What is tensegrity and how does it apply to yoga?

You may be familiar with your yoga therapist explaining that a certain pose will help your body “open” in a certain dimension. But what is going on inside the body to allow this to happen? There is an engineering concept called “tensegrity”, a combination of tension and integrity, that can be applied to your body. We usually think of our bodies being built on the skeleton, where movement is limited by the bones and joints. It is natural to think about it this way since we use skeleton models to understand how the body moves. We are primarily a system of soft tissues, the muscles and fascia, with secondary support from the bones. Instead of the bones holding everything together, the balance of tension across our bodies is the main support.