Map Your Yoga Body

Mapping your yoga body can help you explore areas of tension and stress in your physical being.

Visual Learners

Since approximately 60% of us are visual learners, it may be beneficial, and fun, to break out the art supplies and draw a map of your yoga body. In this way you can use colors, shapes, words, and even textures to record the results of your body scans. You can keep track of changes over time, noticing overlaps or repetition of sensations, new aches and pains, or changes in your existing trouble-spots.

Your Yoga Body

To draw a map of your body, you can either make it life-size by having someone trace your outline by lying on a large sheet of drafting paper, or you can scale it down with a freehand drawing or tracing an image from your favorite yoga anatomy book. You can use just one image, or create numerous maps based on different areas of your body, such as one sketch for muscles and one sketch for organs.

Scan your body from head to toe, from the surface of your skin to your bone-marrow, and track everything you find by marking points on your yoga body map. From this, you will begin to create your unique body map — and a work of art!

The Texture of Emotion

Start mapping your ongoing trouble-spots by asking yourself what the quality of each sensation is like. Is it a color, a texture, an emotion or even a temperature? Is that spot between your shoulder blades — the one which acts up when you are stressed — a green circle? Perhaps it feels more like red crosshatches or a solid purple square? Go beyond crayons and markers by adding textures like feathers or rice or even blobs of glue. There’s no right or wrong ‘representation’ here, the purpose is to solidify your awareness of your body and its needs by associating them with visual imagery.

Have fun with this exercise; think of it as a break from doing yoga poses. Don’t be afraid if you can’t paint or draw, as this is for your eyes only. Once your map is completed, notice any patterns or trends, links or associations between map points, and what they might represent or signify. This is your tool for self-healing.

From Red to Blue

As time goes by, refer to your yoga body map and make note of changes. Maybe all those deep hip openers have released some sciatic pain and turned that area from a red start to a blue wave? What do all these changes mean, to you?

How to Prevent Yoga Injuries’ introduced the concept of ‘scanning’ your body for aches and pains, either chronic or momentary. The purpose of scanning your body is to create a baseline of awareness from which to build your most safe and beneficial yoga practice.

Yet sometimes it’s hard to keep track of everything going on and to remember the particular details of the sensations that you come across. That’s why mapping your yoga body can be so beneficial.