I’m sure if you are a well practiced yogi or yogini, you know as well as I do that Yoga is so much more than just stretching! All you have to do is look at a yogi’s body and see how fantastically shaped their bodies are. Long, lean and generally beautiful, right? So, if it looks pretty obvious, then why is it that so many people think Yoga is just a good stretch?!

I’ve been teaching for 5 years now and the majority of my students started out as complete beginners. That was always such a wonder to me because I had been led to believe that on beginning my journey as a Yoga teacher I would generally have people coming to class that had practiced yoga for years. Now I realise that it’s down to my style. I don’t really view my style of teaching as ‘straight Yoga’ (whatever that is anyway!) I see it more as a means to learning how to move properly and function well as a moving, living, breathing human being. So, because I have had so many beginners come to me, I have heard the same statement from them over and over again; “Wow, I thought Yoga was supposed to be just stretching, but that was hard!” I don’t know where people have got this idea from and I apologise now to anyone who is reading this and thinking they were going to try out a yoga class because they just wanted a ‘good stretch.’

It’s not that I’m saying Yoga doesn’t stretch you out or make you flexible because of course, it does, but to gain it, you have to do more than just stretch.

Just so you understand why I decided to write this post I’m going to explain where my inspiration came from. It came from two things. Firstly, my fiancé, who, over the weekend asked me if I could stretch him out but made a very strong request for me to not hurt him. This statement of his makes me laugh a lot because he’s come to a few of my classes and I’ve taught him privately on a few occasions and every time he says “why do you have to make me work so hard?!” Well, I’m sorry to say it but to get flexible and gain a ‘good stretch’ you must work hard first, I’ll explain why in a minute. The second reason is because the new company, Inspirer, that Dr Elena Voyce created and I manage, have been asked by a trampoline group to teach them how to stretch and so I have been thinking about how to teach it.

If you have been to a Yoga class, then you should know how most lessons are structured, for those of you who haven’t, I’ll explain very quickly. First, you ‘awaken the body’ and every teacher and style does this differently, some in ways I don’t agree with, but I won’t get into that so much. Secondly, you start to warm up and do a whole load of poses that strengthen the body and you do this so that lastly, you can get into some crazy flexible positions.

now let’s think about the gym and your typical fitness classes. They all talk about warming up before you start and at the end you stretch. You do the same in dance, you do a dynamic, warming stretch, you dance for an hour or so and then you stretch. Notice the pattern…. Warm up, strengthen THEN stretch.

This pattern is so incredibly important and that’s because society today barely move. Our muscles and joints are cold. Think of your muscles as an elastic band for a second. Imagine if you picked up a cold elastic band (it’s unlikely you would J but let’s pretend) what do you think would happen if you tried to stretch it? It would most likely snap, or wouldn’t stretch at all. Our muscles are the same. This is why yoga gives you so much more than a stretch. It is an ancient and clever practice, that retrains the body and takes it to its full potential! However, like I said before, not every style of yoga does this in the best of ways, I’m sorry to say that, because I do truly love all styles of Yoga, but some are not made for the modern body and I only say this from my own experience. Some styles go too quickly into the strengthening portion when the joints and muscles are still tight and they’re not ready to move in such a way and so many people are living with injuries and pains these days that you really do have to be careful about how you train the body. If you do it cleverly you can truly make changes. I changed mine completely. I used to have terrible lordosis and ribs that didn’t function properly, legs that barely did any work, basically, I was all over the place! And just with clever movement I have completely changed the shape of my spine and body and have next to no pains these days. It’s great!!

The method I use in my teaching comes from Dr Elena Voyce, my teacher, friend and life saver! She taught me that to gain flexibility you must make the muscles function properly and to do that you should put them in the right place first. Yes, I am talking about alignment, which thankfully lots of people are talking about nowadays! For this post, I am just going to talk about stretching the hamstrings.

Let’s think about society… most people sit down for the majority of their day, so because of this, their hamstrings are constantly over stretched and therefore, tight. Most people sit incorrectly, so their pelvis and hip flexors are not functioning properly. So, what can we do about this? Re-train them! Unfortunately, I could probably write a massive book on how to properly stretch the hamstrings, but I can’t really do that here J so instead I just want to give you a little thing to try and to help you understand why yoga is more than stretching.

2. Now try this: stand with your feet hip-distance apart, parallel and slightly pigeon-toed (so your big toes come slightly towards each other, watch that your knees don’t come together.) Now bend your knees and bring your body weight into your heels. Ground your heels and your feet into the floor and try to pull back through your ankles, like you’re skiing. You should now be able to feel your hamstrings and sitting bones engage a little. Now bow your head, breathe deeply into your back and ask your ribs to move back. Try to relax your pelvis a little and allow your hip bones to lift up and back slightly as if lifting them and creating space in the belly, which in turn allows your tailbone to relax. Without losing the connection to your feet or the space in the belly roll all the way down with your legs bent. Once all the way down keep that connection to the feet and ankles and the lift in the hips.  Now pressing down through your heels can you start to straighten your legs from your heels to your sitting bones, as if pushing your thigh bones up to the ceiling and keep your hands on the floor. Only go as far as you can without feeling like you’re pulling the muscle at your sitting bones. Does this feel different? Do you feel more of a stretch, but gain some heat in the body? Hopefully the answer is yes and hopefully, you now see that what Yoga poses should do, is create strength and heat as well as a stretch, when you get this, you’re going to start stretching in a much more efficient way!

For a better understanding of how this all works come to one of our upcoming Back to Back classes (website coming soon).