Scott Anderson, Ph.D.

As a kid, I was famous for picking at scabs and digging up seeds to check on how their germination was coming along. As a result of this chronic tendency to mess with stuff, my father coined the acronym DFWI. Whenever Dad suspected that something impetuous, ill-thought or otherwise lacking consideration of the long-term was in the offing, he simply uttered the acronym DFWI to initiate a conversation. While my father left this plane almost 10-years ago, I can still clearly hear him saying DFWI. And as a yoga teacher, I still find myself thinking about DFWI when I consider some of the practices that are commonly taught. Breathing - at rest, during exercise and deepest (yoga pranayama) Deep breathing is one of the canonical practices of Hatha Yoga. Depending on the style and tradition of Yoga that you practice, deep breathing is most likely at least a part of what you consider yoga . While there are likely many benefits to this deep breathing, it's not a foregone conclusion ...

The Respiratory Pump The heart serves as a pump for the blood, though this pump is inadequate to get all the blood from your legs back up to your heart/lungs to be refreshed. If you've ever found your calves and ankles swollen after sitting for awhile, you've had the firsthand experience of how the heart cannot lift the blood up and out of the legs by itself. Besides the heart, what returns this depleted blood back to the heart? For a long time, it was thought that the  contraction of skeletal muscles  was the primary helper in pushing the depleted blood back to the heart. While it's true that the rhythmic contraction of skeletal muscle  does  push blood upstream and back to the heart, the rise and fall of the diaphragm is also a  significant contributor in pumping depleted blood back to the heart. In fact, UW researchers have recently published a report that the respiratory pump may actually return more blood to the heart than the skeletal muscle doe...

I'm pretty enthusiastic about active stretching. While there may be a time and a place for passive stretching, I've found that active stretching tends to possess three oft-desirable attributes: The gains in flexibility come quicker. The flexibility gains tend to be longer-lasting. The flexibility gains tend to be greater. In addition to these positive benefits in flexibility gains with active stretching, I've also found that active stretching tends to better support joint stability. And as many of you know, I'm very interested in techniques that facilitate greater stability of both body and mind! OK - so what is active stretching? Active stretching is where the yogi or yogini contracts the muscle that's being stretched. For example, in Supta Padangusthasana (Hand to Foot Pose), the hamstring is contracting at the same time that it's being lengthened. I think many of us (most of us?) have a sense of what contracting means, though what are the mechanisms...

I'm pretty enthusiastic about active stretching. While there may be a time and a place for passive stretching, I've found that active stretching tends to possess three oft-desirable attributes: The gains in flexibility come quicker. The flexibility gains tend to be longer-lasting. The flexibility gains tend to be greater. In addition to these positive benefits in flexibility gains with active stretching, I've also found that active stretching tends to better support joint stability. And as many of you know, I'm very interested in techniques that facilitate greater stability of both body and mind! OK - so what is active stretching? Active stretching is where the yogi or yogini contracts the muscle that's being stretched. For example, in Supta Padangusthasana (Hand to Foot Pose), the hamstring is contracting at the same time that it's being lengthened. I think many of us (most of us?) have a sense of what contracting means, though what are the mechanisms...

The Backstory: I was a pretty good athlete, albeit not a great one. While I harbored dreams of competing at a high level after college, those dreams were grounded on little more than high hopes and fear. I simply did not have the talent to compete at a high level post-collegiately. By the time that I had graduated from college, I had competed and identified as a high jumper for over seventeen years. The identity of  high jumper  had became so indelibly woven into my self-concept, that I had little idea of who I was other than that. The thought of letting go of the high jumper identify was petrifying; if not  high jumper , then who was I? In the Exercise Physiology Lab University of Wisconsin - Madison By the time that I was facing this identity crisis I had already been practicing yoga for awhile. While I don't remember consciously trading in my high jumper identify for the yogi identity, in hindsight, it would appear as though that is what I did. How con...