Your Body, Your Yoga: Learn Alignment Cues That Are Skilful, Safe, and Best Suited to You By Bernie Clark
Review by Anne Bailey
Bernie Clark is well known for Yin Yoga and studied with Paul Grilley. If you’re
fascinated by anatomy as it relates to yoga poses or baffled as to why you can’t get
into a certain pose then you’ll love this book. Bernie explains how we’re all unique
and that it’s not realistic to expect one alignment cue to be suitable for everyone in
class. There are two volumes in the book. Volume 1 invites us to consider what it is
that stops us accessing a pose. To explain this, Bernie looks in detail at muscles,
fascia, bone variation, joint capsules etc. Volume 2 uses the knowledge of Volume 1
and applies it to the hip, knee, ankle and foot – so that we can see how our yoga
poses are affected by our individual make up. This book has lots of detail and is 325
pages long. It’s the kind of book that you know that you’ll re-read to try to absorb
more information, or find useful to refer to if a student is struggling to access a pose
with your usual alignment cues. After reading the book, I feel more accepting that
my hip sockets are probably in different places than those who can do
Agnistambhasana (Fire Log Pose). I no longer complain about having stiff hips and
instead like to think of them as being stable.
ISBN: 978-0968766538
Website: yinyoga.com