Week 5: Yoga Teacher Training Reflection

I’m a week late on my week 5 reflection, but it’s better late than never!

Two weeks ago we had two nights of an anatomy lecture! I was looking forward to this part of the training because I didn’t take anatomy in high school (cheers to being an average achieving student.) Of course there isn’t any dissecting of fetal pigs or cats in a yoga anatomy class though. We learned the names of the major bones, joints, and muscles in the human body so we could understand the benefits behind each posture and the refinement cues to better help our future students find depth, alignment, and safety in yoga.

From our CPY manual, aka Manuel: “The genetic make-up is important to understand so we can teach our students to appreciate their individual bodies and not compare themselves to other yogis in the class.” I know I’m not alone in having felt inadequate in a yoga class before, so it was very refreshing to read that!

Here are a few things I really enjoyed learning about in our lecture series:

• Why we warm up at the beginning of a yoga class: Our fascia is firm when cool and warm when soft, so we warm up our bodies to be able to access the muscles underneath our “sausage casing” (what our manual refers to fascia as…) to stretch and flow with ease.
• Why the person in the front of the room appears to be much more flexible than me: All bodies are not created equal! For example, if the person on the mat next to you has a longer torso, then they’ll be able to create more space when doing a side-bending pose (such as standing half moon or extended side angle.)

And for the sake of my procrastination in writing my reflection for Week 6’s lecture, here are a few visual representations of more cool things we learned:

Now I can name all the major muscle groups and bones in our bodies. (Not from memory yet though!)

It all makes sense to me why Preston Burke was the Cardiothoracic surgeon on Grey’s Anatomy…

The mnemonic device we learned for remembering the planes of motion is to the tune of the chicken dance!

And last but not least, meet Skelly! He was a great tool for studying the human skeleton for obvious reasons, but judging by this picture here, he’d have been a great prom date if I’d known him in high school. He’s tall, lean, and not afraid to put his arm around a lady for the sake of a picture!

Namaste healthy and balanced, y’all!