Sensational Yoga Poses
(A User's Guide for the Body)

Sensational Yoga Poses are divided into types according to body position. There are Standing Poses and Seated Poses, Arm Balances as well as belly down and belly up poses. (You can find these and other groupings under Basic Yoga Poses.) There are also Inversions like headstand, handstand and forearm stand.

This in one of the more usual ways of classifying yoga postures and the general order might be to do standing poses first followed by seated poses and so on.

Another way to classify postures is according to action. Actions include bending forwards, bending backwards, twisting and sidebending to name but a few.

Breathing

In any yoga pose you can focus on breathing, but if you have trouble with breathing smoothly or slowly you can practice breathing as a stand along exercise. To make breathing easier you can focus on moving your body rhythmically. One method is to practice rocking back and forwards. Read Breathing exercises to find out more!

Creating Balanced Routines

The idea of classifying postures (and stretches) according to actions will enable you to better choose poses based on a desired affect and also to enable you to create balanced yoga routines.

As an example of balancing a yoga routine, if you do some backbending poses then you'll also want to do some forward bending yoga poses to balance the backbends.

If you do poses to strengthen the front of the body, then you can also do postures to strengthen the back and so on.

Backbending

Backbending Poses are used to open the front of the body and also to help strengthen the back of the body. You can focus on backbending the whole body (hips and spine) or focus your backbend on only one part, say for example the hips.

Forward Bending

Forward bends do the opposite to Backbends. They open the back of the body and can be used to help strengthen the front of the body.

Note that in either case, strengthening the back of the body, or strengthening the front of the body, you may actually have to "consciously" activate the target muscles.

Anatomy Based Yoga

To find out more about activating particular muscles, read Muscle anatomy. You can learn how to direct your awareness so that you can feel your muscles and deliberately activate them. As an example, if your focus is on ab exercises, then these ab exercising yoga poses can help you to exercise your abs. If you are interested in learning to activate your serratus anterior muscle to help with stabilizing your shoulder blade then the serratus anterior page shows the yoga poses and actions that you can practice.

If you have trouble getting your hands together in lifted arm yoga poses like warrior 1 and chair pose then read about how to use your trapezius muscle. For back bending yoga poses where your are bending the spine backwards, you may find it helpful to read about the spinal erectors. This muscle can also be used in back strengthening poses.

Side Bending and Hip Adduction

Side bending poses can be used to stretch and strengthen the sides of the body. Use the left side to stretch the right side and vice versa. Note that sidebending at the hips can be used to counter or balance hip abduction and vice versa. An example of hip abduction is the side-to-side splits.

Twisting Yoga Postures

Twisting Yoga Poses can be active or passive. Like with side bends, the muscles that twist the spine in one direction can be used to stretch the mucles that twist the spine in the opposite direction. For "passive" twisting, instead of using one set of twisting muscles to stretch the opposing set, you can use your arms to turn your ribcage relative to your pelvis so that you stretch both sets of twisting muscles.

Depending on the pose you could also use your legs to turn your pelvis relative to your ribcage to create a twisting effect.

Binding and Arm Balances

Binding Yoga Poses are those where you grab a part of your body, a hand or a foot, or a toe, sometimes with some other part of the body intervening.

These poses deserve their own section because not only do they sometimes require more flexibility, but it also helps to understand that when doing these types of poses you change the way your body works.

By grabbing one part of your body, you give your muscles something to work against. And you may also shift your center of gravity, making balance a little bit more challenging.

Note that arm balances are similar to binding poses since one part of the body works against another part, in this case the legs work against the arms.

Balancing Poses

Another general group of yoga poses is Yoga Balance Poses. In this group of poses, the starting focus can be on using your foundation to feel and control your center. As your body awareness and responsiveness improves you can then work at using your whole body to control your center.

Balance poses are one of the easiest ways (or so I believe) to learn to feel and control your body.

Dance of Shiva

Strictly speaking dance of shiva positions aren't yoga poses. You can think of them as capturing the essence of yoga poses. This is more of a dynamic practice which I learned from the same teacher who taught me universal freestyle yoga. If you can understand dance of shiva then you can understand universal freestyle yoga. And you can also understand how to solve problems and how to create a framework for creativity.

But that's all a bonus. Perhaps the most important aspect of dance of shiva that you can work at taking into your yoga practice is that each of the positions is clearly defined. They are also close to the body's natural range of motion.

Because the positions are clearly defined it makes it easier to focus on doing them. You don't have to wonder about what to do, you can get on with doing it. That's how you become present.

That's how you get into the flow.

By Knowing What Your Are Doing!

And I'd suggest that's the most important thing you can take into doing yoga poses. Know what you are trying to do. Rather than just doing yoga poses, practice knowing what you are trying to do.

Like a carpenter who knows that they are building a table, you can get on with building a yoga pose. And if you find pieces don't match, or the final product isn't quite what you imagined, then you change or adjust it.

A carpenter gets better the more they practice carpenty. The same is true with yoga. As you get more familiar with your body you can get better at using it.

You can think of your body as the tool and the yoga pose as the final product.

Yoga and Me

So why practice yoga? I do it because it feels good and it has also helped me to become more flexible.

When I first started yoga I wasn't able to touch my toes. And even for a long time after I stared I still wasn't able to touch my toes. Initially I started of with Ashtanga yoga.

The nice thing about this style of yoga is that it has a Set Series of Poses. It meant that I could learn it by myself and practice it by myself.

While this gave me a good start in yoga I eventually did start going to classes so that I could learn how to do yoga poses better. And eventually I took a yoga teacher training course so that I could teach yoga. And that's when I truly began to learn.

But I still wasn't flexible. After teaching and doing Ashtanga yoga for a number of years I met Andrey Lappa. He gave me something that I was looking for but didn't know existed at the time. A structure for creating yoga routines freely that still resulted in a balance body. He effectively taught me to be free within my yoga practice. Now I rarely if ever do the same practice twice. Instead I work freely based on how my body feels, or if I'm teaching, based on the needs of my students.

This freedom also makes it easier for me to develop routines or even special poses to make working towards difficult poses more easier.

But I still wasn't flexible. That came later after I moved to Taiwan and began developing practicing and teaching Inner and Outer Thigh or Hip stretches, Quad Stretches, Hamstring Stretches, Hip and Psoas stretches) and Shoulder Stretches, in part based on what I'd learned from Andrey, in part from studying with various tai ji and martial arts teachers, and in part, based on my own growing experience.

And that's also where I began to understand Balance.

Different Aspects of Yoga

Apart from flexibility training, balance is one of my favorite subjects to teach. (I even wrote a Book About Balance.) It offers a simple gateway into learning to feel and control the body.

Actually, who am I kidding. I enjoy teaching lots of different aspects of yoga.

That also includes Meridian yoga, or perhaps more appropriately, Meridian Stretching. For me understanding the Meridians is a nice compliment to what I learned from Andrey. They provide a way for guiding the way I structure my yoga routines based on the flow of the meridians.

Another related topic is the chakras. One of my personal interests has been figuring out correspondances or ways to relate the Meridians to the Chakras (and vice versa).

And as for another key element of yoga, Breathing is something else that I like to teach with a different approach. Rather than just "feel your breath" I like to teach my students to feel the muscles that they are breathing with. That makes it not only easier to feel the breath but also to adjust and even control it.

A User's Guide for the Body

At the center of yoga is the body, and that's what I'm really trying to help my students learn is their body.

And so really what Sensational Yoga Poses aims to be is a User's Guide for the Body.