Something challenging in the beginning of yoga practice is the lack of mobility and/or flexibility and that can come from the amount of hours that we spend sitting down working, watching TV or the lack of mobility throughout the day, and as a consequence it can create short hamstrings, tense muscles and some limitations. But for sure, we want to develop a conscience practice with quality movements and awareness of our own body.
Some yoga postures, like lotus pose, for many people, are very hard to perform. But to believe in universal alignment is a utopic thought, considering our bio-mechanical differences, life style and other factors. And at the end, what we want is to create our own practice that leads us to a healthy life style.
Adding tools out the box could be helpful to progress in our yoga practice. Stretching methods like ballistic stretch, loading stretch help develop new range of motion with some strength gains. Thinking about the physical benefits of yoga practice, many people only mention and concentrate on flexibility, dismissing the strength required to advance in the practice.
A good oriented strength training combined with a regular yoga practice, may be more beneficial for some practitioners. Give them a good opportunity to reach a new level of practice. Some moves like push ups, pull ups, chin-ups, help create strength and stabilize the upper body.
The right understanding of shoulder-scapular system and hips movement allows our body to challenge some postures like inversions or back bending’s. Gymnastics is full of exercises that make it easy to gain strength. For lower body is possible to add some weights and work, as mentioned before, with loading stretch, this method requires a lot of knowledge in what point we are, because over load could have consequences, possible injuries or contractions in the proper range of motion (ROM). Reaching a new ROM has some interesting science facts behind it, like retraining your brain and neurological system.
Probably for those that have felt stuck in a traditional system. It’s time to give new possibilities and technics a try. Something really important to consider is talking with professionals or specialist in strength or stretch training.
The main idea of this article is to give an option to develop an efficient and safe yoga practice, without under estimate the power of traditional practice.
Namaste!!