Yoga Biomechanics: Stretching Redefined

The industry-leading yoga textbook on biomechanics and how it relates to teaching yoga, building strength, stretching and flexibility exercises, injury and safety, and more.

Yoga Biomechanics: Stretching Redefined provides a unique evidence-based exploration into the complexities of human movement and what a safe, effective yoga practice entails. The emphasis is taken off flexibility and centered around a narrative of body tissue adaptation. Conventional approaches to modern yoga are examined through a biomechanist’s lens, highlighting emerging perspectives in both the rehabilitation and sport science literature. Artfully woven throughout the book is a sub-text that improves the reader’s research literacy while making an impassioned plea for the role of research in the evolution of how teachers teach, and how practitioners practice. Yoga teachers and yoga practitioners alike will discern yoga asana for its role in one’s musculoskeletal health. Yoga therapists and other allied healthcare providers can apply principles discussed to their respective professions. All readers will understand pose modifications in the context of load management, reducing fears of injury and discovering the robustness and resilience of the human body.

This book:

  • Highlights meaningful, evidence-based applications and examples of yoga and/or stretching.
  • Provides guidelines for non-researcher’s critical interpretation of research, helping them to avoid making poor choices based in well-worn beliefs and hackneyed assumption.
  • Pushes teachers to a deeper understanding of biomechanics, beyond simply memorizing anatomy, empowering them to make smart choices for instructing a variety of populations in both private and group class settings.
  • Encourages variety in popular modern-day asana, using props and a keen eye, given our understanding of how the body’s tissues adapt to applied loads.
  • Educates yoga teachers to think beyond the scripted yoga education they received, stretching their minds to further understand and redefine stretching of the human body.

BOOK TOPICS

  • Biomechanics Basics
  • Force, applied loads, and stress
  • Progressive overload and specificity
  • Conventional stretching
  • Stretching and peformance
  • Eccentrics
  • Mechanical properties of connective tissue
  • Tissue behavior, structure, and composition
  • Tissue tension, adaptation, and capacity
  • Exploration into soft tissue injuries
  • Alignment, posture, and stability

May 2019 Review
Click link to read.

Bernie Clark

Author, Complete Guide to Yin Yoga and Your Body, Your Yoga.

September 2019 Review
Click link to read.

Trudy Morrison

Reviewer, Yoga Scotland Magazine

October 2019 Review
Click to link to read.

Norman Blair

Author, Ashtanga Teacher, & Yin Yoga Educator

Your book has SO much valuable information–I’ve been through it twice and still working on developing my voice to share some of your points with more senior teachers who are still firmly in the mindset of “flexing the knee beyond the ankle is very bad for you” and other “safety” points which you have provided such a wonderful framework for questioning. Thank you for all of the time and effort you put into creating such a great resource for teachers and practitioners of yoga.
 
Nancy

Your book should be in every yoga studio as required reading for teachers. It’s excellent.

Instagram Comment

Just finished your book. Fantastic! I wish every yoga and Pilates studio had a copy!

Sarah

I cannot adequately express how much I’m getting out of your book and enjoying your discussions. I thought that my own beliefs would NOT be challenged as I’ve always tried to strive for a similarly scientific approach, but I am blown away both my how much I don’t understand and how much I realize now that I want to understand. Thank you so much for taking the time to go as deeply into each aspect of the book’s focus as you have so that we too can start to make sense of it (eventually). Throughout the third chapter, between feelings of inability to grasp enough to even ask an intelligent, I kept saying how much I’m loving this. 

Book Club Member

I honestly can’t thank you enough Jules! I’ve been reviewing research for the last 10+ years as a college educator and yoga continuing education provider, and I know how tedious and necessary it is. I feel like you just brought me up to date on all the latest! Now I can just focus on what emerges next! Such a gift!  – with enormous gratitude.

College Educator and Yoga Continuing Education Provider

I finished this highly anticipated book by Jules Mitchell last week, and I keep going back to revisit particular topics! This is a rich read and will be a valuable resource for anyone teaching anatomy to movement teachers, or any movement enthusiast! Jules has done us an invaluable service in compiling and sorting through the most recent peer reviewed research on stretching and loading tissue, and how these tissues and systems adapt.

Denise

Audiogram and Text Motion Excerpts 

Ready to take your training to the next level? Consider a Workshop, the Mentoring Program, or my 300hr Yoga Teacher Training.

300 hour advanced science-based yoga teacher training

Jules Mitchell’s 300 hour advanced teacher training content is heavy on biomechanics, pose analysis and purpose, use of props for specific adaptations, somatics for coordinative variability, applications of pain science, restorative yoga, and deliberate sequencing.