Basic Guidelines.

The most basic guideline for these exercises is to move slowly and smoothly.

Most exercises in this book consist of an active phase and a relaxed and/or resting phase.

• Work at activating and relaxing slowly and smoothly.

One reason that the relaxation phase is important is because it gives you a mini-rest. These little mini-rests can often make the whole process of stretching more bearable and easier to improve. (And it gives a contrast to the active phase).

The Preparation section includes some basic exercises with instructions on how to do:

• Muscle Resisted stretches and Muscle Assisted Stretches.
• It also includes a Dual Assist section.

For each exercise, whether doing active stretching or relaxed stretching, focus on feeling your body.
Notice what happens to the parts of your body each time you relax muscles and each time you activate.
This focused awareness will not only help you to improve your flexibility and strength, it will help you to gain a better understanding of your body that you can apply to other poses and exercises.

Have a Clear Intent and a Clear Reference

One thing that might not be obvious when stretching is to have a clear intent. With stretching that means moving (or trying to move or stretch) in a clearly defined direction. To that end it helps to have a reference point. For example,

• If you where doing front to back splits, you could use your back leg as your reference point. Thus the intent is to slide or reach the front foot forwards.
• But you could use the front foot as your reference point. Then the intent is to reach your back leg rearwards.

If you wanted to activate the hip flexors of your front leg while doing splits, you could imagine your torso and hip as your reference point. Then to activate your hip flexors you create an upwards pull on your front leg.

While it is unlikely that your foot will actually lift, the clear intent will help you to activate your hip flexor and probably what you’d find is that your pelvis sinks closer to the ground as a result.

Working similiarly with the back leg you could “intend” to lift your back leg using your torso or pelvis as your reference. This then activates the glute and/or hamstrings of the rear leg but instead of the rear leg lifting your torso sinks down.

Note, that you could try and prove me wrong and say “I can lift my legs”. In that case you’d need to have arms braced against the floor. In this case your torso truly does become a fixed reference point and you may find that you can actually pull upwards on both legs and lift them.

The important point is to have a clear intent and a clear reference point.

Even if only in your imagination, your reference point is your fixed point and then the clear intention is to create movement relative to your reference point. That intent is what activates muscle to create an active stretch while the reference gives the muscle a foundation from which to work.

Have a Stable Foundation

Another thing that may not be obvious when stretching, and that relates to the first point, is creating a stable foundation. Sometimes this is the same as your reference point, sometimes it isn’t.

Stability is a resistance to change. Filing a piece of metal, you need to clamp it so that it doesn’t move. Then you can use the file on it effectively. Stability (provided by the clamp) allows the desired change (from filing the piece of metal) to be created.

The same applies when stretching. A desired change could be lengthening one muscle and/or shortening another. In either case the muscle needs to have a foundation to lengthen away from or contract towards. Bending the hips forwards, you could stabilize the legs and tilt the upper body forwards relative to the legs. The legs act as the foundation. Or you could make the legs stiff at the knees and/or feet, and move the legs relative to the body. In some cases you may find it helps to make the legs and torso stiff, then you move one relative to the other.

As you might gather, there are lots of ways of creating stability. With better muscle control, you can experiment with different ways of creating stability and then directly experience whether a particular method helps or not. And in a way, that is part of what being flexible entails, being able to change where you create stability.