Blog 18: 2 Hour Meeting Answer #3

1. How best can Hatha Yoga improve strength and flexibility?
2. Alignment is crucial in performing the yoga postures correctly to gain strength and flexibility.
3. During my independent component, the yoga instructors always emphasized how important it is to stack your limbs. Often times I would hyper extend my knee in a pose without realizing it until the teacher told me I wasn't aligned correctly.
Alignment is the relationship between limbs, bones, joints, and muscles that work together to create an asana.
Different teachers can give a student different reasons why alignment is important, so it is better to ask, "What does alignment accomplish?" rather than asking which alignment is best.
4. Both my independent component and bodhitreeyoga.com are great sources that can justify the importance of alignment. Although bodhitreeyoga.com isn't a ".org" or ".edu," it is a yoga studio located in Canada who joined together to write this PDF.
5. I plan to study the injuries of alignment, how and where it's caused, and how to prevent it. Also, I would like to study the many different reasons why alignment is important. Because it differs from teacher to teacher, I will ask the teachers of my studio about their take on the significance of alignment.