To keep you healthy, free from injury and to maximise the benefit of your yoga practice, finding the correct alignment for your body is vitally important.

Alignment of the joints by stacking them on top of each other or in the same plane of movement puts the least amount of strain on the ligaments and is the most efficient position for the body.

Knees, wrists, shoulders & vertebrae in the neck and spine can become strained, inflamed or damaged if the body moves in a way which doesn’t work in harmony with them, especially if that movement is repeated often, so awareness of what you are doing is really important. If you’re not sure about something, get hold of a teacher and ask them. All of our teachers are around before and class to help you with anything and answer your questions (and they love it when you do ask btw!).

In class, you will hear instructions such as..

hips and shoulders square
lock the knee
arms locked
arms pressed to ears
bent knee directly above ankle
shoulders on top of wrists
spine straight
tailbone under
heels in one line
and these are all examples of keeping the body in the correct position so you can get the most out of a posture while doing it safely. Use the mirror to check that everything is in the right place.

Tadasana, which is the starting point for any standing pose, is a great posture for thinking about your alignment (and is greatly overlooked!). Focusing on this posture will helping you create a steady base for your standing postures, while also bringing the mind into stillness. Use this pose to ground the feet and distribute the weight evenly across each one and also between them, stack the joints, straighten and lengthen the spine by pulling up through the crown of the head and keep the head lifted.

Alignment is a challenge because it requires patience, practice and persistence and the mind will always look for short cuts. It takes time and concentration to create new muscular habits and reprogram the neuro-muscular pathways. Once they are built though, less energy and focus are needed to hold the postures and you find a sweet spot between effort and ease. Good posture makes your body feel light and improves its energy flow, which has such a positive effect on you physically, mentally and spiritually.

I see people getting frustrated and giving up too soon, missing the journey of exploration and discovery because they are are trying to get to a certain end point. The frustration comes from trying to do too much too quickly and shoving themselves into postures before the body is ready.

Asking yourself what the purpose of the posture is can change the emphasis and help you to think more about your alignment rather than its depth. Are you bending, stretching, compressing or twisting? What are its benefits? Rather than use your body to get into a pose, instead use the pose to get into your body.

Learning to accept where you are on any given day is a big part of the practice. Letting go of the self judgement, bringing the attention inside the body and feeling what’s going on is really the goal. The key is to relax and let the breath flow…if you find yourself trying so hard that you stop breathing, back out of the pose a bit and become aware of the flow of your breath.

How you and your body are vary from day to day, class to class. There is no one perfect posture for everybody. Yoga is a path of exploring and discovering the intelligence of the body by tuning in to your movement, your sense of balance, different sensations in the body, thoughts and feelings and your breath.