Myofascial yoga : a movement and yoga therapists guide to asana PDF
Preview Myofascial yoga : a movement and yoga therapists guide to asana
Myofascial Yoga A movement and Yoga Therapists guide to ASANA Kirstie Bender Segarra, PhD LMT ERYT Myofascial Yoga A movement and Yoga Therapists guide to ASANA Copyright © 2013 Kirstie Bender Segarra All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author. Permission may be sought by contacting balinesetraditionalmassage.com. First Edition 2013 ISBN: 10-1484838785 ISBN-13: 978-1484838785 The author/publisher has made every effort to trace holders of copyright in original material and to seek permission for its use in Myofascial Yoga: A movement and yoga therapists guide to asana. Should this have proved impossible, then copyright holders are asked to contact the publisher so that suitable acknowledgement can be made at the first opportunity. In dedication with loving memory to Mary Owen Dean Scott, Ph.D. a.k.a. “Tutu”. Table of Contents MYOFASCIAL YOGA A MOVEMENT AND YOGA THERAPISTS GUIDE TO ASANA FORWARD INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE: WHAT IS MYOFASCIAL YOGA? CHAPTER TWO: SUPERFICIAL BACK LINE AND SUPERFICIAL FRONT LINE CHAPTER THREE: LATERAL LINE, “OUR INTERNAL FISHINESS” CHAPTER FOUR: SPIRAL LINE OR MÖBIUS STRIP CHAPTER FIVE: DEEP FRONT LINE, “OUR CORE” CHAPTER SIX: THE ARM LINES AND FUNCTIONAL LINE CHAPTER SEVEN: ALIGNMENT, TOUCH AND BODY READING CHAPTER EIGHT: EASTERN MEDICINE CHAPTER NINE: SEQUENCING YOUR MYOFASCIAL YOGA CLASS CONCLUSION WORKS CITED CONTRIBUTORS AND MODELS FORWARD Given how sedentary and routinized our post-industrial society has become, we can salute and encourage all forms of movement training, because each has a value to different people at different times in their lives. Yoga is of course one of the oldest attempts, along with martial arts, to reform the person through the body, to make a better human being via how that person positions themselves or moves. As yoga has blossomed into our western world - just speaking of the one 'limb' of hatha yoga - it has become so very popular (and popularized) and has at the same time diversified into many different forms in various venues, from the most meditative to the most vigorous. Long live all these approaches! I myself am not very knowledgeable about the depths of yoga, so I cannot comment on the superiority of any method over any other. It is not a question of 'better than', but simply 'what does this living being need right now to become more awake, alive, and adaptable to whatever their future may hold?' In my own observation, the worst yoga done with full attention is better than the best yoga done with your attention elsewhere. The next question becomes: attention to what? Here then is where I am very happy with this book. Kirstie Segarra has turned our attention kindly but firmly toward a systems point-of-view. She has employed some of my anatomical ideas (thank you) and taken them beyond my original conception to show how the various asanas engage whole systems of muscles and their surrounding fascia. Applying standard Western musculoskeletal anatomy to yoga is a frustrating experience. Our standard anatomy is an anatomy of parts, a reductionistic, scalpel-based approach that breaks the body down into smaller and smaller parts, thinking that if we put all those parts together we will come up with the whole. But as the greatest systemic thinker in my lifetime, Buckminster Fuller, showed us, there are behaviours of wholes unpredicted by putting together the behaviours of the parts - this is how he defined synergy. Yoga has always been synergetic, and yoga has always been a systemic approach, not a series of exercises for different 'parts'. The Anatomy Trains schema (and it is just that, simply a map), a subset of the holistic point of view subsumed currently under the name 'fascia', presents us with a lot easier way to understand the intention of the yoga asanas. In the book you hold, Kirstie Segarra has laid out clearly, concisely, and usefully how the asanas relate to the Anatomy Trains, and how to take up and teach (whether teaching yourself or others) the anatomy of asana in a way that makes sense to the body and to the person. Enjoy the ride. Intuition and scientific knowledge are not opposed, they are simply two different ways of knowing. This book allows you to blend both ways of knowing in mutual service to each other to develop your inner and your outer knowledge of yoga in your own living body. Tom Myers Clarks Cove, Maine 2013
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