Jul 20 2008
Yoga Anatomy [book]
This book strikes me as a labor of love - immense and incredible detail pours forth on every fully illustrated page. 
Serious yoga practitioners will glean useful insights on joint actions, breathing, and the precise inner workings of their bodies, in poses from savasana to scorpion. Excellent color drawings show where your intestines curl up to in poses like shoulderstand (they take up a lot more room in the torso than we realize), what parts of the body hold up weight in inverted poses, and even what our illustrated musculature looks like from underneath, in, for example, turtle pose (the publishers photographed yogis underneath suspended glass slabs). There is a lot of neat stuff here.
- The “Joint Action,” “Working” and “Lengthening” paragraphs detail what parts of the body are under stress or responding to gravity. The arms, legs and spine are given extra attention.
- “Obstacles and Notes” includes where one might feel restrictions, try variations or deal with bodily congestion.
- “Breathing” offers tips on how the breath might be restricted and how to align each pose to more comfortably/fully breathe.
OVERALL RECOMMENDATION -
Beginners won’t really know what to make of this book. Besides the “oh, cool!” factor, it’s difficult to figure out what beginners could do with this information. It’s not a pose book per se. It’s not causal reading. It’s a serious texbook for serious yogis.
While the top of each page provides both Sanskrit and English pose names, the text refers to the Sanskrit, forcing yoga beginners to fumble around between pages to catch what the references are.
Proper names of muscles, bones and tendons are used: if reading about adductors, flexors, rotators, erector spinae, multifidi and rhomboids that “work eccentrically” are confusing, this book might not be altogether helpful.
That said, this book is a must-have for the libraries of yoga instructors and yoga therapists. Doctors and medical professionals endorsing yoga for health/fitness will likely enjoy this reference tool.
Intermediate to advanced practitioners with a working knowledge of anatomy and Sanskrit names should find exploring Yoga Anatomy an - ahem - *illuminating* experience. 
Stumble it!
