Amrita 6: Asana through the ages - Magazine - Page 58
Playing it Safe
Exaggerated Warrior 1
So here’s an exaggerated Warrior 1 (page 54). Whilst looking
great it manages to combine:
Knee rotation: The right femur (upper leg bone) is being
turned to face forward by the hips squared to face the front of
the mat, whilst the lower right leg bones are being rotated
outwards by the turn of the right foot. The knee is twisted
between these, and the knee is not a rotational joint, and
done repetitively this wears / tears the meniscus. This is hugely exacerbated by having the feet in line with each other.
Femoral Acetabular Impingement (FAI): Forgive the name, it
just means that the femur (upper leg bone) is being pushed
forcibly forward in the hip socket (the acetabulum) and done
repetitively this results in inflammation and impingement at
the front / inner area of the hip joint. Here the right femur is
angled so far back with a tilted pelvis (you can see my butt
sticking out so my pelvis has dropped at the front and lifted
at my butt) that it is way beyond normal hip joint mechanics
and the femur is pushing hard on the front of its own joint
socket. FAI is a super common injury associated with dancers, footballers and yogis3
Lumbar Compression: see the big back bend curve in my
lower back? When we take part of the spine into extension (a
back bend) then the vertebrae get compressed onto each
other. This would be ok except for the problem that the majority of people have too much inward curve in their lower
backs already (and correspondingly too much stiffness /
rounding in their upper spines). So lots of lower back bends
makes an existing problem of lumbar compression way
worse exacerbating problems of neural and blood vessel impingement, vertebral facet joint fractures and forward shifts
in the lumbar vertebrae – all resulting in inflammation, pain,
swelling, stiffness, stenosis and degeneration. And we do this
kind of lower back bend (lumbar extension) a lot in yoga
classes.
56 AMRITA Issue 6 / Spring 2021
