Back when I began my yoga journey it was on a DVD series of yoga and other workouts. The instructor talked a lot about the concept of muscle memory. How once you do something your muscles remember how it feels and how things line up. The more you do it the more your muscles remember.
I could really feel this idea working as I began learning the different poses. The one pose that really did this was headstand. As I first contemplated doing a headstand I figured no way. Then with some good coaxing from instructors and lots of trying at home I got myself up and couldn’t believe it. I wondered if I could do it again. But the more times I did it the easier it became because my muscles remembered the feeling and what had to line up to accomplish the pose.I didn’t have to think about it as it became automatic.
This is probably true for all the poses that you do but the headstand is the one that stood out for me.
I suppose that repitition is the key to muscle memory.
Something to think about.
Yes I love this point!
We learn this too from neuroscience, neurons that fire together wire together and this is the same for connecting our proprioception to movements in a pose. Over time as we stop moving our body in new and novel ways, the brain develops what is known as body amnesia. This is the pruning of networks in the brain because they have not been used frequently or enough. The frequency of practice only strengthens the memory that we form in our body, memory does not just exist in the grey matter in our head!
Exactly. I did have to look up that $100 word-proprioception. Haha. Thanks.
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