In last week’s musing I wrote about the joint-by-joint approach (see blog post – We are a Stack of Joints) and mentioned the cardinal planes of motion. Let’s explore them a bit as they pertain to human movement and yoga.
Why do I think this is important information for you to have?
Yoga asana practice is a place where having a basic understanding of how the body is designed to move informs the exploration of our own unique way of navigating human movement. In a well planned yoga asana sequence, the practitioner moves through a variety of postures that create different shapes – forward bends, back extensions, side bends, twists. These can happen in a supine, prone, upside down, sitting, or standing position. They occur using one’s own body weight, a prop, the floor, or the wall. So, it’s wise to have some understanding of the planes of motion (how our body is designed to flex/extend, adduct, abduct, and rotate) in order to have a balanced practice that moves us through a complete range of motion. Variable movement is deeply nutritious for a body.
I am not a sanskrit scholar, but my basic understanding is that the word “yoga” comes from the root “yuj”. Yuj means “to yoke” as in the mechanism that actually yokes together animals for pulling a plow. From this, we can extrapolate that “yoga” means to yoke, to join together, to bring into union. Now, let’s just agree that the science of yoga is a much bigger practice than the asana portion, but my passion is geeking out over the physical stuff so my discussion about union, joining together, or yoking stuff focuses on how balancing actions in human movement affects us.
I like to think of the physical practice of yoga as a place to find balance. Looking at how human movement actually occurs in the cardinal planes helps me achieve a body that moves well in all directions. It’s that variable movement theme again.
Going off on a side note here, but an important one….the body does not move without the brain’s input. Ultimately, whatever direction my body moves is about a union (yoking, bringing together, balancing) between the brain and the body. The science of yoga really does consider this in a BIG way – that’s why we practice breathing, meditation, the postures, and more to affect change in our mind and body. The central nervous system (CNS) is basically made up of the brain and spinal column and is the center of our thoughts, the interpreter of our external environment, and the place where control over movement (motor control) rests. The peripheral nervous system (PNS) consists of nerves that carry messages from the sense organs perception of the external environment to the CNS. The CNS interprets, forms a plan, and sends messages back out to the muscles for movement/action. Your muscles don’t move your joints into flexion/extension, rotation, or abduction/adduction without the brain’s input. That’s important to remember and it’s where I get that big AH-HA moment that explains why yoga asana practice (or hiking in the woods, or running on the beach, or even lifting weights) becomes a spiritual action if practiced with intention and mindfulness because it is absolutely a union of the mind and body. My personal experience with the physical practice is that it affects my spirit very deeply.
Uh-oh, I got side tracked… back to the cardinal planes.
Moving our body in lots of different ways (variable movement) is a really good thing. The practice of yoga asana has great potential for supporting this. The asana practice, though, stays pretty definitively in a fixed space on your yoga mat. In my role as a Kinesiologist, it’s important to stress the value of also moving through space and interacting with a changing environment by walking, running, skipping, swinging, swimming, climbing, pulling/pushing, stepping over obstacles, and more, so please add some of those things into your life regularly no matter how old you are or how much you love the asana mat practice.
When we move our body in asana or other movement forms, we move in three cardinal planes:
Sagittal Plane – Bisects the body from front to back, dividing it into right and left sides. Flexion and extension movement happens in this plane.
- Forward flexion – standing forward bend, dog pose, pascimottanasana, half standing forward bend at wall
- Back extension – salambasana, bridge pose, dhanurasana, cobra
- Squats, lunges, caturanga dandasana
Frontal Plane – Bisects the body laterally from side to side, dividing in into front and back halves. Adduction and abduction movements happen in this plane.
- Opening the arms out from the shoulders in warrior 2 (shoulder abduction)
- Bringing the arms back to the sides of the body in tadasana (shoulder adduction)
- Jumping the legs open for triangle pose (abduction)
- Jumping them back in for tadasana (adduction)
- Baddha Konasana femurs in abduction at the hip
- Side bending or lateral spinal flexion in triangle, extended angle, revolved janu sirsasana
Transverse Plane – Bisects the body horizontally, so top and bottom or superior/inferior. Rotation/Twisting happens in this plane.
- Seated, standing, or supine twists
Our “stack of joints” each have a definitive way of moving in one or more of the cardinal planes. Each joint also has the potential of moving around 3 axes (yep, that’s the plural of axis, like in geometry, omg, math!), but we’ll hold off on that discussion right now. Let’s take a look at two joints in the lower kinetic chain, the knee and the hip.
In terms of cardinal plane motion, the knee is mostly designed to move in the sagittal plane because it mainly flexes (bends) and extends (lengthens). Although we are typically taught that the knee is a “hinge” joint for flexion/extension, I want you to understand that it does have the capacity for both rotation (transverse plane movement) and lateral/side-to-side movement (frontal plane motion) in response to forces at the ankle or hip.
When we squat into utkatasana (chair pose) the legs are usually parallel to one another and the knee bends (flexes) to allow us to lower into the posture and then lengthens (extends) in order to stand back up. In this example I have isolated the knee joint, but remember that the knee does not have a stand alone role in utkatasana because the knee shares bones with the ankle (tibia), the hip (femur), the pelvis (acetabulum portion of the hip), and the spine (because the pelvis and the sacrum are intimately connected) – can you see how this stack of joints thing and the influence of movement in one joint upon a whole set of other joints begins to make sense?
The hip joint, on the other hand, is a ball and socket joint designed for what we call multiplanar motion because of its role in the bigger picture of human movement. The hip joint is built to weight bear and thus, transfer loads between the trunk and lower extremity. It needs to respond more “globally” with multiplanar range of motion in order to accomplish its job. The hip joint can flex/extend (sagittal plane), the femur portion of the hip joint can externally or internally rotate (transverse plane), and the femur portion moves in the frontal plane with adduction (movement in towards the center) or abduction (movement out from the center). The hip joint has a BIG job in the life of your body and movement.
When thinking about sequencing for a yoga asana practice, there are many things to consider – your population (could be yourself or a room of students), warming up, building towards a particular pose or movement, action potentials at the different joints, types of postures, or pose/counterpose. Considering each of our joint regions and how they move individually, as well as how they influence what is above and below, can inform our practice and the way we set up a practice for an individual student or a class. This helps us make decisions that allow us to move in all three cardinal planes, serving us as human movers because moving in all three cardinal planes helps to create variable movement, which is nutritious for the body.
What you do is what you do. Or as I say in class all the time, what you train is what you train. In other words if all I do is movement that forward flexes me at the spine and hips, then I’m going to get really good at forward flexion in the sagittal plane (think sitting… this example was designed with thought because most of us are spending a crap ton of time in flexion these days!). If I spend a majority of my time in a sport that has a “swing” or “throw” element to it (tennis, golf, disc golf, baseball, volleyball) then I am going to get really good at twisting, especially on one side. It’s not right or wrong or good or bad, it’s just what I train is what I train. I want to balance (back to that whole “yuj” or union thing from earlier in the post) my body with movements that flex/extend, abduct/adduct, and rotate moving me through all the cardinal planes for a more rounded movement experience.
The next time you step onto your mat or go to the gym, consider a strategy that includes all three cardinal planes of motion.
Enjoy the process!
In exploration,
Laurie
