Donna Farhi: Keys to Pain-free Living – The Importance of a Balanced Core Cylinder

Donna Farhi is an internationally renowned yoga instructor, leading countless intensives and teacher training programs. She is the author of The Breathing Book, Yoga Mind, Body, and Spirit: A Return to Wholeness, as well as Bringing Yoga to Life: The Everyday Practice of Enlightened Living. In this article, she shares her insights into the importance of keeping a balanced core cylinder for long-term structural health.

For many yoga practitioners and teachers, the pursuit of flexibility has become the primary focus of practice. Yet internationally renowned yoga instructor Donna Farhi has observed a troubling trend emerging from this emphasis: students who have “literally pulled their bodies apart through doing yoga and were now trying to put them back together again.”

After decades of leading intensives and teacher training programs worldwide, Donna noticed that the primary issues showing up weren't caused by a lack of flexibility—they were caused by hypermobility. This revelation led her to explore a fundamentally different approach to yoga practice, one centered on core stability and structural balance rather than extreme ranges of motion.

The Hidden Foundation of Movement

“Everything that we do in our everyday lives is dependent on our posture,” Donna explains. “Our ability to lie down, sit, stand, and walk in comfort is directly related to the template of centered body posture.”

Yet many people develop what Donna calls “structural snags”—deep, seemingly unchanging imbalances that throw the body off balance. She uses the analogy of a snag in a sweater: it might begin at the shoulder, but what you notice is that the cuff is short on that side. Similarly, when deep core muscles like the psoas are out of balance, the effects ripple throughout the entire body.

“There's a left and a right side to the psoas major, and with core snags, if there is excessive pulling or shearing force on the upper or the lower fibers, then each will have different effects on whether that pulls the spine into flexion or extension,” Donna notes. “Because that's at the hub of the body, all the other parts of the body are calibrating themselves off of the center point. So if the center point is off balance, your arms are off balance, your neck and head are off balance, and your legs are off balance.”

The Problem with Conventional Core Strengthening

In mainstream fitness culture, core work typically means strengthening the abdominal and back muscles. But Donna argues this approach misses the mark when deep imbalances exist in the foundational core muscles.

“If there are deep imbalances in the deep core muscles, then all you end up doing is reinforcing the snags,” she warns. Instead, her approach focuses first on releasing, stretching, and lengthening these deep muscles, addressing any major imbalances between the left and right sides before beginning to strengthen. “What you're strengthening is a centered body rather than strengthening yourself to perpetuate your old pattern.”

Understanding the Psoas: The Controversial Core Muscle

At the heart of this work is the psoas, the deepest core muscle in the body. Donna emphasizes the importance of approaching this muscle with care and respect. “The lumbar autonomic nerve plexus is literally embedded in the psoas muscles between the deep and superficial layers. So, if you go at those muscles in an aggressive way, you will trigger a flight response. You will trigger an even more heightened sympathetic arousal in the nervous system.”

This insight underscores why gentle, non-invasive techniques are essential for working with the psoas. Pain-free practices that release and balance these muscles allow the body to respond cooperatively rather than defensively.

Returning to the True Meaning of Asana

For Donna, this approach to core integration reconnects practitioners with the original purpose of asana practice. She references the classical definition: “Sthira Sukham Asanam”—steadiness and ease.

“These days, the focus seems to be almost exclusively on, ‘How far can I go, how flexible can I become, what extreme range of motion can I create in a body?'” she observes. “Sutra's central message is not about flexibility. Sthira means to be steadfast, to be strong, to find that part of yourself that is unshakeable. And Sukha: Su means good, and Kha means space.”

Rather than the conventional translation of steadiness and relaxation, Donna translates it as “stability and centeredness that leads to relaxation, and that relaxation allows us to be comfortably seated mentally, emotionally, and energetically pre-spiritually in the moment.”

This shift in focus creates an entirely different quality of practice. “The room is very quiet when people who are focused in this way are practicing. There is a feeling of real peacefulness because there is no striving towards somewhere else, there is no striving to get somewhere, there's only coming back to the moment.”

The Body's Natural Intelligence

Perhaps most encouraging is Donna's observation that the body inherently wants to be centered. “Our evolutionary purpose involves standing upright and walking for long distances and being able to work and use our body over our lifetime in a way that the structure can withstand. It's the direction in which the body wants to go.”

When given the right tools and approaches, students experience remarkable shifts. Donna recounts hearing from participants: “This is the first time I haven't had back pain in ten years,” or “This is the first time I've ever been able to stand up without my pelvis being tipped forward,” achieved without strain or struggle.

A New Template for Practice

Ultimately, Donna's work invites practitioners and teachers to reconsider what they're cultivating through yoga practice. Rather than chasing flexibility or extreme poses, the focus becomes establishing a centered foundation—what she calls “the cylinder of support” involving the transversus abdominis, multifidus, and other core stabilizers working in harmony.

This foundational work doesn't just prevent pain; it creates the structural template necessary for all movement in daily life. As Donna reminds us, “Every yoga teacher out there knows that eighty percent of the people who come in the room have a pelvis that's either tipped forward or back or up on one side. There are lower backs that are too flat or too curved, upper backs that are too kyphotic, and so on.”

By addressing these fundamental imbalances with gentle, intelligent practices, we work with the body's natural wisdom rather than against it—creating not just pain-free living, but a practice that supports structural health for the long term.