For all Yoga Practitioners and Teachers the article below is very very important and useful. Couple of weeks back the entire Yoga Community was rattled by an article in New York Times by William Broad titled “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body” and while there was a big debate for and against the article, I found the following letter by Shmuel Tatz to New York Times best explains how we need to go about addressing the issue of injuries in yoga without getting overtly emotional about the original article.
The reason why I am posting this article here is that I found Shmuel Tatz speaking exactly what I have been silently attempting to do as a yoga teacher and yoga practitioner in the last 1 year i.e. learning the biomechanics of the human body so that I become a better yoga teacher and yoga practitioner. Previously I was taking pride in calling myself a Certified Sivananda Yoga Teacher but now I do not want to be under any label i.e Sivananda, Ashtanga, Iyengar etc etc.I have respect for all the Traditions i.e. Sivananda, Iyengar, Ashtanga and found that each has its own merits and at the same time each has its own drawbacks if not done intelligently. So it all boils to developing body intelligence and for that one needs to have knowledge of bio mechanics of the human body. So instead of jumping from one style to another or being fanatic with regard to one style I found that the wiser way would be to first learn the biomechanics of the human body and develop my own person practice with regard to Ashtanga Vinyasa. I have been doing lot of research on this subject for the past 1.5 years and found most of the Yoga people were very uni-dimensional in their approach i.e. strictly Ashtanga, strictly Sivananda or strictly Iyengar and had the opinion either “my way or high way” without learning to respect the bio mechanics of each human body and learning to adapt the practice accordingly while teaching to others or while practicing on oneself. I found no Yoga institution training its teachers on this topic of bio mechanics and that is one of the reasons why you find lot of injuries in yoga practice. The problem is not in yoga but in teachers/practitioners who are not informed of the Biomechanics of the human body and they take pride in the saying: “practice leads to perfection” or “no pain no gain.” Practice leads to perfection only when the practice is mindful or intelligent and not just mechanical practice and there is no need for pain or injury if you do it mindfully or intelligently .Out of the vast yoga practitioners only few are competent enough to do a mindful and intelligent practice and rest keep on doing the same mistakes again and again and keep on hopping from one teacher to another or one work shop to another to understand where they are going wrong or why they are not improving . Some get fed up and leave one style to switch another or switch to other fitness forms (like Tai Chi, Pilates etc) but their frustration will still continue. Out of my research in to body movements I found few extraordinary people who were looking at the body not from a uni-dimensional view but from a multi-dimensional view and they were:
- Moshe feldenkrais who founded the Feldenkrais Method
- Emilie Conrad who founded the Continuum Movement
- Vanda Scaravelli (a former student of BKS Iyengar and Desikachar) who quit the Iyengar Method after 10 years of practice to start her own method of doing yoga postures based on natural body movements and not on the strict Iyengar method.
- Shmuel Tatz who was a student of Moshe Feldenkrais and has integrated all the best with regard to understanding the biomechanics of body in his own teachings called Body Tuning.
I very much resonate with Shmuel Tatz and hope to assimilate as much as I can about body mechanics so that I can become a better Yoga Practitioner and Yoga Teacher. Since I do not have the luxury to study personally with Shmuel Tatz in New York, I have devised a plan of self study on this subject through books and DVDs to enrich myself on this subject of Biomechanics. This is a long journey and there is no short cut in this and I do not mind investing my time, energy and resources in this pursuit. I need to give the best to myself and my students and I am prepared to make any sacrifices for the same.
For others interested on this topic kindly go through the letter given below by Shmuel Tatz to New York Times as a rejoinder to the original Yoga article to understand the importance of Bio Mechanics for Yoga Practitioners and Teachers.