Anatomy for Yoga with Paul Grilley

In many of the reviews many people recommend this as a must for Yoga instructors, but it is as important, if not more important for students to see it. You are the only one that can really tell how your body works and feels. It's important that you know what it is, exactly, that you are feeling. This DVD, is a must see for anyone practicing Yoga, teacher or student. Despite the name, and length, this is not a complete anatomy, but a skeleton anatomy. At first you may wonder why you need to know about the skeletal anatomy. The reason is, that is what ultimately restricts your movement. Tight muscles and connective tissue will stretch over time, but your skeletal structure will remain the same, and you need to work around it. If you try to push pass the restrictions of your skeletal system, you could seriously injure yourself. And that is the whole point of this DVD, to learn what is simply tension that can be worked through, and what is compression caused by the alignments in your skeletal structure.The DVD contains almost 4 hours of lectures divided up into sections covering the various points of movement in the body, including places that you wouldn't normally think about, like the scapula. Paul starts each section with an overview of what he is going to be covering in each section, then gets into more detailed discussion. He explains the difference between tension, and compression, and how you can tell the difference, so that you don't injure yourself, and get the most out of your Yoga practice. He show how the different joints work, using a model skeleton, and how minor changes in the bone and joints can affect the way the joints move. He then brings up people with differing skeletal structures to show the types of restrictions that you would see in the joints and how they would look in different poses. This is immensely helpful, especially for people new to Yoga. If you are just trying to look like other people doing the poses, but don't understand the difference between muscle tension, and joint compression, you could hurt yourself. What Paul stresses throughout these lectures is not to worry about looking like everyone else. You need to get a feel for your body, and if you run into skeletal restrictions, you need to learn to work around them, which he also covers.Overall this was a very interesting and informative DVD. I actually learned a lot about some points of compression that I had been fighting against thinking that it would loosen up. I am now working around those restrictions. Paul is a very good teacher and covers the subject thoroughly, while still keeping it interesting and easy to understand. By first showing how the joints work using a skeleton, and then bringing up real people to show how differing skeletal restriction actually look in certain poses, it makes it much easier to grasp the whole picture. I highly recommend this DVD for all Yoga practitioners.

I started doing yoga 3.5 years ago. Because I needed to use so many props, I stopped for a period of time to focus on weight-training...to increase my upper body strength. After watching this video, I realized that, while the weight-training did help, the CORE of my problem was short arms and short legs...relative to my torso! I will ALWAYS need props (blocks) when doing yoga simply because of my body proportions. I also realized that I will NEVER be able to do certain poses (such as headstands)...again, because of physical proportions (arm length) and lack of adequate neck extension relative to arm length. With the information in this dvd, I was able to immediately modify my power yoga in a way (using props) that allowed me to get the maximum benefit of various poses without feeling that I was 'cheating'! While I recommend this dvd to everyone doing yoga, I especially recommend it to individuals who have short arms/legs! With blocks, I can now maximize the benefit I get when doing my poses!mary

Instead of undergoing total bilateral knee replacements on 9/9/13, this 60 year old cancelled that surgery and began to practice Yoga at a local studio.Although I have exacerbated multiple endstage osteoarthritis issues in my knees, neck and shoulder since then which TAUGHT me a lot and I am now a student in a Yoga teacher training course; I found this DVD illuminated to me what all the Required Readings on Anatomy did not!The bottom line I received from this DVD is to LEARN and TAKE from ALL- then pick The BEST for me!PS: Wabi-Sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfections and celebrate the cracks, crevices and all the other marks that time leaves behind. Wabi-Sabi also reminds us that we are all transient beings on this planet and our bodies and the material world are in the process of returning to the dust from which we came. Through wabi-sabi, we learn to embrace liver spots, rust, and all our frayed edges that the march of time represent.

I agree that this DVD does gloss over a lot, and is hardly authoritative, but, it's a DVD not 14-week college course. Given the time restraints, I think this DVD does provide a great deal of useful insight. I think his technique of using live models of different body types really helps the viewer retain the key points he's making. I think some of the areas are more complicated that he's got time to address -- in particular hip rotation -- but no one would watch, let alone buy, a 12-hour dvd set. As it is, it's the best 2-hour introduction (or is it 3?) to anatomy for yoga that i've come across. Of course any yoga teacher interested in this approach should also have the Anatomy of Hatha Yoga, a book which will take you way, way more than 2 hours to read.

