Overview
This is a balancing pose which strengthens the core muscles (abdominal and back), arms and leg muscles.
​
​
Joint Actions
Muscular Actions
About this resource
This is a non-profit resource aimed at equipping physiotherapists who are non-yoga practitioners with the knowledge to understand the specific involvement of each anatomical structure necessary to achieve a certain yoga pose (asana). The intention is to enhance accuracy in diagnosis, treatment and prevention of yoga-related injuries.
As such, this resource may enable physiotherapists to:
-
Provide education on injury prevention.
-
Use yoga as a treatment modality.
-
Identify contributing factors limiting a person’s ability to perform certain asanas, such as deficits in related physiological structures
-
Guide patients on safely attempting poses e.g. strengthening the weak psoas major to perform a crow pose.
Utilising this resource
The postures are categorised based on anatomical focus i.e. lower limb, upper limb, balancing, back bends. This way, you may search for poses that you think may be beneficial in the treatment of your patient e.g. a balancing pose such as warrior 3 may be beneficial for your patient who would like to improve their balance. If you are looking for the information of a specific pose, you may search it up directly in the search bar.
​
Due to the nature of yoga practice where postures are static i.e. held for a period of time, muscular contraction in these postures is isometric. Therefore, this resource will describe muscular contractions in the following terms: engaged, engaged in a lengthened position, passively lengthened.