Yoga Anatomy Quotes

“Breathing has the dual nature of being both voluntary and autonomic, which is why the breath illuminates the eternal inquiry about what we can control or change and what we cannot.”
― Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy

“An asana, or yoga pose, is a container for an experience. An asana is not an exercise for strengthening or stretching a particular muscle or muscle group, although it might have that effect.”
― Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy

“It is a fundamental fallacy to think that our human bodies work like the structures that humans have built.”
― Kaminoff, Leslie, Yoga Anatomy

“Prana refers to what nourishes a living thing, but it has also come to mean the action that brings the nourishment in.”
― Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy

“When you stand, you bear weight on the only structures in the body that have specifically evolved to hold you up in the uniquely human stance—the feet. The architecture of the feet, along with their musculature, shows nature’s unmatched ability to reconcile and neutralize opposing forces.”
― Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy

“One job of the bones is to receive weight and transmit force, while the ligaments direct that force along specific pathways.”
― Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy

“The conventional terms used to describe movement at the joints, joint actions, describe fairly simple movements that are flat and two-dimensional and happen in a single plane. No single joint action takes into account the volume of the movement possibilities at every joint.”
― Kaminoff, Leslie, Yoga Anatomy

“yoga practice is the removal of obstacles that impede the natural functioning of our systems.”
― Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy

“Please note, because the images are moments isolated from the full phrase of movement, there is no way to know the sequence in which the movements were made. The order in which things are listed is not any indication of what sequence is best, appropriate, or most effective. There is no single correct way to get into or out of these poses, and each choice you make will give rise to a different experience.”
― Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy

“Following the release of Yoga Anatomy in the summer of 2007, its success took everyone by surprise. As of this writing it has been translated into 19 languages, over 300,000 copies are in print, and it remains among the top-selling yoga books in the United States. We have received tremendous positive feedback from readers, many of whom are educators who now include Yoga Anatomy as a required text in their yoga teacher training courses. Practitioners as diverse as orthopedists, chiropractors, physical therapists, fitness trainers, and Pilates and Gyrotonic instructors are making good use of the book as well.”
― Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy

“Amy and I have also received critical feedback from readers, colleagues, and respected professionals in a variety of fields. The process of responding to this feedback has resulted in numerous improvements, the most significant of which are two new”
― Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy

“The starting position of the legs is sometimes described as external rotation.”
― Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy

“When all the usual, visible, external breath movements have been stabilized, something deep in the core of the system must mobilize through a new pathway. That pathway is commonly referred to in yogic literature as susumna—the central channel.”
― Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy

“The skillful observation of humans gave rise to the possibility of yoga practice (kriya yoga) classically formulated by Patañjali and restated by Reinhold Niebuhr in his famous serenity prayer.1 Within this practice we orient our attitudes toward the discernment (swadhyaya) to distinguish the things we can change (tapah) from the things we cannot change (isvara pranidhana). Isn’t this a prime motivation to study anatomy in the context of yoga?”
― Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy

“The reason for this mutually illuminating relationship between yoga and anatomy is simple:”
― Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy

“This book takes the opposing stand that in order to go deeply inside ourselves, we must journey within our physical bodies.”
― Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy

“Without Lydia’s partnership, this book would still be lingering somewhere in the space between my head and my hard drive. Sharon Ellis has proven to be a skilled, perceptive, and flexible medical illustrator.”
― Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy

“Sharon Ellis has proven to be a skilled, perceptive, and flexible medical illustrator. When I first recruited her into this project after admiring her work online, she had no familiarity with yoga, but before long, she was slinging the Sanskrit terms and feeling her way through the postures like a seasoned yogi.”
― Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy

“Standing positions have the highest center of gravity of all the starting points, and the effort of stabilizing that center makes standing poses by definition brhmana (see chapter 1, page 20).”
― Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy

“The modern master of yoga therapy, T.K.V. Desikachar, has often said that yoga therapy is 90 percent waste removal.”
― Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy

“How, then, can we possibly analyze the anatomy of an asana? Because we believe asana is more of a process than a final product, in the creation of this text it was a challenge to decide which moments to photograph and which parts of the anatomy to focus on.”
― Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy

“Prana and apana must have a healthy reciprocal relationship in the body; thus, the body’s pathways must be clear of obstructing forces.”
― Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy

“Starting from the center and moving outward, a synovial joint is composed of the bones that articulate with each other, the synovial fluid between them, the membrane that creates that synovial fluid, and the connective tissue that surrounds and protects the whole structure”
― Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy

“They are part of the nervous system because of the role calcium has in the working of neurons, and they are part of the endocrine system because of the hormones secreted by bone cells that play a role in our metabolism.”
― Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy

“If prana and apana are expressions of function, what of the structural conditions that have to exist in a cell in order for nutrition to enter and waste to exit?”
― Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy

“This book is by no means an exhaustive study of human anatomy or the vast science of yoga.”
― Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy

“Because yoga practice emphasizes the relationship of the breath and the spine, we pay particular attention to those systems.”
― Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy

“Within this practice we orient our attitudes toward the discernment (swadhyaya) to distinguish the things we can change (tapah) from the things we cannot change (isvara pranidhana).”
― Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy

“The ancient teachings we’ve inherited were developed through the enlightened observation of life in all its forms and expressions.”
― Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy

“Once there, we will not only understand our anatomy but also directly experience the reality that gives rise to the core concepts of yoga.”
― Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy