Amrita 6: Asana through the ages - Magazine - Page 63
Playing it Safe
Please don’t think that you now have to learn a huge
amount of anatomy for EVERY asana!!! My aim when teaching yoga teachers is that you understand our human design
and how that manifests in good movement patterns, not just
parrot a load of instructions. It really is quite straight-forward! It really is often as simple as understanding that the
knee is not a rotational joint and therefore you modify asana
to keep good hip-knee-ankle alignment and that’s what you
instruct. Or that people have excessive lower back curves
and excessive upper back rounding and that what our spines
want is less lumbar curve and a flatter upper back. So you
modify asana to keep the lumbar neutral and the thoracic
spine flattening (in extension).
And don’t worry about what anyone either past or present says about an asana – we know a huge more about human design now than we did when yoga was codified in the
early twentieth century.
If you are teaching based on our contemporary understanding of human movement then you are a safe, thoughtful, considerate teacher who is doing the best for your students. A
REFERENCES
A good start on the literature of yoga and injury is William Broad’s The Science of Yoga . It
is an accessible read and fully referenced.
1
2009 survey of yoga teachers and in-class injuries by International Association of Yoga
Teachers, Yoga Alliance USA and Yoga Spirit Canada.
2
SARAH RAMSDEN IS a senior yoga teacher with YAP and has over 15,000 teaching hours. She is a long-term yoga teacher at Manchester
City and Manchester United football clubs. She runs The Body Aligned – Yoga, Functional Anatomy & Injury teacher-only course and also the
Specialist Teacher (sport) accreditation course, The Body Athletic – Teaching Yoga to Athletes & in Sport.
www.sportsyoga.co.uk | www.sarahramsden.co.uk
www.yogaallianceprofessionals.org
AMRITA Issue 6 / Spring 2021 61
