Discover a Functional Anatomy Approach to Your Yoga Practice
The Your Body, Your Yoga trilogy by Bernie Clark is a deep dive into the ranges of human variations and their implications on movement possibilities. You are unique! No one else has your biography or biology. This uniqueness will determine what is ultimately possible for you to do. The trilogy consists of over 1,000 pages with hundreds of illustrations describing the bones, muscles, and fascia of the body and how they allow or inhibit movement. Used as a standard text for many yoga teacher training programs this trilogy provides yoga students and teachers a system for exploring what asanas are possible and sensible and which postures should best be left alone. Whether the reader is a novice to yoga and anatomy or a seasoned practitioner with an in-depth knowledge, these books will be valuable. For the novice, there are easily understood illustrations and photographs, as well as sidebars highlighting the most important topics. For the anatomy specialists, other sidebars focus on the complexity of the topic, with hundreds of references provided for further investigation. For the yoga teacher, other sidebars suggest how to bring this knowledge into the classroom.
Your Body, Your Yoga
This first book of the series looks at all the ways we may be stopped or stuck in a yoga posture, or whenever we are trying to go further into any movement or shape. The reasons span a spectrum from various sources of tension at one end to compressive impact of the body against the body at the other end. The answers to this “what stops me?” question may include physiological factors ranging from neurological inputs to the muscles, restrictions in our fascial tissues, shorten muscles, inflammatory immune system responses or even hormonal imbalances. Perhaps the most common answer, however, is compression arising due the unique shape of our bones. In Volume 2 of this book, these boney compressions are illustrated for the lower body: from the pelvis down to the feet. To learn more, visit here.
Your Spine, Your Yoga
The second book of the series, Your Spine, Your Yoga, is arguably the first book that looks at the spine from both the Western anatomical/biomechanical point of view and the modern yoga perspective. It is filled with detail, discussion, illustrations, and practical advice for spines of all types. This emphasis on variety is welcome and necessary: no two spines are exactly alike, and no two people have the same biology and biography. What your spine is able to do may be vastly different from what other yoga students’ or teachers’ spines can do. To learn more, visit here.
Your Upper Body, Your Yoga
This third book in the series looks at the upper body: the shoulder complex, arms and hands. But, there is more. This final book also includes explorations of how asymmetries and proportions affect our practice. Proportions and asymmetries are highly variable from person to person. The implications of asymmetries for a yoga practice and whether these asymmetries need to be changed, accommodated or simply accepted is examined along with variability in our proportions and their effect on postures. To learn more, visit here.
About the author
Bernie Clark loves learning about and then sharing the things that fascinate him. As a child, he enjoyed studying the world and how it works, and as a teen, he loved thinking about the mind and the soul. The seemingly contradictory interests in science and spirituality continued to shape his philosophy of life well into his adult years. With one foot in the commercial world of space and computer technologies and another in the realm of meditation and yoga, he sought bridges between Eastern and Western maps of reality. These maps and bridges are described in his teachings and writings with the hope that others who share his fascinations will be able to enjoy what he has learned, without having to go through the labor of detailed research.
Bernie has a degree in science and spent 30 years as a senior executive in the high-tech/space industry. He embarked upon meditation in the 1970s and began teaching yoga in the 1990s. He conducts yoga teacher trainings several times a year in Vancouver, Canada. To stay informed of Bernie’s activities, visit his website, www.YinYoga.com, where you can subscribe to his Yinsights newsletter.
Other books by Bernie Clark:
- Your Body, Your Yoga: Learn alignment cues that are skillful, safe and best suited to you
- Your Spine, Your Yoga: Developing Stability and Mobility for your spine
- Your Upper Body, Your Yoga: Including Volume 5: Asymmetries and Proportions of the Whole Bod
- The Complete Guide to Yin Yoga: The Philosophy & Practice of Yin Yoga — Second Edition
- Shiva Dancing at King Arthur’s Court: Exploring Yoga Stories & Western Myths
- YinSights: A Journey into the Philosophy & Practice of Yin Yoga
Connect
We love to hear from our readers!