Your Body, Your Yoga: Learn Alignment Cues That Are Skillful, Safe, and Best Suited To You

in the morning, the discs are the most hydrated and thickest, but by bedtime at night, they are the least hydrated and thinnest.162 For this reason, stresses on the spine first thing in the morning are not recommended because the tension along the spine is already very high due to the hydration that occurs as we sleep.

The arrangement of the fibers of the first three ligaments are key in restricting movements (see figure 2.23). They are jointly called the capsular ligaments and

With a little stress, it may stay at that original length, but it will become taut. With a bit more stress, now it starts to stretch. The amount of stretch it undergoes is called the strain, usually measured as a percentage of its resting length. The ratio of the stress to the strain is called the material’s stiffness, as shown in

Rolling and sliding often occur together in a joint movement, again to maximize surface area contact. This happens, for example, at the knees and at the shoulders. As shown in the shoulder example in figure 1.52, when the humerus is abducted to the side, it rolls in the shoulder socket, but it also slides down a bit so that the surfaces stay in con

Mechanoreceptors sense stress. When we apply a stress to our body, whether through movement, posture or gravity, through tension or compression, through yoga or other exercise, through massage or through daily living, the stress reaches and affects our cells.

Compression occurs on the inner part of the curve, while tension occurs on the outside of the curve, which is the location of fracturing if the structure’s materials become overly fatigued and start to fail. Fractures occur on the outside of bending curves. For our purpose—answering “What stops me?”—it is sufficient to consider the stresses arising

Ligaments do not become tense only at the extreme range of the joint’s movement; when the muscle tenses, the tendon and the ligaments both undergo stress. This stress may restrict our full range of movement long before the joint has reached its limits.

Ball-and-socket joints (also called spheroidal joints), such as the hip and shoulder. Here one bone

Henceforth, we will avoid the confusing terms origins and insertions in favour of the more precise proximal and distal attachments. Proximal refers to the attachment closer to the core of the body, and distal refers to the attachment further away from the trunk or core of