01/12/2020
If asanas are about wellbeing, alignment should focus on function, not appearance or aesthetics. Your body is not designed to fix itself into straight lines or bound forms. The reason why any particular alignment may be important is only for specific functional purposes: that positioning relieves pain or mimics or prepares for actions that you may do in a healthy life.
Consider the idea that standing asanas should be done with straight knees. In normal life, what can you do with your knees straight and locked? You can stand for long periods. That is all. Anatomically, the reason you can lock your knees is that it allows you to stand with little muscle effort for a long time. The moment you begin moving, you have to unlock your knees. So it makes little sense to lock your knees (or elbows) into straight lines in an asana practice. Keep your joints soft and dynamically responsive in your asana practice. That will help build much more functional neurological and tissue patterns.
The best tip for good alignment is to start with a neutral spine and then take your joints through varying stresses in different angles mindfully. Your tissues will grow stronger if you stress them gradually. Alignment should foremost be about cultivating resilience through loading.
Your tissues will shorten and lengthen, and strengthen or weaken, based on the positions you repeat. You don’t want them to get stuck in just a few patterns. You want your tissues to be adaptable. So keep varying your positions and movements over time. For instance, if you want to decrease your risk of hip fracture with age, stress the hip joint into a variety of angles. Do the triangle, rotated triangle, side angle, and warrior in as many planes of movement as you can. If you wish to decrease your risk of knee injuries in sports or hiking, stress your knee in multiple angles: bend it to different angles, take the knee beyond your toes, engage your muscles and rotate your body while holding your knee stable—you can do all this in standing asanas very nicely once you let go of the idea of there being a fixed alignment you must repeat every time.
Dr. Ganesh Mohan
Learn pranayama with the Mohans online at on.svastha.net/36lIU7Y.
