your practice
ANATOMY62
april 2019yogajournal.com.auWHEN MY CHILDRENwere very young
andseated in a highchair, they would
deliberately drop pieces of food—one
by one over the edge of the tray, each
time delightedly watching them fall to
the floor. By the time my third child
reached this stage, I had changed my
perspective. Instead of being
annoyed, I told myself that she was
just “experimenting with gravity.”
That always made me smile.
When you practice asana, you are
constantly experimenting or dancing
with the force of gravity and its effects
on a pose. If you are to understand
how to practice, and certainly how
to teach, you must be aware of how
gravity “chooses” which muscles are
working, and which are not, in
each asana, and why this is so. This
understanding is what I call movement
literacy, and it is the guiding principle
of my online and in-person course on
experiential anatomy.
Movement literacy is based on
the understanding that the body is an
orchestra and movements are the
music it creates. When you can see,
feel, and understand the specifics of
the body’s movements, not only do you
become a better practitioner, but you
now have the tools to help your
students practice more safely and even
potentially to help them eliminate pain
when they struggle in an asana.
Here is an example: Both Supta
Padangusthasana (Reclining Hand-
to-Big-Toe Pose) and Uttanasana
(Standing Forward Bend) are forward
bends. Both poses are practiced by
flexing the hip joints. But there is a bigdifference in which muscles are
creating each asana. In Supta
Padangusthasana, you begin by lying
supine on your mat. To practice the
pose, you exhale as you flex your hip
joint, bringing your thigh toward your
trunk. Your leg comes straight up,
moving against the force of gravity the
whole way. Finally, catch your big toe
or hold on to your outer ankle or lower
leg, depending on your flexibility.
The action of raising your leg up is
created in this position by the hip
flexor muscles that are found on the
front of the body. These are principally
the iliopsoas, the rectus femoris
portion of the quadriceps, the
sartorius, and the pectineus.
When you lift your leg up against
the force of gravity, these muscles
undergo a shortening contraction, also
called a concentric contraction. The
hip flexor muscles are creating the
movement of bringing the thigh to the
trunk, that is, hip flexion. The entire
action is occurring against the force
of gravity.
But just because you are moving
into hip flexion doesn’t necessarily
mean that you are creating the
movement by using your hip flexors.
When you are standing up, for
example, and bending forward to
practice Uttanasana, it is actually the
muscles in the buttocks and back thigh
that are controlling the creation of hip
flexion, not the hip flexors. Thus, the
muscles that are creating hip flexion in
Uttanasana are muscles on the back
of the body: the hip extensors.
The hip extensors are the gluteusmaximus and all of the hamstring
muscles, except the short head of the
biceps femoris. Plus a small percentage
of the movement is created by the
posterior fibres of the gluteus medius.
Hip extension is the movement of
the femur backward when standing,
like when you prepare to kick a ball.
Or, in asana practice, extension of the
hip joint occurs when you lift one leg
up in the Adho Mukha Svanasana
(Downward-Facing Dog Pose)
variation often called Three-Legged
Dog, or when you move into Urdhva
Dhanurasana (Upward Bow Pose).
All of these movements are
shortening contractions of the hip
extensors. But the hip extensors are
also active when moving into
Uttanasana, which paradoxically is hip
flexion. When bending forward in the
pose, you are now moving with
gravity. When you begin the pose by
tipping the trunk slightly forward,
gravity immediately begins to pull
more and more of your body
downward toward the earth.
The hip extensors are now
undergoing a lengthening contraction.
They are slowly letting you down, like
you would let someone down with a
rope over the edge of a cliff. The hip
extensors are acting like a brake on
the body to control the gradual
descent into hip flexion. This is more
metabolically efficient; you need less
energy to move with gravity than
against it. In other words, by using
the hip extensors, the body uses less
energy to create hip flexion. Without
the lengthening contraction of theDancing with
Gravity in Asana
An increased awareness of the effects of gravity can help you figure out which
muscles to use and which to release in order to move more deeply and more
safely into a pose. By Judith Hanson LasaterILLUSTRATIONS: MICHELE GRAHAM; PHOTOS: CHRISTOPHER DOUGHERTY;MODEL: MEGAN O’DONNELL; CLOTHING: MODEL’S OWN