Friend and yoga teacher, Jen, recently emailed me about Vasisthasana (Side Plank) alignment. She asked if turning the sole of your foot down on the bottom leg is healthy alignment or if it could be bad for your ankle. Well, let's take a look and see!

What are muscle agonists and antagonists? Here's a short video and review with a little help from Batman and Robin. A massage therapist named James introduced me to this superhero analogy some time ago, and I've used it to teach this topic ever since. Thanks James!

I recently received an email from a yoga teacher buddy asking how many vertebrae we have in our spines, specifically how many cervical vertebrae. "Is it 7 or 8?" This may clear things up.

In this post I'm getting back to some anatomy terminology! This will be the 3rd and final part of my anatomy language series. Please check out Anatomy Language: Part I and Anatomy Language: Part II if you missed them. There are a few more basic movements that are helpful for yogis and yoga teachers to know. These additions are kind of "special movements", but don't worry! These movements are really only special

In my first article, we reviewed the starting point of anatomy with anatomical position. If you missed it, you can read Anatomy Language: Part I here. From here we can move on to naming some major movements. In this article, we'll review the major movements of flexion, extension, abduction, adduction, external and internal rotation. 

Thanks for reading my first post on YogicDoc! This yoga blog is dedicated to making complex topics easier for both yoga students and teachers to understand and use. It just makes sense to start the first post with a review of anatomy terminology. I find that in many times it is not the actual anatomy that is hard to understand, but it is dealing with all of the terminology. It is like a whole other language, and believe me. It is! I always joke with my students that it is just to make us doctor types sound smarter. So let's review some terms that we need to know in order to talk about more interesting things and sound smarter for it!