YogasAnalysis
Yoga • Asana • Analysis

Yoga: A Heightened Quality of Attention
Asana: A Steady Position Held Comfortably Over Time
Analysis: Ana-Lysis … To Loosen Apart

---

How Does An Asana Work? . . .

What Makes Particular Asana Useful
and For What Purposes? . . .

What Anatomy of Hatha Yoga Do You Need So
You Can KNOW What's Happening In An Asana? . . .

How Do You CREATE Custom Asana For The Unique
Needs Of Your Individual Students & Clients? . . .

And How Do You KNOW NO HARM Is Being Done?

---

. . . DSL Is Creating A New Paradigm in Yoga Asana . . .

What is this New Paradigm? … After years of exploring and working with the various issues, and developing ways to explain them, and looking at yoga asana from a Western/Scientific perspective, I, David Scott Lynn, have developed a new foundation for asana creation and performance:

No More One-Size-Fits-(almost)-NO-ONE

The tendency in many traditional approaches to yoga is to focus on the List of Postures as what we need to learn. As we perform a particular series of postures, we are led to believe that the various areas of the body will be balanced and, if necessary, healed. We are also told that doing yoga postures symmetrically is important, meaning, do the same thing on each side of the body to achieve a certain balance.

This approach can work, up to a point. However, as we find ourselves working with people who have more complicated and unique issues, we start to realize that the Do This, Do That, "place your body in THIS ideal position" approach has limitations. Sometimes BIG limitations. And just because someone CAN do a particular movement IN NO WAY means they SHOULD.

To REALLY serve the needs and wants of our Students & Clients, we need a far more individualized approach to determining which yoga asana are best for a particular situation. And, if we attempt to use traditional formulas, to just Do THIS Posture when such and such is happening, we run great risk of missing the nuances for each individual Student's needs.

This ends up as a one-size-fits-(almost)-NO-ONE process.

All generalizations are false . . . Including this one.

. . George Bernard Shaw

To be more Response-Able toward your UNIQUE Students & Clients, you have to have a higher level of perspective, knowledge and skill. And that is what this website is geared for, those who are in a Life-Long Pursuit of higher levels of insight, knowledge and skill in yoga and related fields.

In some hands-on massage and bodywork therapies the correlate to the dilemma of standardized stretching routines is called Poke & Hope. When confronted with a condition that does not respond as hoped or expected, practitioners are often told by their trainers to "Just do the routines." Meaning, "just keep pressing where we told you to press over and over again until (and keep hoping that) it works."

When I train massage and bodywork therapists, I look for practitioners who want to think deeper into their Client's situations, rather than be focused on the technique. I look for practitioners who want to invest the substantial mental energy necessary to REALLY see and understand — and FEEL — what is going on in their Client's bodymind, then tailor make an in-the-moment strategy for what is happening right then and there.

This is NOT about Doing Routines

The Question Is … do YOU want to master the art of understanding asana — and the Human BodyMind — in ways that allow you to evaluate your Student or Client, then be able to construct an asana based on their unique needs?

If so, you and I need to be more creative and start not with the list of asana to choose from, and hope something works, but start from what is their body actually DOING … or not doing that it SHOULD? Then we build from there, creating individual components of asana around what is going on in-the-moment for them, right now.

So while some bodyworkers are stuck doing Poke & Hope, we might be stuck with Pose & Hope. . . . OR, we can get more Strategic in our thinking and doing bio-Structural Analysis.

This is the difference between Strategy and Tactics. … Nothing wrong with tactics, but they must always be secondary to your strategy.

If this is what YOU want to be able to do, HOW do we do THAT?

A Brief Overview of the Strategic Asana Process:

First, we ask ourselves what the Kinesiological Objective of the asana is. (Kinesiology is the study of what a bone does when its respective muscles contract or relax. And NO, this is NOT the Applied Kinesiology of more esoteric or borderline mystical fame.)

In other words, if we want, for example, to reduce the tension levels in a particular muscle or muscle group, we figure out what is that muscle's ACTION. Then, we use the DSL Asana Creation Formula to decide what the OPPOSING action is, then set the body up to perform that opposing action.

Which actually turns out to be the BALANCING action, provided proper attention is paid to your Clients' Edges of Pain, Fear & Resistance.

Or, if we want to correct a certain postural imbalance, we first discover which muscles, or parts of muscles, are most chronically shortened that are also performing or creating that imbalancing action. We then select the opposing — actually balancing — action that will stretch that muscle or muscle group.

But always remember, just as fighting-fire-with-fire does not always work, fighting excess muscle and nerve tension with more tension seldom works, either, at least not in the long-run. And this is why Attention to Edges is so important.

This Strategic Process is quite simple for very simple objectives. But many of the needs our Students & Clients have to move toward balance are not near as simplistic as one might expect, or hope. The more complex an imbalance is, the more complex must be our understanding of the body and the Asana Creation Formula.

