Understanding Vrikshasana using body mounted sensors: A statistical approach

Aim: A scheme for understanding how the human body organizes postural movements while performing Vrikshasana is developed in the format of this paper.

Settings and design: The structural characteristics of the body and the geometry of the muscular actions are incorporated into a graphical representation of the human movement mechanics in the frontal plane. A series of neural organizational hypotheses enables us to understand the mechanics behind the hip and ankle strategy: (1) Body sway in the mediolateral direction; and (2) influence of hip and ankle to correct instabilities caused in body while performing Vrikshasana.

Materials and methods: A methodological study on 10 participants was performed by mounting four inertial measurement units on the surface of the trapezius, thoracolumbar fascia, vastus lateralis, and gastrocnemius muscles. The kinematic accelerations of three mutually exclusive trials were recorded for a period of 30 s.

Results: The results of every trial were processed using two different approaches namely statistical signal processing (variance and cross-correlation). Conclusions obtained from both these studies were in favor of the initial hypothesis.

Conclusions: This study enabled us to understand the role of hip abductors and adductors, and ankle extensions and flexions in correcting the posture while performing Vrikshasana.