Making It Complicated On Purpose
For the last few weeks in yoga classes, we’ve been working with a movement that combines a variation of Supta Padangusthasana and Ananda Balasana. It’s a curious movement — subtle but surprisingly challenging. It asks a lot of the body in terms of coordination, proprioception, and integration. And honestly, I don’t think there’s been a single person who’s found it easy.
More than once, I’ve heard, “Why are we doing this? What’s the point? It’s so hard!”
And fair enough — when something feels awkward or difficult, especially in a familiar practice, it's natural to wonder why we're doing it. So I wanted to share a little bit of the thinking behind this.
What we’re exploring is something called muscle integration for functional movement. Simply put, this means training the body to work as a whole—to organise itself in ways that are efficient, coordinated, and responsive to the demands of real life. Rather than isolating one muscle or focusing purely on stretch or strength, we’re asking: how does the body work together to move well?
Functional movement is about how we live in our bodies
It’s not just about what you can do on the mat. It’s about how you move through your day—lifting things, getting up off the floor, walking, reaching, bending. All the things that make up life in a body.
When we attempt to practice yoga asana functionally, we use compound movements that involve multiple joints and muscle groups working in concert. Examples include more familiar movements, such as squatting movements like Utkatasana and lunges, as well as the type of cross-body movement we’ve been working with recently in class. These movements are closer to what we do in daily life than many of the more traditional, isolated exercises.
At the centre of it all is the core—not just your abdominals, but the deep network of muscles that stabilise the spine and pelvis, supporting smooth, coordinated movement between the upper and lower body. Without this central stability, movement tends to become compensatory or strained.
It’s also about the nervous system.
Another layer to this work is neuromuscular control—the body’s ability to effectively recruit the right muscles in the right sequence at the right time. This is what gives us a sense of ease, responsiveness, and flow in movement. It also helps us adapt when things go a bit off balance (which, let’s face it, they often do).
So why put ourselves through the discomfort of a movement that feels awkward?
Because this kind of movement enhances:
Coordination and agility, not just brute strength
Injury resilience, especially in unpredictable, real-world situations
Posture and balance, leading to better mechanics and less wear-and-tear
Ease in daily life, like getting out of a car or picking something up off the ground
And beyond the physical, there’s the key yogic aspect of cultivating mindfulness and somatic awareness, and something quietly empowering about doing something hard, noticing the effort, and staying with it. Not perfectly. Just consciously.
How to work with this in practice
Start with the basics. Familiar patterns, such as squatting movements, Utkatasana, planks, and lunges, performed with attention to form, provide a great foundation.
Go slowly. This isn’t about performance. It’s about listening, noticing, and allowing time for new patterns to bed in.
Mix it up. Change planes of movement, add gentle resistance, or shift tempo. Keep the body awake and curious.
Stay attuned to alignment. Quality matters more than quantity. Let your posture guide you.
Get support if needed. A skilled teacher or therapist can offer small tweaks that make a big difference.
So yes—it’s hard. But not in a punishing way. In a this-is-where-the-learning-is kind of way.
We're not aiming for perfect movement—we're aiming for integrated movement. Movement that feels coherent, mindful, responsive, and alive.
And that’s something that pays off far beyond the mat.