Sometimes, two or more patterns are going on at once, and the Strategy for each pattern needs to be coordinated with the others. While this might sound like way too much to think about or deal with, this is actually where it gets really interesting, and for a lot of people, actually FUN!

(The Basic Asana Creation Formula, in itself, is actually quite simple. Yet knowing all the possible inputs into the formula can get pretty overwhelming at first. That's why its usually best to start with the most simple and obvious factors, then build on those as you assimilate the factors. Those individual factors actually become  a part of who you are, and eventually emerge spontaneously and instantly as you practice.)

There is also the issue of affecting the organs and glands, and their metabolic functions. To do so, we need to understand the INDIRECT affect of muscular action on those processes.

This is not as direct and reliable a methodology, becasue there are many other factors besides the psycho-neuro-musculo-fascial possibilities that can affect metabolic health. Yet every little bit helps.

If you are interested in the e-Course where you can Learn How To Do the YogasAnalysis Process, Please Click Here.

---

A Brief Description of the Primary Elements of Learning YogasAnalysis™:

• Asana (a): A semi-static, yet internally dynamic & fluid positioning of the bodymind, that can be held with no negative stress, for a sustained period of time
• Asana (b): A tool of self-observation & healing-stimulus for health, personal development & bodymind integration
• Physics & Geometry: To understand Asana Dynamics, you'll also need to visualize the affects of water pressure and gravity, structural dynamics, and different kinds of leverage, on the bodymind
• Structural Anatomy: The locations of muscles and their precise attachments
• Postural & Functional Kinesiology: What happens to a bone in posture and movement when its respective muscles contract or relax
• NeuroMuscular Physiology: The coordination by the nervous system of muscle action, sensory/motor control and memory
• Myofascial Physiology: The structural and functional differences between fascia, connective tissue, tendons, ligaments versus muscle, and all their affects

---

The Objective of Web-based YogasAnalysis™ . . .

As I developed the concepts and techniques for the DSL Let-Go Yoga System, I realized that a lot of that information could be taught over the internet. There are some things that are difficult to really get if you do not see them with your own eyes or feel them with your own hands and body. But a lot can be taught over a distance.

And because when teaching LIVE and In-Person, I usually only teach about a dozen people at a time, so I would never make even a small dent in getting this knowledge out to the many thousands of yoga teachers in the world. And there are MANY teachers and therapists who are not exactly or exclusively yoga teachers – physical therapists, occupational therapists, personal trainers, just to name a few — who could use and benefit from the information presented on this website.

he trick is to get the time and expense down for you to learn as much of this material as possible before wanting to participate in a Live Training. This way, when we DO work together in person, you and I can focus on the aspects that can only be absorbed in the direct, live, in-person setting.

So I am going to make as much of the information available as possible through audio, animations and videos, and save only the most personal, technical and abstract stuff for the Live Trainings. And who knows, maybe you can get it ALL via the internet, and save yourself quite a lot of travel time and expenses. … It truly IS an experiment on how far we can take this electonic medium. … We'll see.

This Is NOT Re-Packaged, Modified Versions
of the Same Old Stuff

Meaning no disrespect for Traditional Ideas or Techniques, if you are expecting that this will be a restructuring or repackaging of a bunch of old, orthodox information from ancient, traditional ways of teaching yogasana … Sorry. I have developed my system of asana analysis from a completely different point-of-view.

While I incorporate certain Essential Insights from the East, DSL YogasAnalysis™ is based primarily on a very Western, scientific, anatomically based understanding of how the body works in posture and movement, bodymind integration/meditation and pain and dysfunction. The asana approach is evolved from that point-of-view.

The cool thing is that the more you know — in-depth and wide-ranging — about ONE asana, the more you will know about all the rest of the possible configurations of the body in asana, posture and movement. You might find yourself being able to figure all this stuff out on your own with just a few basic ideas to get you going.

SO … If you want to know more about all that, keep an eye, or both eyes, on this website. I will be publishing related short articles on The Blog and the FREE Weekly e-Letter. More in-depth introductory articles will also be available on the website.

The Following Page is an in-depth description of what YogasAnalysis™ is all about.

And Please, Sign Up for my FREE Weekly e-Letter and 5-week e-Course on the 9 Natural Laws of Yoga:

Please SIGN UP for Your FREE Weekly e-LetterOn Yoga PLUS a 5 Week e-Course on The 9 Natural Laws of Yoga (via e-mail) Learn More Here

Please Enter Your FIRST NAME & PRIMARY e-Mail Address

PRIVACY POLICY: I'll will never sell, rent or give your contact data to anyone. That's a Personal Promise.

The Following Page is an in-depth description of what YogasAnalysis™ is all about.

Thanks for Reading & Take Care,
David Scott Lynn
DSL: Your Hi-Touch Up-Link to the Inner-Net