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april 2018yogajournal.com.auWhy 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 rockPHOTOGRAPHY 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.