About Asana Atlas

What this site is

Asana Atlas is a reference shelf for people who practise yoga at home, without a teacher in the room. It holds two kinds of entry: the pose, described as a specification (what it loads, how it is entered, what it asks of the joints, what makes it a bad idea for some bodies), and the flow, which is a pose list in the order you actually do them, with a breath count and a cue per step.

Nothing here is a course and nothing here is a diagnosis. The library is deliberately written so that you can read one entry, try the shape for thirty seconds, and decide for yourself whether it belongs in your practice.

How the entries are put together

Every pose entry carries the same fields: Sanskrit name, English and Chinese names, the areas it loads, the props that make it easier, the gaze point, a typical hold, a joint-angle figure, ordered entry steps, modifications, and a contraindication list. Flow entries carry length, level, focus areas, an ordered pose list with breath counts, a peak pose and a counter pose.

The figures are not photographs and not stock art. Each one is a parametric drawing generated from the joint angles recorded for that pose, so the shape you see is the same data the specification table describes. The angle call-outs on the plate are measured on the drawn skeleton.

• Text is written in English and Chinese in parallel, and both versions carry the same information — the Chinese page is not a summary of the English one.
• Entries are published a few at a time rather than in one dump. An entry that has not reached its publish date has no page and is not listed anywhere.
• Where a safety note depends on anatomy or a medical history, we say so plainly and tell you to ask a professional rather than pretending the site can judge it.

Who it is written for

Home practitioners who already know a handful of poses and want the details: which muscle group is doing the work, where the prop goes, how long to stay, and when to back off. Teachers sometimes use the sequence pages as a spine for a class, which is fine, but the site is not a teacher-training syllabus.

Corrections

If a figure looks wrong, a Sanskrit spelling is off, or an entry contradicts what your teacher taught you, write to us. We would rather fix a page than defend it.

Contact

Email [email protected] for anything at all — corrections, questions, or a request for a pose that is not in the library yet.