Leslie Kaminoff's Yoga Anatomy
Instructors and Students Can Benefit from Detailed Illustrated Guide
Nov 8, 2007
In his beautifully illustrated 221-pages of “Yoga Anatomy” published by Human Kinetics in 2007, Yoga therapist and anatomy instructor Leslie Kaminoff brings together vital information about both the human body and the practice of yoga.
Understandable by a beginner, and still informational for a trained body-worker, Kaminoff balances the informative and educational with an informal friendliness of real-life examples. Technical anatomical terminology and Sanskrit terms have been translated into plain, conversational English. Ample full-color illustrations and diagrams are almost as helpful to aid in understanding as exercises and self-study explorations intended to guide a student’s own internal practice.
A New Angle: 3D
By photographing models for the drawings from above and below (while performing asanas atop a sheet of Plexiglas suspended above the floor), Kaminoff provides three-dimensional views to offer students and teachers alike new insights about the poses.
This innovative rendering allows readers to see where weight rests on the ground during poses. This produces dramatic demonstrations of such things as the spinal curves where students do not sink entirely into the mat during Savasana.
Seeing the postures in 3D alters perceptions of balancing points and working joints and muscles. The new perspective will help any yogi to improve their own understanding and performance of even the most familiar stretches.
Three-Dimensional Breath
As the head instructor of The Breathing Project, Kaminoff stresses that the root of all yoga practice is the breath. With a detailed introduction to the structure and function of the torso, ribs and diaphragm, he expands the definition of breathing: “Breathing, the process of taking air into and expelling it from the lungs, is caused by a three-dimensional changing of shape in the thoracic and abdominal cavities.”
Kaminoff also spends an entire chapter exploring the relationship between yoga and the anatomy of the Spine, which he seamlessly combines in his description of the Chkravakasana (Cat Pose and Cow Pose Vinyasa )
“Although it is common to teach this movement by telling the student to exhale on spinal flexion [Cat Pose] and inhale on spinal extension [Cow Pose] it is more accurate to say that the spinal flexion is an exhalation and spinal extensions is an inhalation. As the definition of breathing shows, spinal shape change is synonymous with breathing shape change.”
Scope and Breadth
Kaminoff details over seventy poses and variations divided into 6 sections based on the base of support (which part of the body the student is sitting, standing, or lying on). Poses and their modifications range from the basic and foundational, such as child’s pose or down-ward facing dog, to the extremely advanced, e.g. Viparita Salabhasana (Full Locust Pose).
Tadasana includes detailed information about the structure and organization of the muscles and bones in the feet and balancing points. This even includes a diagram of what your yoga instructor means by the “four corners of your feet”!
In addition to the name and description of each asana in Sanskrit and English, Kaminoff provides a clear indication of the classification and level suitable for the pose. Also, he details the active ingredients of the postures, the structures, joints and limbs that are active, working, or lengthening. In the interest of safety, Obstacles, Notes, Cautions and Variations are also included for each and every position depicted.
Echoing his interest in the structures and kinds of breathing in the earliest chapters, each of Kaminoff’s postures includes a section on the breath. Detailing the kind of breath appropriate for the pose (belly breath, thoracic breath, ujjayi breath) as well as the complications with breathing some poses may present.
The Fourth dimension of Yoga
With a nod to the Tralfamadorian 4-D vision of the world from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five Kaminoff notes: “Most often an image of an asana depicts the end point of a movement. …In yoga poses, we experience a cross section of a never-ending progression of movement and breath, extending infinitely forward and backward in time.”
A must-have for any yoga instructor or serious student: Leslie Kaminoff’s “Yoga Anatomy” could be considered the most informative manual of Yoga since B.K.S. Iyengar’s “Light on Yoga” was published over forty years ago.
* Copyrighted Cover Art as well as quoted text appear with permission from Human Kinetics.
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