Anatomy for Yoga with Paul Grilley

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.

This was recommended to me on my yoga teaching training and I decided to buy a copy. I am so glad I did. He presents the material based on the 8 major joints in the body clearly and in a practical way. I don't see how anyone could be a yoga teacher without having this knowledge. The video demonstrates how our anatomy affects how we do yoga poses and that insisting that everyone in a class could attain the same pose in the same way if only they were flexible enough is wrong. It's probably best viewed in several sessions and the video is neatly split into sections by the joints so you can do this. I made copious notes so have pen and paper to hand. I have also bought his video on Chakras and it is one of the most clear presentations on Chakras I have heard. Both videos are highly recommended.

I was shown clips of this DVD at my yoga teacher training in Kripalu. Upon returning home, I immediately purchased the DVD and I am so pleased I did. It is incredibly helpful to be able to say to students, "Your downward dog is not 'incorrect' because your heel is not on the ground," and then to be able to back that up with the anatomical reasons, explaining how skeletal structures can make postures look very different from person and to person, and how bone-on-bone compression plays a large role. How wonderful, right? To give students the freedom to be themselves in a posture? If everything was uniform, it would be a bit boring!My husband is relatively new to yoga (not a teacher), and he watched parts of the lectures with me. He also found them very helpful, though I agree with one reviewer that this may not be for all students of yoga. My husband even thought it got a bit boring at times when I was pretty much salivating at all the information! ha!Overall, a great buy for any yoga teacher or yoga student interested in anatomy.

A brilliant dvd. Very informative with excellent lecture content, using live models for clear illustrations and comparisons.This dvd will definitely be used as my go to for anatomy reference queries.

Very informative and interesting to watch. Paul explains things very clearly.

I was more than a bit disappointed with this DVD - the content is almost exclusively around the human skeleton and although this is presented in a clear and interesting way, there is almost nothing at all about the muscular system - which I would have thought is of equal (if not greater) importance for any yoga teacher or practitioner to understand.

This DVD was very useful while I was doing my yoga teacher training. I love the way everything is explained in the DVD...definitely worthwhile to bye it and use it. I can recommend it to anyone working with anatomy.Prompt delivery, good price, good condition! Thank you!

This video was clear and concise and through a lot of insight into the practice of yoga. Really makes a lot of sense and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone interested in understanding more about anatomy as it relates to yoga and just movement in general.

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!

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.

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.

Excellent information in an engaging and entertaining format!