Jul 23, 2026 · 22 min · 13 segments
Most yoga twists are done *to* the spine — not with it. In nearly every conventional yoga twist, the arms and legs do the work: The hand presses against the knee. The elbow hooks outside the…
Jason CrandellHostAndrea FerrettiHost
And I want you to, this is going to come clear when you listen to this episode, but I want you to understand something on a very fundamental level about adding external resistance or external load to your practice or in a complimentary session that sits with your practice.
The external load and the external resistance is just another source of feedback.
And you're going to hear me talk about this a little bit in the episode, but everybody imagine how much you can feel with your arms and your shoulders if you just did an air chaturanga.
Like you could probably recruit enough if you're pretty skilled to like really fire the muscles in an air chaturanga position.
Or I've been teaching things like air pull downs and so forth and All of these things are better than nothing, but now compare an air chaturanga to an actual chaturanga.
How much stimulus is the actual chaturanga giving you compared to the air version? And the reality is when we start to take this same sentiment and we extrapolate it beyond into everything, what we really see is that there is a mechanical deficit in yoga.
And that mechanical deficit is we just don't have external resistance in all planes.
Actually, we've created a lot of body weight engagement, but it's just so difficult to fully stimulate the body in all of its planes of motion without resistance in those planes of motion.
And so you can even take this a step away from the conversation about getting stronger, because maybe that just doesn't fit you.
But you resonate with the yoga practice because you feel connected, you feel your body, you feel the mind-body connection, your presence.
When we are using external load and when we are using external resistance, it's actually easier to feel the body in most poses.
It's difficult to be intellectually stimulated if there's nothing for your mind to work against.
It's very difficult for your mind to figure out something new or have a new awakening if there isn't friction present.
If you look at the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, that's all a setting of what? Friction.
And I want you to, this is going to come clear when you listen to this episode, but I want you to understand something on a very fundamental level about adding external resistance or external load to your practice or in a complimentary session that sits with your practice.
The external load and the external resistance is just another source of feedback.
And you're going to hear me talk about this a little bit in the episode, but everybody imagine how much you can feel with your arms and your shoulders if you just did an air chaturanga.
Like you could probably recruit enough if you're pretty skilled to like really fire the muscles in an air chaturanga position.
Or I've been teaching things like air pull downs and so forth and All of these things are better than nothing, but now compare an air chaturanga to an actual chaturanga.
How much stimulus is the actual chaturanga giving you compared to the air version? And the reality is when we start to take this same sentiment and we extrapolate it beyond into everything, what we really see is that there is a mechanical deficit in yoga.
And that mechanical deficit is we just don't have external resistance in all planes.
Actually, we've created a lot of body weight engagement, but it's just so difficult to fully stimulate the body in all of its planes of motion without resistance in those planes of motion.
And so you can even take this a step away from the conversation about getting stronger, because maybe that just doesn't fit you.
But you resonate with the yoga practice because you feel connected, you feel your body, you feel the mind-body connection, your presence.
When we are using external load and when we are using external resistance, it's actually easier to feel the body in most poses.
It's difficult to be intellectually stimulated if there's nothing for your mind to work against.
It's very difficult for your mind to figure out something new or have a new awakening if there isn't friction present.
If you look at the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, that's all a setting of what? Friction.
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