Too Flexible to Feel Good: A Practical Roadmap to Managing Hypermobility

Are you overly flexible or double-jointed? Perhaps you are the clumsy and tired person in your group of friends, often nursing an injury of some sort. If you are nodding in agreement with raised eyebrows and a knowing smirk on your face, then there is a chance you are hypermobile.

Hypermobility affects a whopping 10 to 25 percent of the population (meaning it’s more common than being left-handed, standing over six feet tall, or having a third nipple), and it can cause symptoms ranging from minor discomfort to debilitating pain. Hypermobile people’s bendiness and tendency toward anxiety often lead them to yoga, where they find that they are at last praised for their physical ability and given tools to manage their hypersensitivity. However, the way yoga is taught frequently leaves this population susceptible to severe injuries, and they end up being told by medical professionals to avoid yoga.

In this epic new book, fitness experts Adell Bridges and Celest Pereira redefine how to manage hypermobility, providing a practical roadmap that will enable you to harness your bendiness and feel fantastic. They reinforce the importance of stability, correct posture, and a healthy lifestyle, showing how, if managed properly, hypermobility is not debilitating but a superpower that you can use to live an extraordinary life. Too Flexible to Feel Good teaches you how to adapt your everyday habits such as your biomechanics and your diet to support and nourish your flexible body. This book also features:

• Practical tips on how to hold your body for optimal results during training
• Tools to help build awareness of your joint position in everyday life
• Strategies for busting anxiety
• Exercises that can improve your biomechanics
• Diet and sleep considerations

Too Flexible to Feel Good is also an invaluable resource for yoga teachers, fitness instructors, and medical professionals, helping them develop a deeper understanding of how best to help this population.

Celest Pereira is deep down (or maybe not so deep) a geek who loves anatomy and biomechanics. She miraculously acquired her BSc (Hons) in Physiotherapy in 2009, despite dropping out of school at 16. The bonus of this is that she knows how to explain complex concepts and make them easy to grasp and digest. After a workshop with her, you’ll know so much more than just your ass from your elbow. Her biggest passion is movement (and has been since she was little), but she strongly believes life is too short not to have fun along the way. So although her yoga sessions will challenge you, they will also be a chance to make new friends, laugh, and relax. Still, you should bring a towel.

Adell Bridges’s childhood was spent training and competing as a gymnast, where even then she was referred to as a “more elegant than powerful” gymnast. Bendy rather than strong was how she would always describe her movement abilities. At age 19, Adell moved to Wales, where she studied in psychology and later received a master’s degree in creative writing. Like many graduates, Adell spent several years bouncing from job to job and feeling generally unfulfilled and uncertain of her purpose. When she discovered yoga at age 28, everything changed. Taking her foundation teacher training near Dharamsala, India, Adell went on to travel to more than 30 countries, teaching and sharing her love of yoga, and continuing to train and learn about anatomy and biomechanics, a subject for which she feels an unquenchable thirst. Adell says her job isn’t to tell others what to do, but to educate others so they know what to do themselves. Her vision behind everything that she shares is to encourage deeper understanding of the self. She believes that by encouraging each individual to understand their own unique experience of movement, breathing, and living in general, the student becomes their own teacher.