' as well as the 'circle of willis'. I like to describe anatomy to them like road maps. This morning I explained to them (while in the pose) the anastomosis is like roundabouts that we come to at 4-ways. It's important to know 'your body' better than you know anything else. FUN!!! That fat pad behind your knee, its important to protect the anastomosis around the knee. Same with the elbow. And the brain. There are some words I just like to say - anastomosis, elbow, and paschimottanasana are three (3) of them. Epiphany is another. 🙂 Love is another. 🙂

11/26/2024