Body and Breath

Each month a new series of 10 questions will be posted on the Test Yourself page. The following month the questions will then be posted here along with the answers and explanations.

Answers to the April 2003 questions are posted below. ( View Archive )

Test yourself, April, 2003, with answers

You are scheduled to teach an all-day (six hours total) lecture and practicum on yoga and anatomy to 30 hatha yoga teachers using Anatomy of Hatha Yoga as a textbook. The assignment: Outline the third of four, 1½ hour sessions (which run 9:00 AM to 10:30 AM, 11:00 AM to 12:30 PM, 4:00 to 5:30 PM, and 7:30 to 9:00 PM) covering at least a few representative postures and topics from chapters five, six, and seven. You can assume that everyone has a book in front of them, that no one has studied it critically, and that five of the 30 teachers have a biomedical background. Please design your course as a whole (and this third session) so that it does not bore the five students with some background in biology and that at the same time does not leave the remaining 25 students frustrated and lost.

Answer:

First 30 minutes on chapter five
Anatomy of flexion and extension
Breathing and backbending
Cobra postures
Locust postures
Prone boat postures
Bow postures
Second 30 minutes on chapter six
Lumbar and lumbosacral forward bending
Forward bending at the hip joints
Clinical matters and cautions
Posterior stretch
Down-facing dog
Breathing and forward bending
Hip flexibility
Third 30 minutes on chapter seven
Fundamentals of twisting
Thoracic twisting
Lumbar twisting
Supine twists
Standing twists
Sitting spinal twists