The Muscle and Bone Connection

If we go skin deeper, we get to your bones and muscles. IYO Yoga postures make more sense if you know a little bit about how your body works. Your particular physical challenges will also become more specific to you if you understand your anatomy. Your skeleton is your frame. It supports your fat, muscles, and organs. It contains 206 bones. Connecting the muscles to the bones are tendons. Muscles help you bend your joints and perform all sorts of tasks. Strong muscles go a long way toward supporting your frame, making it easier to achieve good posture. Think about how effortlessly infants curl up and raise their toes to their mouth. Your back and spine are completely loose before you learn to walk. Once walking begins, the spine tightens and flexibility diminishes and diminishes and … Yoga is the caretaker of the spine, lengthening and extending it to release the energy that runs through this neural superhighway.

The Western anatomical model of the human body’s musculoskeletal and nervous systems (left) is complemented by IYO Yoga’s seven energy centers, called chakras (right), which store and release prana, the life force.