When I finally discovered biomechanics, I could not believe it wasn’t a part of standard anatomy education. All of a sudden, the musculoskeletal structures I had memorized in anatomy came alive with purpose. Instead of a static model, I began to see the body’s resilience and adaptability. Suddenly a tendon wasn’t just something that “connects muscle to bone,” a tendon was a complex biological fabric with specific mechanical properties, a complex biochemical environment, and active cells!

Learning biomechanics as a yoga teacher helps you understand many hot topics around yoga such as safety, injury, stretching, pain science, and more. Understanding tissue mechanics allows you to confidently work with students and understand what may or may not be best for them and why. And, at the end of the day, I help you to realize that there are no easy conclusions and you don’t have to know all the answers (the good news is that nobody does).

One of my most important roles is guiding yoga teachers in discernment. I help folks learn critical thinking skills. We learn how to think about scientific research, rather than just scanning the abstract for an easy answer or big conclusion. Many of the teachers who work with me tell me that after a workshop or course, they have even more questions than when they started. This is a good thing! I show yoga teachers how to turn their “messy” questions into smarter, better, and more specific questions so they can get closer to the answers they seek.

Fortunately for me, I had a very strong background in math, physics, and engineering from my undergrad years, so the concepts were relatively easy for me to grasp. The teachers taking my weekend workshops, however, did not. So I translated my ideas, made the concepts digestible, and presented ways to make this knowledge accessible and useful for teaching yoga. It worked and here we are today.

In 2018, I published my book, Yoga Biomechanics: Stretching Redefined. This book is the culmination of my life’s education and experience. My father was an engineer and my mother was a university professor, meaning I was perfectly groomed to write a book and teach others about math and physics. Although my undergrad degree was in women’s studies, I minored in mathematics and continued my studies in architecture, structural design, and civil engineering. Even though I had never heard of biomechanics when I started teaching yoga, all this education was preparing me without me even knowing it. I now see clearly that it is my dharma to study, write, and teach biomechanics to yoga teachers.