“Don’t force to the periphery, what the axis can’t do” said famously, Vanda Scaraveli, one of Iyengar’s first generation western senior disciples. Scaraveli who famously formed her own approach to yoga once breaking away from the Iyengar system was well known for her ‘liquid’ spinal flexibility.
Like many contemporary western students of yoga, a good understanding of anatomy is important to their practice. As for contemporary western yoga teaching, we cannot afford to avoid experience of anatomy if we want to teach well.
Back in the day, even just twenty years ago, this knowledge was scarce in the yoga shala. As trainee teachers we were just taught by repetition and questioning the teachers methods was almost frowned upon! We are all a bit wiser nowadays. We know its beneficial to have anatomical knowledge.
Bodhiyoga puts a strong emphasis on two areas in the teacher training. These help guide the teacher in the direction of sound principles and safe practice. One area is anatomy study and the other is structural alignment, which includes analysis of postures. This is a thorough part of our training module which helps build safe practice principles for the teacher.
We like to say that yoga takes place within the anatomical laws of the body. This means that we respect our body and its range of motion. Combined with awareness practice in the yoga this leads to an intelligent aware practice that we can build on over a lifetime, safely guiding students deeper into their practice.
