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understanding the asanas 31
An understandable question that could arise is: “Since the poses are all static, why
wouldn’t all the muscles just be doing isometric contractions?” 2 The short answer to this
question is that the text is describing how to come into a pose from a starting position,
rather than how to be in a pose. In other words, look at an asanas as a process rather than
as a final product.
Most often an image of an asana depicts the end point of a movement. Even if you stay
in a pose for a period of time, the muscle actions that got you there from the starting point
(standing, sitting, kneeling, and so on) are still present. In addition, the movements of the
breathing structures never cease. In yoga poses, we experience a cross section of a neverending
progression of movement and breath, extending infinitely forward and backward
in time. 3 As long as we are in this matrix of space and time, we will never actually be still,
and our full action potential will be present and accessible.
The Drawings
The asana images in this book are based on photographs of various models that were taken
during several sessions. Some of the perspectives are quite unusual, because they were shot
from below using a large sheet of plexiglass, or from above using a ladder.
The photos were used as reference for the anatomical illustrator, who posed her skeleton
in the various positions and sketched the bones by hand. After a round of corrections, the
Yoga Anatomy photo shoot at The Breathing Project in New York City. Leslie Kaminoff (far left)
supervises as project photographer, Lydia Mann, shoots Derek’s Bakasana from below the plexiglass.
Janet and Elizabeth stabilize the ladders. The final artwork from the resulting photo is on
page 186.
2
“Each bodily movement is embedded in a chain of infinite happenings from which we distinguish only the immediate
preceding steps and, occasionally, those which immediately follow” (Laban 1966, p. 54). For reference to “isometric” versus
“stabilizing isotonic,” see Adler, Beckers, and Buck, 2003.
3
A memorable description of this concept is contained in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, in which he describes the
Tralfamadorians, who live in the fourth dimension. When they look at a person, they see a very long, four-dimensional
caterpillar, with tiny newborn legs at one end and withered, elderly legs at the other end. Human beings, lacking the fourth
dimension of perception, can only see a three-dimensional cross section of the caterpillar.