I wrote a piece for my blog last year called “Dorkasana,” which was about caring enough about your yoga practice to do whatever you need to stay engaged with it. For me, staying engaged involves studying anatomy, but this wasn’t always the case. When I did my first yoga teacher training, the standard 3 days of anatomy was a mind-numbing blur of what seemed to me boring and unimportant information. I didn’t care about the Latin names, and I didn’t think my future teaching would hinge on knowing what muscles were where: I wanted to chant, and sweat, and get the yoga high.
And then I started teaching, and every so often someone would come up to me after class and say something like, “When I do such-and-such pose, my knee kind of hurts on the outside.” And then they would pause, and look at me expectantly. The pause was always uncomfortable, because I would hem and haw for a bit, and then unleash this gem, “Well, maybe you shouldn’t do that pose,” followed by something generically useless like, “Take care of yourself.” After a while, it really started to bother me that I couldn’t do more to serve my students and help them get out of pain. I began to turn my studies and my teaching in the direction of anatomy, therapeutic work, kinesiology and the like. As a result of this path change, I spent last weekend assisting Jill Miller teach Yoga Tune Up® Anatomy at Liberation Yoga’s Teacher Training.
On day one of the training, the trainees reminded me what it was like to be new to anatomy: they were hearing strange words and working hard to give them context, sometimes finding themselves totally confused, and occasionally discovering moments of clarity and comprehension. The difference between their training and mine was that by day three, these trainees were naming muscles, directions of movement, and bony landmarks like they’d been doing it all their lives. I credit this difference not to any lack of ability in my first anatomy teacher, but instead in the approach to the material. For a long time for me, anatomy was a concept that lived in books and diagrams, but this training was different. The Yoga Tune Up® Integrated Embodied Anatomy is exactly what it claims to be: a hands on (yourself and others) approach to the endlessly magical and mysterious world of the human body that we all get to live in. Ball rolling, Simon says games, and full embodiment of poses and movements took anatomy out of the books and into the trainees’ bodies.
With this kind of an in-the-body introductory experience, we got to see the trainees’ interest sparked as they felt the empowerment of truly owning their own anatomy. Hopefully for some, this spark will ignite a passion for a topic that will continue to hold their attention for their entire teaching careers. It might lead them to become Yoga Tune Up® teachers, or even fully-fledged Dorkasana practitioners.
Enjoying your teacher training class.
I love this approach too! Getting hands-on with the balls makes all the difference.
Day two of Yoga Tune Up TT finally put the anatomy portion into context for me while trying to identify all the bony landmarks on a fellow Trainee during a particular pose. I had never heard of the ASIS before but knowing the anatomical terms helped me to finally understand what my teacher means when saying “lift your hip points up” during class.
Its good to know that anatomy was a blur to you in the beginning as it is to us now! While we still have a LOT to learn, I’m looking forward to incorporating anatomy in my own yoga practice, and eventually in teaching others.
Just finished 3 days of anatomy training with Maura. The Yoga Tune Up approach made a dry subject like anatomy fun and interesting. I look forward to use information like DOM or location and structures (anterior/posterior/superior/inferior etc.) in my own practice and teaching.
I love this article. I just finished my 3 days of anatomy in yoga teacher training, and it is amazing how much information we just learned. I already feel like a better yoga teacher knowing my landmarks, muscles, and directions of movement. What a great weekend- I’m definitely on my way to becoming a dorkasana practitioner.
I really learned a lot from you this weekend during our anatomy training. The way you presented the information and made everything come alive as we palpated, touched and discovered our own bodies and those of our fellow students was extremely helpful. I certainly can’t remember everything, but I have a good foundation on which I can build. Thank you.
