Bernie Clark

We need to compress our tissues in order for them to stay healthy and strong—antifragile—but for some reason this form of stress has come to be considered unhealthy or dangerous in the yoga world.

It takes practice; it takes intention; it takes attention.

Unfortunately, this confuses the means with the ends. If the goal of your physical yoga practice is to increase your flexibility, to gain an optimal range of motion and regain your natural mobility (and by optimal and natural we mean healthy, not maximum), then it is important to understand that most of what is stopping you is not tension in your muscles.

The key word is appropriate. How does a teacher know when the stress is appropriate? Short of wearing X-ray glasses and having a portable MRI handy, you cannot be absolutely sure, but what you can do is teach the student how to pay attention to her edge.

When the intention of a yoga practice is to achieve optimal health, we must ask how deeply to stress the body. The answer is found in the fragility curves we saw earlier. If too little stress is applied, the tissues atrophy. If too much stress is applied, the tissues degenerate.

The fascia of the muscle limits how far it can be stretched. Fascia is made up of several types of proteins, but the most common one is called collagen, which is strong and inelastic.

The final activation option is where the muscle tries to contract, but it is held at a constant length: this is called isometric contraction, but again it is not really contracting, so let’s use the term isometric activation.

In general, body builders have big, bulky muscles while yogis have long, lean muscles—but both may generate equal power when they engage their muscles!

Henceforth, we will avoid the confusing terms origins and insertions in favour of the more precise proximal and distal attachments. Proximal refers to the attachment closer to the core of the body, and distal refers to the attachment further away from the trunk or core of the body.

he conclusion: when it comes to what stops us stretching further, the limiting factor is not the muscle’s sarcomere but the fascia within and around the muscle cell.