Paul Grilley is a wonderful teacher. He packs a world of material into his 4 hours of education time that all yogi's can benefit from, as well as PTs, dancers, and other body movement enthusiasts by skeletally explaining why bodies are so different and so why individual ability and range of motion for each of us is so unique to us...due to the nature of our bones, whether genetic or due to other reasons like injury. It is a different kind of anatomy course than the more dry & usual "...this is a femur, this is a pelvis" kind of thing...b/c of how it translates to movement and a pose, but most importantly how we as teachers see the students we work with every day. It is very absorbable & I highly recommend it.

I really liked this DVD (the lectures total around 3 and a half hours) and its given me a bit of motivation to work on my yoga practice. There is some nice Taoist insight as well, during the Q&A session at the end.The trainer, Paul Grilley, is very personable and enthusiastic. He uses a range of attendees/students, and gets them to demonstrate the issues he's outlining by going into various poses and breaking down their mechanics by body type. He also has a full skeleton to demonstrate basic structure, which is useful.There are some useful 'split screen' stills throughout the lectures, where you can see the difference between how one person has demonstrated the pose, and how it looks on another student with a different range of motion / body proportions.He gets you thinking about the fact that there is no standard way to teach a pose - you have to look at how that individual person's body is operating in the pose because we'll all experience it completely differently according to our body's structure and proportions (and accordingly, our 'compression' points - i.e. where bone stops us from progressing, which is usually after we've reached the limit of our muscular / soft tissue expansion).Basically, you've got 8 major joints, and he explains the need for awareness of whether poses are being limited by soft tissue (i.e. tension, which is about stretching muscles, tendons, etc. over time) or whether its compression, i.e. the way your individual bone structure works (which can't be changed, only worked with). Its useful for teachers who have a range of body types and capabilities such as hyper mobile (double-jointed) students, etc.DVD CONTENTS:- The Big Picture (60 mins) he goes through the major joints- Shoulder vs. spine (31 mins) very useful info here about the thoracic spine and its relationship, in movement, to the shoulder & collarbone structures- the femur (20 mins)- the pelvis (12 mins) which is the complementary to the femur- proportion (18 mins) about the lengths / ratios of different parts of your body to one another (e.g. length of torso to arm length), and where props may help you to accommodate where this limits poses- orientation (24 mins)- Q&A with students (28 mins)There is some useful bonus material also (incl. an interactive skeleton, which I haven't ventured into yet). Highly recommended, one that I can envisage returning to occasionally to revise.

Chi vuole capire perché non riesce fare una determinata posizione nonostante che la pratica da anni. Qui un motivo perché succede. Paul Grilley spiega che non c'entra sola la flessibilità, ogni corpo è fatto in modo diverso. Se io, per esempio, alzo le mani in alto in urdhva hastasana, alcune persone riescono portare le braccia molto indietro altre invece si fermano già prima cioè molto in avanti, questo succede per la compressione su le ossa. Ogni persona ha una conformazione delle ossa diverse che può facilitare o ostacolare un esercizio. Prendendo l'esempio di prima se la persona non riesce portare bene su le braccia avrà conseguenze anche per altri esercizio come per esempio in adho mukha svanasana.Le esplicazioni nel video sono interessanti per ogni praticante di yoga ma assolutamente importantissimo per chi insegna, porta ad una comprensione maggiore del funzionamento del nostro corpo.Consiglio caldamente questo video!

Das ist das beste Lehrmaterial, was ich bisher zum Thema Yoga Anatomie gesehen habe. Die DVD ist voller Aha-Momente, und aus meiner Sicht sollte sie eine absolute Pflichtlektüre für jede Yogalehrerausbildung sein. Die DVD ist auch sehr gut strukturiert, so dass man sich die einzelnen Lektionen entsprechend aufteilen und dem Stoff sehr gut folgen kann.

A fantastic resource for understanding anatomy and how body types affect yoga poses. A must for all practicing yogis and teachers alike!

Excellent DVD qui permet d'acquérir des connaissances anatomiques. C'est un parfait moyen de gagner un niveau superieur dans la pratique du yoga.