Should You Engage or Let Go?
“Am I supposed to be engaging my muscles in this pose—or letting go?”
“Should I contract my muscles or allow them to relax?”
These are common—and excellent—questions. And the answer isn’t always straightforward.
Therapeutic Yoga isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. Instead, it’s a practice that empowers you to feel into your own body and make choices based on what you actually need—not just what the pose traditionally asks for.
Muscles release more deeply when the nervous system feels safe. For some, engaging creates that sense of safety. For others, softening does. Your body knows.
The key is learning to tap into your body’s innate intelligence—to listen, adapt, and adjust from within.
Of course, that’s not always easy. We all develop habits and movement patterns that can cloud our ability to really understand what we need. But here’s a simple framework to help clarify:
Engage your muscles when you need…
Stability or balance
Strength-building or joint protection
Support for an injury or hypermobility
Active mobility or functional control
Relax your muscles when you want…
Deep release or nervous system regulation
To stretch without force or resistance
To shift into rest, recovery, or relaxation
To become more aware of unnecessary effort
What’s “right” will vary from person to person—and even from moment to moment.
There’s no rule to always engage or always relax. Instead, we practice discernment.
Every pose offers a chance to pause and ask:
“What would feel most supportive for me right now—effort or ease?”
That’s what makes Therapeutic Yoga different.
It’s not about performing a pose perfectly—it’s about feeling what’s happening, responding with awareness, and moving in ways that support healing, growth, and resilience.
The more you practice, the more fluent you become in your body’s feedback—
and the more freedom you have to move in a way that truly serves you.
In modern anatomy and movement science, we now understand that muscle engagement and relaxation aren’t just about doing a pose “correctly”—they’re about how your nervous system, musculoskeletal system, and connective tissue all interact in real time.
When you engage a muscle, you’re doing more than creating strength. You’re also:
Sending a signal to the brain that you need control and stability
Activating something called reciprocal inhibition, which reduces tension in the opposing muscle group
Increasing joint compression, which can be stabilizing—or irritating—depending on your body
When you relax a muscle, you’re not just letting go. You’re:
Creating the right conditions for parasympathetic activation—the nervous system’s rest-and-digest state
Allowing for passive stretch and fascial hydration
Improving proprioception (knowing where your body is in space)
But here’s the key:
The same action doesn’t produce the same result in every body.
For someone with hypermobility or joint instability, relaxing too much can lead to pain or overextension. For someone with chronic tension or anxiety, constantly engaging may reinforce a stress response and limit range of motion. And for someone healing from injury, both over-working and under-working can be problematic.
This is why in Therapeutic Yoga, we don’t teach rigid rules.
We teach attunement.
By understanding how the nervous system responds to effort and ease—and how your unique history, body type, and patterns play into that—you can make more informed choices about how to move, not just what to do.
Yoga becomes less about fitting into a mold, and more about rediscovering how your body was designed to move, feel, and heal.
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If you want to understand the Therapeutic Yoga Methodology on a deeper level, my online Therapeutic Yoga Teacher Training is coming up soon! Click here to learn more and check out all the details of the program!
