Hypermobility On The Yoga Mat – Jess Glenny

For a maximal backbend, the pelvis has to tilt backward. When you tighten your gluteus maximus, it tilts your pelvis back at first, but when it reaches full contraction, it forms a hard lump of muscle that sits between the back of the pelvis and the back of the thigh. In extreme backbends, this lump physically blocks the pelvis from tilting back any farther, so a flexible practitioner can’t extend to his or her full capacity.32 If you’ve read this far, you won’t be surprised to know that in my view having stabilising muscles engaged and offering support is much more important for highly flexible yogis than being able to extend to their full capacity.

Indeed, the intention of stabilisation is that it allows us to expand into the full range of our functional mobility while preventing us from jamming bones into extreme ranges of motion. Updog, Cobra and sun salutations Updog is a basic component of the vinyasa-style sun salutation.

In this posture, the palms and tops of feet are the weight-bearers; the arms are straight; the hips are off the floor; and the entire body from the feet to the top of the head forms a long, upward-swooping arc. In the more curly, curvy and mobility-orientated Sivananda sun salutation, the Updog slot is filled by bhujangasana (Cobra Pose), a position in which the arms are bent and the pubic bone is on the floor, creating a shorter, tauter spinal extension, in which the thrust of the arch is angled more into the lower back.

While it is possible – and desirable – to create Cobra in a more rather than less engaged way, on the whole this posture is more about flexibility and less about strength than Updog. I therefore do not suggest it as a vinyasa modification for beginning hypermobile students. Bear in mind that in a vinyasa practice, the chaturanga–Updog–Downdog sequence recurs frequently as a kind of reset between postures.

The emphasis here therefore needs to be on stabilisation and neutral alignment. (In the Sivananda system, the sun salutation happens a few times near the beginning of the practice and is not repeated again.) Many beginning students confuse Updog with Cobra, and it’s worth taking time to point out that these are two distinct postures and explain the main differences.

In my experience, when a hypermobile student is having difficulty producing Updog within a sun salutation, they are most often overwhelmed by all the different movements and have no idea what they’re actually meant to be doing, so the first line of action is to extrapolate the posture and explain the actions.

This can be offered as a teaching focus for a whole class.

on the YOGA Mat A Guide to Hypermobility-Aware Yoga Teaching and Practice JESS GLENNY Foreword by Jules Mitchell OceanofPDF.com Contents FOREWORD BY JULES MITCHELL NOTES ON THE TEXT Introduction 1. What Is Hypermobility? 2. Teaching Yoga to Hypermobile Students 3. Hypermobility-Aware Asana: the Practicals 4. Working with Commonly Co-occurring Conditions 5. Yin and Restorative Yoga 6. Hypermobile Children and Yoga 7.

Practising Yoga with Hypermobility RESOURCES ENDNOTES INDEX ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS OceanofPDF.com Foreword Jess Glenny has shown up strong for the yoga community by writing this much-needed text for a population who will benefit from it for years to come. Modern postural yoga has become synonymous with flexibility, an asset that many appear to possess while silently living in discomfort, confusion and a diminished sense of embodiment. Likewise, flexibility has become synonymous with hypermobility, a complex condition that is defined by a collection of symptoms far beyond just appearing to be good at yoga.

Jess clearly articulates why these associations are incomplete at best and inaccurate at worst. During my last decade of writing about tissue mechanics for the yoga population, I clearly recognised the lack of available research on hypermobility. There was just enough information to help me articulate that the condition was not a function of stretching and that stretching need not be vilified indiscriminately. Jess takes this basic premise and expands upon it tenfold, providing the reader with a comprehensive guide on how different styles of yoga can safely and effectively benefit hypermobile practitioners.

Only in recent years is hypermobility becoming more recognised by the medical community, resulting in a wide range of possible diagnoses under the hypermobile umbrella, as well as an awareness of how hypermobility expresses differently across individuals. Jess patiently outlines all the potential challenges someone with hypermobility might face and how they might choose to approach their yoga practice in response. Her book is full of personal anecdotes and includes insightful quotes from not only researchers and yoga educators, but also the students themselves.

She truly grasps how important it is to hear directly from those whom the book is intended to benefit. Because yoga tends to select for individuals on the hypermobility spectrum, Jess Glenny’s work is especially important. She brings awareness to a crucial topic while maintaining her position as a yoga teacher rather than a medical professional or scientific researcher. For this reason alone, her book will serve many who might otherwise not have to access to this information.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 5f4383ed8ff8052a
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 3,324,131 bytes (3.17 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 447
• Language: English (en)

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