Hi yogis! How have you been? It’s been quite a while that I haven’t posted anything here as I think I needed a big break after my accident to figure a lot of things out.

Now I am back and I have never been happier to get things started again! Today, I wanted to talk to you about anatomy. Hot topic in yoga right? If you have done the 200h Yoga Teacher training you know that we don’t learn a lot about it during the training and that most of the knowledge has to come from your own research after you have finished. If you are a yogi student, you may be wondering why the yoga teacher is talking (or never) talking about bones, ligaments that you didn’t even know existed! I know I have been in that case before my YTT and even after. If I am doing some classes with teachers I don’t know, they may be throwing at me cues with muscles I don’t even know about. Ouch!

That is why during these holidays that I have just started (I will share some pics on my Insta feed if you want to see my little paradise for the next 2 weeks), I decided to learn more about anatomy. First: for me and my students’ safety. Second: does it help me fighting the impostor syndrom that I am not a yoga teacher + anatomic scientist? Hell yeah. Although I keep fighting this perfectionnist/impostor syndrom, I still find it normal to learn more about anatomy. And during my research, I have found very useful tools to help me with that and I wanted to share them with you whether you are a teacher trying to offer safe classes or a student who just want to understand how your body work and what the teacher is saying!

Books : The Key Muscles of Yoga: Scientific Keys Volume I & The Key Poses of Yoga: Scientific Keys Volume II

I was asked to buy these books during the Yoga Teacher Training and at the time I found it extremely hard to understand (so you know I always hated science and the skeleton inside the yoga teacher training class was the most frightening thing I have ever seen in my life!). But now time has passed. 2 years after starting teaching, I realized I needed more information about what was going on under my skin so I can improve my knowledge and teaching. I got my hands on these books again and found them very helpful. Muscles are explained, posed are explained and you have precise information about the actions of bones, muscles and so on.

An App: Muscle Motion Yoga

My physio talked to me a lot about this app so I downloaded it and it was a massive revelation! You can find on this app all the asanas explained. How the muscles are engaged in Chair pose for example? How the bones are moving when you are doing this pose or this pose? What are the common mistakes we do and what are the solutions to overcome them? It is an endless source of information! Not everything is accessible for free (you have to pay the rest) but there is enough to get started already and see if you like the app or not. Actually I think that for people who have done the YTT, that should be mandatory to have this app to continue digging into anatomy years after as it is SO useful.

A Youtube channel: Anatomie 3D Lyon

It is a French channel but I honestly don’t listen to the sound or read the text that is why I recommend it here even if you don’t speak the language. What I am more interested in is the 3D visualizations of how different part of the body work and I am sure it can interest you too. Because books are great to learn anatomy but frankly a 3D video is much more helpful to really get how the bones move and how the muscles are interlaced and interact with each other.

Now tell me what tools or ressource do you use to know more anatomy applied to yoga or just in general? Share your knowledge in the comments or on my Social Medias to help me and other readers improve!

Have a beautiful day yogis,

xxx