While we can agree that yoga is about a lot more than stretching, that doesn't change the fact that the majority of people coming to yoga in the west, come because of a perceived benefit of stretching. So what is actually happening to the body when we stretch and move in a postural yoga practice? Has what we know about the body changed in recent years because of developments in western medical science?
Join us as we chat with Jules Mitchell MS, CMT, RYT, a Los Angeles based yoga teacher, manual therapist and educator. She combines the tradition of yoga with her background in biomechanics to create yoga programs designed to help people move better and achieve individually defined physical success. As adjunct faculty at Arizona State University, Jules serves as the yoga consultant on various research studies (including a recent grant from NIH) to quantify the effects of yoga therapy on special populations – including pregnant women, women with depressive symptoms associated with perinatal loss, and cancer patients. The author of a popular science blog, Jules writes on yoga biomechanics and references the exercise science literature on topics (such as stretching) where the yoga research is lacking. She is a regular contributor to yoga teacher training programs worldwide, providing yoga schools with the most current research in biomechanics, even when it invokes a discerning analysis of tradition
Special Guest: Jules Mitchell
Host: Ashton Szabo
Sound Engineer: Zach Cooper
Producer: Benn Mendelson