Follow this video and you’re likely to injure yourself!
Yogi Tara Styles says: “This is a routine great for beginners… So go ahead and sit up on your heels.”
It was this very sitting on my heels during my first weeks of yoga in 2009 that stretched ligaments in my feet that caused them to swell a shoe size and to require about $1600 worth of physical therapy.
In many yoga classes, the teacher does not pay enough attention to how performing a particular exercise might injure somebody. Too often in yoga classes I’ve attended and yoga videos I’ve watched, the stress has been on completing exercises rather than on examining how you do them.
From an Alexander Technique teaching perspective, how you do something is often more important than what you do.
To tell somebody to do something that stresses their strength and flexibility is to risk injuring them unless you pay careful attention to how they’re doing the assignment.
This video has a particular end in mind — weight loss. No wonder it has almost 500,000 views.
The Alexander Technique, by contrast, concentrates on means rather than ends. Alexander teachers rarely promise particular results such as weight loss because they can’t know how a student will implement the Technique. Some people are not capable or not interested in doing the cognitive work necessary for progress in the Alexander Technique. You can’t promise somebody increased energy or flexibility if they’re not willing or able to practice the principles of the Technique.
The principles (such as observation, inhibition and direction) of the Technique work but not every student is going to find this work congenial to their temperament.
Because of this, most Alexander teachers market the particulars of the Technique rather than the benefits.
Over Shabbat lunch, I was asked what the Technique was about. “It is a way of noticing how you respond to stimuli,” I said. I was told that I should come up with Alexander Technique definitions that stressed the benefits of the Technique rather than its unsexy mechanics.
That’s what Alexander teachers call end-gaining. You go for a goal and this outweighs the importance of the means of attaining the goal.
The girl in this video move elegantly but the instructions convey few if any principles of easy movement such as freeing the neck and allowing the head to release away from the torso. The average Joe who watches and practices this video is unlikely to come away with any additional knowledge of how he works.
It’s easy to follow these exercises and to just be totally mindless, paying no attention to how you’re doing things and what effect your interfering tension patterns are having on your movement. By contrast, an Alexander Technique teacher such as myself could point out to you damaging habits such as needless compression in the neck and torso whenever you encounter a substantial stimuli (such as challenging yoga positions or chopping vegetables or driving a car).
The following video is billed as “yoga for relaxation.” It has almost 13 million views.
There are no principles you can take away from this video to promote relaxation as you move through life. Instead, judging by the comments, it appears that many guys got quite stirred up by this chubby white girl in a red bikini. Giving in to wanton lust is the opposite of relaxation in my book.
If the average person tried to imitate the exercises in the video, they’re putting themselves at risk for injury. Our yogi provides no instructions on how to do things safely. Rather than spreading enlightenment, every wiggle of this lady’s derriere bangs away at the foundation of the nuclear family.
“My name is Simona. I am a Czech Fitness Girl. Fitness is my passion. I am sharing my passion with you in my videos. I am training in the white, clear transparent beaches of Halkidiki, Greece.”
This sexy bikini workout is fun to watch but it lacks practical information for noticing and letting go of your patterns of excessive tension.
I thought yoga was supposed to be spiritual? I feel so unclean.
