Why Should We Learn Yoga Anatomy?

The teachings of B.K.S. Iyengar place a significant emphasis on anatomy. But why is that? Anatomy can seem boring and is often overlooked or rushed through in other yoga traditions, so why does the Iyengar tradition place so much importance on it?

Since birth, we've been constantly adapting to the world through our bodies. When emotional or environmental stress arises, as our interests and lifestyles shift, the body subtly picks up on all the cues and creates patterns of alignment to support these experiences. For example, the child who learns to shrink in the classroom may start to collapse the chest or tighten the jaw. A professional sportswoman who only bowls with her right hand may develop uneven strength and mobility in between shoulders. A teenager who finally gets that phone all his friends have may begin to hunch more, developing a rounded upper back, protruding chin, weakened neck muscles. Over time, these patterns become embedded, and we've become adjusted to experiencing the world with these patterns of tension, without awareness of how we should truly feel.

The Map Back to Natural Intelligence

The teachings of B.K.S. Iyengar are about returning the body back to its natural intelligence and studying anatomy is important of regaining this awareness. When we have been used to using our bodies in inefficient maladaptive ways, it takes time to gain awareness of our original biomechanical efficiency. Without learning our anatomy, it is incredibly difficult to teach and signal to our bodies the cues for new muscular engagement as we no longer even have the awareness of what these muscles are and how they should be used! Once muscles go dormant in the body, they don't just go out of use, they also go out of our awareness. So, the study of anatomy gives us the map to start gently guiding our bodies back to realignment. Learning anatomy allows you to move beyond guesswork on your yoga mat and towards more efficient and meaningful repatterning of your biomechanics.

Mind Instructing Body

We study anatomy to first educate the mind about the correct patterns and relationships within the body. Once the mind has regained the seeds of awareness, we can use the mind to begin to instruct the body. By learning how to move, the mind can take that clear image to signal to the body how it should move. Some instructions at the start might seem impossible for the body — we have lost complete connection to that part of ourselves and can't imagine using our body in that way. Slowly over time however with repeated use of the mind to signal to the body, through the knowledge of its anatomy and communicating with the body's intelligence, we become aware of the subtlety of our body and the idea eventually converts to action within the asana. The process of restructuring your physiology takes time, but the more and more we can train our minds to signal to the body what muscles we want using and why, we start the process of restructuring. And that training of the mind's signals rests on how well we can teach it the correct anatomy.

Anatomy as the Way In

Through learning anatomy, we start to engage with the gross sensations of the body at a subtler level. Understanding the biomechanics at play, we start to build a deeper intimacy in our practice. We develop a sensitivity to our body's sensations, an awareness of how our body's sensations are shaped by the asana, how our physiology is creating experience for us. As we continue this practice, this attunement shifts beyond our mere physical structure to a subtler and subtler understanding of all our interpretative experiences. How is our mind filtering experience? How is our emotional body creating experience? And eventually, leading us to explore the nature of our very existence in its purity.

Anatomy is our way in. By creating awareness of the physical body through learning the anatomical structure, we start the process of deep introspection that yoga offers us. This is why Iyengar yoga starts with anatomy: not just to remain on the surface, but to allow an unravelling of all our unconscious patterning and to experience ourselves in the vastness that exists beyond this form.