Читать книгу Restorative Yoga Therapy. The Yapana Way to Self-Care and Well-Being онлайн

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Learning a Skill

The right prop support can teach a skill necessary for experiencing a balanced approach for doing, being in, and breathing in a yoga pose. Some solutions for addressing difficulties in a pose may often be found in other poses that require less. And solutions will always include a soft breath and a calm mind — in essence, a yielding body and mind. Yoga poses require not only strength, stability, flexibility, and mobility but also skills such as proprioception (the unconscious perception of movement and spatial orientation arising from stimuli within the body itself), somatic movement (movement that relies on an awareness, desire, and ability to become more self-determining; somatic refers to your ability to sense the processes going on “within” you), and a mind that doesn’t react to its own fluctuations. If one or more of these skills are significantly impaired, the benefits are that much harder to achieve. For instance, let’s use a simple back bend as an example.

Back bends require the chest muscles to stretch, the mid and upper back muscles to contract, shoulder mobility, and the fibrous tissue between the mid and upper back vertebrae to move forward. Muscles that are too tight and joints that are too stiff end up relying on help from other areas of the body that aren’t meant to play a significant role in the pose. In a classic back-bending pose, this can put strain on the lower segment of the spine and disrupt proper rotation of the shoulder joints. These imbalances, if not addressed, make it difficult to open and lift the chest with strong back body support, a skill necessary for a safe back bend. Therefore, safe and enjoyable back bends are often inaccessible to many students.