Richelle Ricard - The Yoga Engineers Manual: The Anatomy and Mechanics of a Sustainable Practice

A must for your yoga library! The Yoga Engineers Manual is the next step in the evolution of our understanding of yoga anatomy. A yoga teacher, anatomy teacher, and massage therapist, Richelle brings her vast experience to the table to turn conventional yoga alignment on its head and empower students to more deeply understand their bodies and their practices. Practical and insightful (with a dash of humor), this book is a must-read for students and teachers who want to create a sustainable yoga practice that can last a lifetime.

Rachel Scott, MSc Online Education, MFA, ERYT 500, YACEP, author of Living Yoga

Richelle has a unique gift for translating functional anatomy into a language everyone can hear and for sparking the understanding of ones own body that motivates action and growth. She keeps it real and relevant, always connecting the dots of how what we do on the mat affects the engineering of our body well beyond asana. Richelle has been a steady mentor and guide for me in my work coaching elite athletes for more than a decade. This is a truly important book for all yoga practitionersan essential guide for inspiring and deepening a sustainable, lifelong yoga practice.

Erin Taylor, RYT, founder of Athletes for Yoga and author of Work IN and Hit Reset

Richelle Ricard will challenge you to question asana cues youve either heard 1,000 times or uttered yourself. She boldly disrupts our assumptions and asks that we open our minds and pay exquisite attention to what is arising in our bodies as we practice. She guides us to a clearer understanding of what we are asking of students and ourselves. You will be a more skillful yoga teacher if you read this book!

Karen Schwisow, ERYT 500, founder and codirector of Three Trees Yoga Teacher Training

This book is a must-read for anyone who practices yoga and absolutely essential information for every yoga teacher. Richelle brings to light the many ways that one single cue for the alignment of a pose cannot serve everybody. She tackles the important information on how anatomical difference needs to be considered in every pose and how to adjust each pose for those differences. The Yoga Engineers Manual allows for a deep dive into the understanding of your own body mechanics and the variation of what functional movement can look like in other bodies.

This book offers empowering knowledge that the only perfect pose is the one that honors and supports your body and its own unique configuration, while also shining a light for yoga teachers on the important differences in the bodies of their students. With the content of this book, I know my students will practice in a safe and supported way, and we will all be practicing yoga into our nineties!

Suzy Green, RYT E500, C-IAYT 500 Yoga Therapy Certified, owner of Three Trees Yoga Teacher Training

The Yoga Engineers Manual is a remarkable resource for conveying the complex subjects of anatomy, biomechanics, and special conditions in a way that is simple to read due to its smart organization and excellent images and visuals. Richelle has created a truly great yoga book for teachers, students, therapists, schools, and trainers! A must-have for every practitioner who loves their body and practices yoga.

Stephanie Adams, ERYT 500, YACEP, OES, ACE PT, author of Cancer Exercise Specialist Yoga

Are you a yoga instructor? Have you had students develop pain during or after class? Do you wonder if theres something wrong with what youre teaching? There might be, but its not your fault and there is help!

The yoga industry is not supposed to replace physical medicine, and yet many people will try yoga before they seek medical helphoping to fix themselves in your class. Thanks to yogas impact on the nervous system, people often do find relief from various problems without extra guidance. But I can tell you from my experience as a chiropractic physician that just as many people get hurt and quit yoga forever.

Let this anatomy-informed yoga field guide, The Yoga Engineers Manual, serve as the remedy. Richelle Ricards extensive experience with massage therapy, yoga, and teaching informs her deep understanding of functional anatomy in this wonderful resource for teachers and students alike.

Ya-Ling J. Liou, DC, author of The Everyday Pain Guide and founder of Stop Everyday Pain

Copyright 2021 by Richelle Ricard. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

Illustrations on the following pages are original works by Rachel Schneider with digital annotation by Kathryn Stevens and the author: 14, 15, 25, 27 (lower image), 28, 29, 32, 33, 35, 38, 62, 78, 159, and 162. Copyrights reserved.

All photography is the original work of Kathryn Stevens. Editing, labeling, and annotations have been completed by Kathryn Stevens and the author. Copyrights reserved.

Published by

North Atlantic Books
Berkeley, California

Cover art gettyimages.com/Benjavisa
Cover design by Mimi Bark
Book design by Happenstance Type-O-Rama

The Yoga Engineers Manual: The Anatomy and Mechanics of a Sustainable Practice is sponsored and published by North Atlantic Books, an educational nonprofit based in Berkeley, California, that collaborates with partners to develop cross-cultural perspectives, nurture holistic views of art, science, the humanities, and healing, and seed personal and global transformation by publishing work on the relationship of body, spirit, and nature.

North Atlantic Books publications are distributed to the US trade and internationally by Penguin Random House Publishers Services. For further information, visit our website at www.northatlantic books.com.

MEDICAL DISCLAIMER: The following information is intended for general information purposes only. Individuals should always see their health care provider before administering any suggestions made in this book. Any application of the material set forth in the following pages is at the readers discretion and is their sole responsibility.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ricard, Richelle, 1979 author.
Title: The yoga engineers manual : the anatomy and mechanics of a
sustainable practice / by Richelle Ricard.
Description: Berkeley, California : North Atlantic Books, [2021] | Includes
index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020052124 (print) | LCCN 2020052125 (ebook) | ISBN
9781623176334 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781623176341 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Hatha yogaStudy and teaching. | Human anatomy. |
Biomechanics. | ExercisePhysiological aspects.
Classification: LCC RA781.7 .R498 2021 (print) | LCC RA781.7 (ebook) |
DDC 613.7/046dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020052124
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020052125

This book is dedicated to those curious ones who seek to peel back the layers of their own skin to see the soul of their bones

Its hard to believe that Ive already been studying and working in the world of movement, bodywork, and healthcare for over twenty-five years. That is a sobering number. I was lucky to stumble into my lifes calling at a young age. A somewhat random detour to get out of a high school PE class became the inception of a decades-long professional journey through physiology, physical therapies, fitness, and movement science. That path wound its way through terrain as varied as the US itself: high school athletic teams, high-end day spas, massage clinics and bodywork schools, chiropractic offices, gyms, yoga studios, Olympic-training teams, yoga teacher trainings around the world, retreats in India