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Postural Control Adaptations in Yoga Single-Leg Support Postures: Comparison Between Practitioners and
Dafne Pires Pinto1, Pedro Vieira Sarmet Moreira1,2, Luciano Luporini Menegaldo1
1Biomedical Engineering Program, COPPE, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, RJ,Brazil.
Abstract:
This paper investigates whether a group of regular Yoga practitioners shows postural control differences compared with healthy controls while performing single-leg Yoga postures. Ten Yoga practitioners were compared with a control group of 10 nonpractitioners performing two single-leg support Yoga postures: Vrksasana (tree posture) and Natarajasana (dancer posture). Rambling and trembling decomposition of the center of pressure trajectories was implemented using a genetic algorithm spectral optimization that avoids using horizontal forces and was validated with bipedal posture data. Additionally, the center of mass was estimated from body kinematics using OpenSim and compared with the rambling outputs. During Natarajasana, no postural control adaptations were observed. For Vrksasana, the Yoga practitioners showed a lower center of pressure ellipse confidence interval area, center of pressure anteroposterior SD, and smaller rambling SD in the mediolateral direction, suggesting possible supraspinal feed-forward motor adaptations associated with Yoga training.
