The Knockout Library

Back to school is our favorite season! Autumn makes us want to sweat, dance, go see art, and stay up late studying.

We love our library at Knockout, which includes volumes on Pilates, anatomy, yoga, dance, running, strength training, and philosophy. When we combined our separate collections, we realized we had doubles of three books. Here’s a look at the trilogy of texts so essential that we each had a copy.
 

Anatomy of Movement by Blandine Calais-Germain
Calais-Germain is a dancer and educator who saw the need for an approach to anatomy that centered motion. We love the simplicity of her book and the way it is organized by functional movement. Sarah’s copy is 30 years old, purchased from the Kripalu Yoga Center bookstore! Lesley’s is the Revised Edition with new versions of the graceful line drawings. We just ordered the companion volume of Exercises and can’t wait to dive in!
 

Trail Guide to the Body by Andrew Biel
This was required reading for  our Pilates certification at Kinected. It’s still the first book we grab  to show a client where their serratus anterior is, and it’s packed with  fun factoids like the names of the smallest muscle in the human body  (stapedius) and the only non-articulating bone (hyoid).
 

We love the guided partner exercises that take you over bony landmarks on “trails” of muscles and fascia. (Hey baby, want to get together and palpate the “Buried Boulevard”?)
 

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
The Bible of yoga, written by a sage named Patanjali around the 2nd century BCE. We have two different translations; with a text this deep, it helps to contemplate different versions. We also like to fire up our harmonium and chant them. Here’s the most famous sutra, 1.2, which gives a definition of yoga:
 

Yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ
Yoga is the restriction of the fluctuations of consciousness. (tr. Feurstein)
Yoga is the stilling of the changing states of the mind. (tr. Bryant)