How to Observe and Assess

Making the Assessment Personal

You can assess your strength and flexibility during movements into and out of asanas and also during the stay in asanas.

In your assessment, you should choose movements with a level of intensity that is appropriate for you. Depending on your assessment of your general characteristics, you should decide on a particular grade of difficulty and test how comfortable you are with it. If you are comfortable with simple movements, you can progress to those with greater intensity.
For example, you may want to assess the strength of your abdominal muscles. The movement you select will depend on your age and strength. If you are an elderly man, you could try apanasana, but if you are a fit young woman, you could raise one leg straight off the floor.

Similarly, you can use a range of movements to test the strength of your back extensors. Here too you must select an asana that is appropriate for you. For example, the elderly man might do cakravakasana, while the fit young woman could try salabhasana. The same concept applies to the assessment of flexibility. Hip flexibility, for example, can be assessed in movements ranging from bending down while seated on a chair to pascimatanasana.

It goes without saying that, like strength and flexibility, asymmetry or misalignment must also be assessed in movements appropriate for you. This can be done by moving the limbs individually in asymmetrical asanas and comparing the movement on the two sides or by observing the difference between two sides in symmetrical asanas. Two such common observations are the outward deviation of either leg in salabhasana or the outward rotation of one of the feet in pascimatanasana.