AustralianYogaJournal-April2018

73

april 2018

yogajournal.com.au

Why Should we

UNDERSTAND THE PLANES?

In a word: proprioception. This refers to the body’s ability to sense

joint position and movement, enabling you to know where your

body is in space without having to look—and to know how much

force is needed to create movement. It helps us feel grounded

and balanced, and it allows us to move in and out of yoga poses

safely. Proprioception can be enhanced over time with mindful,

repetitive movements, such as asana.

One of the obstacles to healthy proprioception is chronic,

unconscious, habitual patterns in the body. Whether these

patterns arise from injury or overuse doesn’t matter; they affect

your posture and keep you moving in habitual ways. To wit: Take a

moment to think about your highly mobile shoulder joint, which is

built to move in many different directions. If you start to favour

moving it just one way—say, reaching your arms forward and up

in the sagittal plane and avoiding reaching them out to the sides

in the coronal plane—that pattern can create an imbalance in the

joint, leading to chronic pain and even injury.

Put the planes

into practice

Want to get comfortable with

these anatomical planes and

expand your movement range

(or teaching skills)? Start here:

STEP 1 Make lists of your 10 favourite, and

10 least favourite, poses. Consider which

poses you tend to practice at home and

which ones you avoid.

STEP 2 Determine the primary plane

for each of the poses on your lists.

STEP 3 Name the planes in which you seem

to be most and least comfortable.

STEP 4 Create a list of poses from your least

favorite plane, and plan to practice these

poses several times a week. Are these poses

challenging for you? Are they easy? How do

you feel when you practice more from the

plane in which you’re least comfortable? Get

curious.

STEP 5 After a couple weeks of practicing

your least favorite poses, go deeper with

your line of questioning: What has practicing

movements you’d been avoiding revealed?

(Yes, I am talking poses—and anything else

you tend to avoid in life.)

If you’re a teacher, take these same steps

when it comes to assessing your go-to

sequences: Look at the poses you teach

often, as well as the themes that you

choose for your classes. Which plane is

over-represented? Which one(s), if any, are

under-represented? Do you tend to teach

the plane that is your personal favourite and

avoid the one that’s your least favourite?

Finally, whether you’re teaching or simply

moving through your own home practices,

commit to creating sequences that include

poses that highlight your least utilised plane.

How do you feel when you practice (or

teach) them? How does your body feel after

a few weeks of moving in your less utilised

plane? Do you feel more embodied? Are

your movements more balanced in all three

planes? See if these simple enquiries help

you feel more awake and whole.

“If you’re a yoga teacher, including poses take

your students through all three planes can help

them develop healthy and balanced bodies.”

One way to wake up from these unconscious patterns is to try

less familiar movements and shapes in the planes you tend to

avoid, which will help bring fl exibility to stuck areas and

strength to weak ones. Exploring simple movements in all three

planes, especially your nondominant one(s), with an open,

playful attitude—frustration and shame are not helpful here!—

can help you develop new neuromuscular pathways and more

balanced movement patterns. Over time, there’s a good chance

you’ll fi nd this leads to more effi cient posture, improved

balance, and healthier joints.

If you’re a yoga teacher, including poses and cues that take

your students through all three planes (whether you name them

or not) can help them develop healthy and balanced bodies.

What’s more, using the framework of the planes to see

distortions and imbalances in a yoga practitioner’s body can

help you use more effective cues.

As you try to understand and analyse how you move

separately in each of the planes, keep in mind that the goal isn’t

to dissect the body. After all, the body exists in all three planes

at the same time. The point of this work is to try to bring the

body into balance in all three planes, at all times, to create a

feeling of wholeness. This, I believe, is one of the keys to feeling

more embodied, both on and off the mat.

Our Pro Teacher Annie Carpenter is a yoga teacher and teacher trainer in San

Francisco. She’s also the creator of the SmartFLOW method, which she teaches in

classes, workshops, and her 200- and 500-hour teacher trainings across the globe.

Learn more at anniecarpenter.com. Model Cynthia Sing is a yoga teacher, a rock

PHOTOGRAPHY BY RICK CUMMINGS; MODEL: CYNTHIA SING; STYLIST: JESSICA JEANNE EATON; HAIR/MAKEUP: BETH WALKER; TOP: TITIKA; BOTTOMS: KIRA GRACEclimber, and a student of Carpenter’s who lives in Boulder, Colorado.