Tailbone up or down?

“You ask me to bring my tailbone downward during the forward bend, but I hear you are giving the opposite instructions to my neighbour-practitioner”.

Answer: Great observation! Though you may need a stronger Ujjayi so you will be fully immersed in your practice next time and your audio sense will be drawn into your breath ;-).

Postural practice of yoga (yoga asana) is universal and can be a great balancing tool for us all. However, we are all different, our bodies are different, our breathing patterns are different, our histories of injuries, imbalances are different.

Yoga asana (postural) practice aims to create a balance of YOUR breath, YOUR body and ultimately YOUR mind. So:

So it’s not the same and there are lots of little lovely details to our practice and to its application to you. These pieces of wisdom above, were learnt from my friend and colleague from South Korea Vayu Jung Doo Hwa.

If you are my student, you know that I am working on the English edition of one of Vayu’s  books, in which he teaches yoga asana practitioners how to observe their breath and body, how to understand the imbalances and their origins and how to intelligently return the body-breath-mind continuum to the state of balance. I hope we’ll publish the book within 12 months, so you’ll be able to learn for yourself how to create a truly balanced practice.

Pictures of practitioner of the body type A (anterior) and body type P (posterior) are from Vayu’s book and just two examples out of four postural body types.