I recently attended a really interesting workshop on anatomy and yoga hosted by Catherine Annis and Andrew McGonigle. Catherine comes from the 'Scaravelli' school of yoga, which is all about physiology, while Andrew is a medical doctor turned yoga/anatomy teacher. He teaches at triyoga (although is apparently about to move to LA, though he’ll be coming back for workshops etc).
I signed up for this course having spotted Andrew on Facebook a while previously. I wanted to do a three-day course he had advertised previously but couldn’t afford it – while this wasn’t exactly peanuts it was more affordable, and at four hours long I did feel like I was getting quite a lot out of it. I hadn't heard of Catherine before but I thought she was great, and I am thinking hard about going to Vienna for a weekend of workshops she's holding in January. It's all money, though...
The workshop was on anatomy as it applies to yoga. It covered topics including fascia, tension and compression and why it’s important to know your limitations. As someone who is still early days in terms of their practice, and who really struggled with science at school, getting into this kind of stuff has been rather a surprise – but perhaps less so, knowing the seriousness of my injuries from my accident in 2011, and the amount of time I’ve spent with physios and exercise therapists over the years!
For instance, who knew there were three different types of compression (soft, medium and hard) and three different types of tension? That fascia, connective tissue, winds through your muscles as well as over it, that it’s still so new people are still conducting research into it, that there’s fascia even behind your eyelids!
While I am still early days in terms of my practice, I already know that I want it, along with my teaching style, to come from a place of knowledge, from a place of medical understanding, and that means being really clear on anatomy and physiology. I want to be able to help other people who’ve suffered from injuries like mine, or those who’ve done their knee or back in in those more standard ways.
I want to be able to understand what I’m talking about – and from conversations I’ve had with friends and acquaintances who’ve trained, it’s clear that they often feel like they exit the course with enough understanding of anatomy to teach, but not much more, and wish there was extra tuition. Teachers come on these courses, although they're also open to serious practitioners, etc.
As it was, Andrew and Catherine worked really well as a duo – apparently it was their first time working together – and were sporadically very silly (I won’t easily forget the sight of Catherine dancing around in mesh T-shirt fabric, pretending to be fascia!) but also very informative. Exactly how I like it.
We talked a lot about:
Why we practice/does your practice serve you?
Knowing our limitations - and how important that is
Controlled movement (e.g. the way we use our spine as we go into balasana, child’s pose, or how to construct a downward dog)
Alignment
Compression and tension types as mentioned above
Bony landmarks (oo-er)
Fascia (as mentioned above!)
Stretch reflexes - passive vs active behaviour (reciprocal inhibitors, Golgi tendon, muscle spindle)
We also enjoyed some free movement, and she showed us a great stretch - you press the ball of your foot up against a block that's by the wall, and then lean forward, and it really stretches all the way down into your ankle. It was new even to Andrew!
Triyoga itself was a bit of a revelation. Having taken classes in workplace basements, small yoga studios, at my YMCA gym, random rooms in other locations, it’s certainly the most corporate location I’ve been to. You walk in and are greeted by three (!) receptionists, who direct you past the café (!) to the changing rooms, which are rather nice, as you might expect.
Taking classes there is an expensive proposition (c.£17 for a class is a LOT, even with London prices for normal classes often being £12/13 as opposed to rural prices of sometimes half that) and if I’m honest, I’m not sure I could see myself going back for anything other than workshops. The studios are huge and therefore the classes are pretty big. They offset this with having some amazing teachers, as Catherine and Andrew were, but I think I prefer a smaller studio for my regular practice. Maybe I’ll go back and treat myself once I’ve got further down the line!
I met some really nice people in the class, including someone who’s just graduating from the same yoga course as Lily, and who reaffirmed her positivity about it. Overall, it was a fab experience, and I had a great time.