54 Yoga anatomY
Range of motion in Joints
The body never moves only one joint or does only one joint action. In any given movement,
the body might be moving through the subtleties of 15 or even 500 different joint actions
just to bend a leg or lift an arm.
Even if we set out to completely focus on one particular joint, as soon as we begin a
movement, it travels to the joints at the other ends of the moving bones and into the next
bones and joints and the next bones and joints and the next—all the way into the spine
and all the way out to the periphery. If you are lying passively and someone else moves
you, that movement will still travel through your tissues one way or another.
Because movement travels through the body in this way, it isn’t practical to focus exclu-
sively on the range of motion in a single joint. While it is possible for a skilled hands-on
practitioner to effectively isolate a joint and determine how much movement is possible
in the bones and soft tissues, as soon as we begin to move volitionally, we must take into
account the rest of the movement choices in the body.
In observing the wholeness of a person moving, you are able see that when movement
seems to stop in one joint, it moves to the next. Sometimes it skips over joints that don’t
move easily or becomes so small that it is difficult to perceive, but it always goes somewhere.
Instead of focusing on the range of motion in specific joints, look at the whole pattern
of movement in the skeletal system: Observe where there is much movement and it seems
easy, and observe where there is less movement and it seems more challenging. Then ask
how to bring balance: If someone has made it to the limit of what can happen in one joint,
is movement possible at the next joint? Do some joints do all the movement to the point
of being overly mobile? Are some joints not moving at all, as if there aren’t joints there?
It can also be a question of attention: Whether someone is very flexible or very stiff, his
or her body will have places where there is a lot of awareness and places that are more in
the shadows.
ConCluSion
Success in an asana (or any movement) should be measured by the quality of balance or
intrinsic equilibrium through the whole body, rather than in the range of motion in a single
joint. This quality arises in the skeletal system from the presence of balanced joint space in
each joint, the availability of clear pathways for movement through the bones and joints,
and the awareness of our individual patterns in the wholeness of the systems of our body.