I will gush here because I share a similar experience. I went into my 200hr teacher training already having a background in massage therapy and was a self proclaimed A&P/Kinesiology junkie. I couldn’t get enough – like Jill and chocolate! I was so disheartened to see the majority of my other trainees had no interest in learning anatomy. An example of that is when we were all supposed to go to the bodies exhibit in the city. I drove in myself and the only two other trainees – and discovered upon parking that it was just going to be the three of us – out of 17 students!!!! They all changed their mind last minute on the train – and my teacher didn’t stop them. The bonus is I got to play teacher for a couple hours and I had 2 wonderfully engaged students as we walked around the exhibit. Now the gushing – I feel incredibly honored that Jill has created YTU and that I get to learn from her. YTU is everything I ever wanted in a training and for what I want my standard of teaching to be. We are all truly blessed that she shares her gift with us!
I totally practice dorkasana. I recently realized that I am the Hermione Granger of my massage therapy class. I involuntarily yell out the answers I know, get annoyed when other people aren’t loving it as much as I am. I think having gone through a 200 hour teacher training really helped me get into my massage school anatomy because I do have a way a finding it on and in my own body. This means that the subject can never be dry because really, its all about me!
So glad it is natural to feel throroughly overwhelmed yet extremely interested & excited by anatomy after the 3 day YTU module. Difficulty in learning the material (latin, strange, numerous new words & concepts) only encourages me to keep at it!
This was a good follow up for me after attending Sarah’s class. I, too, was completely clueless about anatomy (and anything else “scientific”), but am finding myself more and more interested, compelled, even. Knowing you can more or less start from scratch is encouraging.
This is such a great entry and firstly I am going to use it Sarah as a way to promote your training in Ireland.
YTU approach makes so much senses-it is truly challening to just remember strange names of muscles and bones in a very distant language to all of us,which is Latin,without ever trying to use it and truly inconporate them into our practice.Since studying the recommended books by Jill Miller and watching here DVD’S over and over again I became so much more kinestetically fluent and I am truly able to help so many more of my students just by understanding the basics of the anatomy.
Dagmar I’m so glad to hear that YTU is helping make it all make sense!
I am totally buying in to “Dorkasana”. The wealth of knowledge about anatomy and movement of the human body is expansive and completely fascinating. A lifetime of learning to be sure. I agree completely with Dagmar. The amount of information at the YTU training has been epic but so smartly presented that I know, at some point, it will all get retained. And then more workshops for reinforcement!
Being in the fitness industry for years, it seemed the importance of anatomy and educating our clients with their own anatomy became a grueling task. Memorizing muscles other than the majory muscle groups, was quite an undertaking. My own story was very similar to Sarah’s – at the end of class not long ago, a women mentioned that every time she did a certain movement she experienced pain in an unrelated area. She wanted to know if there was a muscle there and what it was !! Ahhh!! I managed to wiggle my way out of that one … but the time was now to learn some real anatomy and hopefully have it sink in. Day 1 of training (today) was fabulous , mind boggling but fabulous. YTU is just what I’ve been looking for. Knowledge is projected to clients – and they will notice and appreciate it. Thanks for bringing this program to Ontario Canada!!
You described my feelings completely! Thank you for a wonderful training this weekend. The strong anatomy component is a great reminder that yoga is a healing art and that we can do a lot of good for students. I am inspired to continue my study of anatomy and perhaps complete a Yoga Tune-Up training in the near future.
I have taken anatomy before but rediscovering it in your class was refreshing and well-organized. To really know the biomechanics will undoubtedly make one a better teacher by being able to help students understand their own bodies
Sarah, I have become a physiological and anatomical convert since diving into the YTU pool. I even told Jill recently that YTU has completely ruined me… in a good way. I find myself being much more of a yoga snob (!), hearing crickets as I await non-YTU teachers’ explanations as to why we’re in a particular pose and what it’s doing for us. It’s refreshing to know that the workings of our inner world never stop!
After only one 3-hour session with Sara, I can tell that she is a fantastic teacher, using knowledge, practical exercises and humor to get the message across to her students. Looking forward to the next 2 sessions!
I have never been more interested in anatomy as I have been since having you as my teacher: it has really awakened an intense curiosity that is only growing with every article, blog, and text I read. It kind of horrifies me that I taught for such a long time not knowing what was REALLY going on with our muscles, tendons and ligaments in various asanas. Hooray for anatomy!