5
CHAPTER
INSIDE THE ASANAS
A
n asana, or yoga pose, is a container for an experience. An asana is not an exercise
for strengthening or stretching a particular muscle or muscle group, although it might
have that effect.
It is a form that we inhabit for a moment, a shape that we move into and out of, a place
where we might choose to pause in the continuously fl owing movement of life. In yoga
poses, we experience a cross section of a never-ending progression of movement and breath,
extending infi nitely forward and backward in time.
Each asana is a whole-body practice where we can witness how things arise, how they
are sustained, and how they dissolve or are transformed. We can see how we are affected
by the experience of moving into the pose, being in the pose, and moving out of the pose,
and how that might affect other places in our lives where we meet change. As long as we
are in the matrix of space and time, we are never actually still.^1
While we might choose different aspects of a pose to focus on, the asana itself is a
composite of all the possible points of focus, and the whole experience is greater than the
sum of its parts.
what iS aSana analySiS?
How, then, can we possibly analyze the anatomy of an asana? Because we believe asana
is more of a process than a fi nal product, in the creation of this text it was a challenge to
decide which moments to photograph and which parts of the anatomy to focus on.
For the purposes of this book, we tried to fi nd the moments that capture the most
recognizable parts of common asanas and analyzed them from the perspective of the
musculoskeletal system and the breathing mechanism. We could just as well have chosen to
focus on the organs or the endocrine system or the connective tissue and found something
equally fascinating to discuss in every asana.
In each asana we chose a starting position and then determined the skeletal joint actions
and muscular joint actions that could give rise to the asana.
Starting PoSitionS anD the BaSe of SuPPort
In the fi rst years of life, a baby learns fundamental movement skills: how to use different
bases of support, how to negotiate a relationship to gravity, and how to move through space.
The base of support is the parts of the body that are on the ground and through which
the weight-bearing forces are transmitted down to the earth, resulting in some supporting
energy generated upward into the body. When we change our base of support, we change
our experience of ourselves in relationship to gravity and space.
The feet—supporting the legs and pelvis—have evolved specifi cally to accomplish this
for adult humans. The lessons you learn from standing on the earth can be applied to any
other base of support you may experience. This is perhaps why simple standing poses are
considered a starting point for asana practice by many yoga traditions.
(^1) “Each bodily movement is embedded in a chain of infi nite happenings from which we distinguish only the immediate
preceding steps and, occasionally, those which immediately follow” (Laban 1966, p. 54).