Why Alignment Matters to Your Yoga Practice
In your yoga classes, you’ve likely heard your teacher talk about alignment. Alignment refers to the structure of each pose and where your body is in space. When a yoga posture is properly aligned, the benefits of the pose are maximized and the risk of injury is minimized. Learn more about alignment in your yoga practice and why it’s so important.
Alignment in Yoga Practice
When we visualize proper alignment, it’s tempting to think in terms of black and white; right or wrong. But it’s a mistake to assume there’s only one way to do each yoga pose. Alignment in yoga is more like a compass or a guide. Alignment helps us understand the intended focus of each pose, and gives us a framework on which to base our modifications.
Bone length, joint structure, strength, and flexibility are unique to every person. One person may find it easy to put their heels on the ground in a Downward Facing Dog, while someone else needs to round their spine to do the same thing. Rounding the spine works against the intended alignment of the pose, which is to lengthen your neutral spine. Thus for some, a Downward Facing Dog with knees bent and heels lifted is actually better aligned.
Combining an understanding of alignment with intimate knowledge of your own body helps you mindfully adapt each posture. Adapting a pose with the use of physical modifications, blocks, bolsters, or straps, may help you stay better aligned with the energetic intention of the pose.
Why Alignment in Yoga Matters
Proper alignment in yoga poses includes a strong and stable foundation and balances an understanding of the posture’s intended energy with the anatomical structure of your body. Healthy alignment in yoga reduces injury and fatigue and improves balance and energetic flow.
- Alignment Reduces Risk of Injury
You’ll often hear instructors talk of stacking joints. Mindful alignment of the skeletal system reduces injury by avoiding unnecessary stress on joints. When knees, wrists and the spine are protected, both acute and overuse injuries are avoided.
- Alignment Reduces Fatigue
When your bones are properly aligned, your muscles are optimally recruited to support the structure of the pose. Some muscle groups work while others get to relax. This balance reduces fatigue, even as the pose strengthens you. With proper alignment, you can hold each pose longer.
- Alignment Improves Balance
Awareness of alignment literally prevents you from falling. When your head is stacked over your pelvis, for example, you’re much more stable. In addition, alignment in yoga prevents strong muscles from taking over and keeps flexible muscles from over-extending. Over time, your body builds a muscular balance that increases stability and prevents injury.
- Alignment Improves Energy Flow
At a subtle level, each yoga pose moves energy, or prana, throughout the body. When your foundation is stable, the spine is neutral, and the heart and lungs are open, with precise alignment, this energy flows more freely. You can sense this flow by paying attention to your breath. Proper alignment allows for full, deep breathing.
How a Yoga Teacher Can Help
Achieving precise alignment in yoga is not always intuitive. It takes years of practice to develop the keen body awareness that’s necessary to self-correct. We can’t always feel everything on our own. Working with a teacher who watches your yoga practice and provides alignment cues helps speed up this process of deepening awareness.
Yoga teachers offer a combination of visual demonstration, verbal cues, and hands on adjustments to help you strengthen awareness in each pose. Their job is not to force you into one cookie-cutter shape, but to help you understand more about the energetic goal of each pose, the structure of your own body, and where the two meet.
When it’s not possible to get coaching in person, apps like FitAtom can provide you with visual demonstrations, verbal cues, and even personal adjustments. FitAtom is just like having a personal at-home yoga teacher. By watching your practice and making recommendations, the app keeps you safe and helps you stay aware. With alignment cues from FitAtom you’ll reap greater benefit from your home yoga practice.
