Core Purpose

Core work can help your students improve their yoga asanas—and their lives.

By Rachel Brahinsky

The Core of Health

In terms of asana practice, core abdominal strength improves nearly every pose, offering a sense of balance and ease. When you step off of the mat, there are lots of other good reasons to be strong in the core, perhaps most obviously to support the lower back. Weakness in the core can result in "overrotations in the vertebrae of the lower back, which leads to degenerative disk disease and arthritis," according to physical therapist Harvey Deutch.

Limp abs often contribute to trouble in the sacroiliac joint, Deutch adds, explaining that the joint—where the sacrum meets the illium, the large pelvic bone—can be subject to strain when the core isn't sufficiently toned. And, says Deutch, if you begin overstressing one joint, you may start to misuse another, causing further injury.

"If we're weak in the core, our digestive fire is weak," adds Ana Forrest, founder of the Forrest Yoga Institute in Santa Monica, California. This can cause constipation, which then brings on "chronic exhaustion, because we're not absorbing nutrients," and which pollutes the blood stream and can muddy the mind, leading to unclear thinking and gloomy moods. Core work, on the other hand, "quickens the blood and gets oxygen moving" throughout the body.

And, Forrest adds, core work connects students to their feelings. "Working with the core during the first 15 minutes of class turns on a student's innate intelligence and gets them feeling more accurately," she says. Such intelligence is essential both in class, as your students decide how deeply to move into more challenging poses in ways that avoid injury, and when they step into the world. "If we don't know how to get centered in our core, we're basically doormats for whoever's a stronger personality," Forrest says. "We become susceptible to anyone who wants to push us off balance, whether it's a controlling mother or a government that controls by fear."

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