My first introduction to effective stretching was via meridian yoga. The simple idea was to relax the muscle being stretched. This isn't always as easy as it sounds. But luckily I'd worked with Andrey Lappa and so had a fairly good idea of how to use gravity assisted positions to make relaxed stretching easier.

One of the things I learned to do with relaxed stretching was to create a stable foundation. That meant stabilizing some part of the body, e.g. if stretching the hips I'd stabilize the leg and move the torso relative to the leg to create a stretch or vice versa (move the leg relative to the torso.)

Later on I played with resisting a stretch and then relaxing. Part of the reason for this was that it helped me to recognize when a muscle was active and when it was relaxed. And I learned how to keep a muscle relaxed even while stretching.

Later on I played with active stretching, using opposing muscles to stretch the target muscle. And another type of active stetching where the muscle being stretched is active, but gradually lengthens while staying active.

Whether relaxing a muscle, or whether activating and shortening or activating and lengthening a muscle, all of these are elements of muscle control. And that is the focus on this book. The goal of the muscle control exercises in this ebook and optional videos is to improve flexiblity, but the side benefit is that you improve body awareness at the same time. 

This program includes both a book (pdf, mobi and epub formats) and videos (mp4 files)

Book

The book is dowloadable in PDF, Epub and Mobi format (all for one price.) The book is laid out with a description of each exercise and photographs clearly showing the different steps of each exercise. Where appropriate, targeted muscles are circled or highlighted so that you can easily understand where to focus your awareness while doing the exercises.

The instructions are designed to be simple and easy to follow so that you can focus on feeling and controlling particular muscles and then on using that control when stretching.

The main focus is on forward bending and back bending muscle control and flexibility. 

Videos

The program includes 4 videos. 

Video 1 covers standing hip extension and flexion (bending hip forwards and backwards.20min.   

Video 2 covers lateral standing poses.25min.  

Video 3 covers supine back bending for the spine and hips (including wheel pose).19min.  

Video 4 covers seated forward bends and resting.17min.  

Videos follow the same order as poses in the book. The explanation in the videos is slightly different than from the book. Ideally using both will give you a better understanding of muscle control and how to use it to get better flexibility.

The videos are designed so that you can watch the instruction then pause the video and do the exercise yourself. Then watch the next section (or replay a section if you need to.)

A slightly different edit of video 3 is on youtube.