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Showing posts from October, 2015

Live Streaming Workshop Hang Loose - Joint Laxity and the Practice of Yoga

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Joint laxity refers to joints that are unusually loose. While loose joints may sound heaven-sent to some, joint laxity can actually be quite problematic. People with joint laxity often live with more pain and fatigue than do their stiffer-jointed peers. There's even preliminary evidence suggesting that people with joint laxity experience more anxiety than the population at large. Because joint laxity relates to mobility and flexibility, its incidence seems to be much higher in the yoga community. While joint laxity isn't all that common - about 10% of the population - yoga is one of the very few physical activities that actively rewards those with looser joints.  Because yoga practitioners are often encouraged to go deeper into more advanced poses, the yoga community seems to have self-selected into a population with a higher incidence of loose-jointedness. And by offering praise and encouragement to those who go more deeply into poses of increasing complexity, those with t