Keys to a Safe Practice: Joint LImitation or Muscle Tightness?
How to Tell the Difference

One of the effects of yoga postures is to challenge joints and muscles in order to enhance strength and flexibility.

This not only increases strength, stamina and flexibility. It also engages the nervous system, enhancing neurological health, and stimulating receptors in the nervous system that slow the production of stress hormones.

But when we put stress on the joints of the body to stimulate greater strength and flexibility, two different types of stress can result: tightness and compression. The first generally is beneficial, the second is not, and it may lead to injury.

In this online course, yoga anatomy expert Stu Girling shows how we can learn to distinguish between the two. Tightness is the sensation of tissues being stretched. Compression, on the other hand, results when we push against the bony limitations of a joint.

We all have a unique skeletal structure and if we try to fit our body into an idealized alignment of yoga poses, we risk hurting ourselves by forcing our body into shapes that conflict with the bony structure of our joints.

Stu Girling will cover the 3 types of compression as it relates to the major joints of the body. Learn how to discern whether limitations in your range of motion are caused by bony structures that predispose you or your students to compression or whether it’s caused by muscular tightness.

What's Holding You Back in Yoga?
Joint Compression vs. Muscle Tightness

What Is Muscle Tightness Really?
The Role of the Nervous System

How Injury Occurs - The Role of Individual Differences