Yoga and stretching

Last weekend I was in an elementary yoga course, where I learned the sun salutations, the deep ujjayi breathing and some asanas.

First, a quick description of Ashtanga yoga for those who don't know (like me 2 weeks ago). In yoga you do a precisely defined series of stretching movements and light gymnastics. They are called asanas. Each asana also defines when you inhale and exhale. If yoga was a state machine, then "states" would be the stretching postures while "transitions" would be inhalations and exhalations.

Yoga is primarily a meditative exercise, secondarily a breathing exercise and only then a physical exercise (although meditative component emerges only after you are so familiar with the asanas that they "empty your mind"). Lots of emphasis is placed on breathing and recruiting all the muscles below stomach for deeper breathing.

Now, back to the main topic.

Parapara stretching

Parapara is a dance for hands. The hand movements are quick and simple. The aesthetics concentrates on 45 and 90 degree angles and big, symmetric hand motions. In parapara, choreographies are song-specific. Everyone dances the same way. Professionals make choreographies for popular Japanese disco songs and distribute them as DVDs.

When I was in India, after I came from gym I danced at least 15 minutes of parapara as a form of stretching. 30 minutes wasn't exceptional. The big circular motions ensured that every part of my hands got stretched.

Parapara stretching was effective, since I didn't have much soreness or snapping, even though I had only begun strength training and therefore my technique was lousy and my body was unprepared.

Traditional stretching

Shoulder snapping started only after I returned to Finland. Gym was far away from my flat, so I did final stretching in the gym with the traditional movements they teach in school, for example:

• grapping some wall corner with your hand and strethching it backwards,
• putting your hand behind your neck,
• pushing the wall, or
  
• trying to reach the ground while keeping your feet straight.

These are solid movements to aid recovery, but they didn't quite cut it. First of all, I had some serious shoulder snapping, which forced me to stop exercising for some weeks. My weightlifting book says that most people's shoulders are woefully unprepared for strength training. For a beginning weight trainer, the question is not if you will have shoulder problems but in which specific lifts they emerge for you.

Nor did these stretches increase flexibility. I still couldn't reach the ground while keeping my feet straight despite having done that particular stretch after every gym workout for almost a year.

Yoga stretching

So parapara worked well and traditional stretching didn't. Yoga combines the best of these two so my hopes are high.

In parapara, you do lots of movements but each single movement is light and easy. Similarly in yoga, you don't lock your feet and don't try your flexibility limit, as the next breath takes you to the next posture quite soon.

In traditional stretching, each stretch is easy and everyone can complete them. In yoga, each asana has a posture which no beginner can complete. You do it as far as you can while focus on breathing keeps the stretch light.

Parapara has the weakness that it only stretches hands and needs videos. Yoga seems to provide equally efficient dynamic stretching system for the whole body, enabling me to avoid soreness and increase flexibility.

Liberating the consciousness with yoga

A Finnish couple living in Vancouver used to write a blog named Dragon/Kolibri. Dragon was the male. He wrote rarely but well, mainly about weightlifting. The blog is now offline.

The woman was an active yoga practicioner. She took steps towards becoming a yoga teacher. She also had a mild psychiatric condition and medication for it. The final entries of the blog were about a pang of anorexia nervosa which was decimating her appetite - apparently quite seriously, since her mother flew to Vancouver and the couple stopped blogging. I haven't heard anything about them since.

Yoga has a reputation for attracting superstitious people for some of whom it becomes "religion lite". This emphasis on spirituality and healing is visible also on the web pages of various yoga schools in Tampere.

Tampereen Astangajoogakoulu has a list of moon days in which energy levels are low and practise should be lighter. In other respects they have the best pages. They even list specific asanas for the courses. The elementary groups are guided, while in the last "mysore group" each practicioner trains his own asanas and teachers introduce new ones when the old ones go well.

Om Yoga presents yoga as just another group exercise. I can already exercise in groups at my gym, so thanks but no thanks. They have lots of mild spirituality/energy/healing references dispersed around the pages. Somehow, I find this more scary than Astangajoogakoulu's honest division, where some pages have spiritual tint while others treat yoga as a physical sport.

I'm not freaked by spirituality in itself, but by people who can't identify and reflect their own spirituality enough to turn it off when talking to non-spiritual people. Clear division to between spiritual and physical content sends a message "We are stating these spiritual facts because we believe in them. You are free to follow the advice and traditions taught by our yoga masters, or to follow the Western tradition of ignoring them as superstitious."

Tampereen työväenopisto offers the best prices, and good enough courses for all but the most active enthusiasts.

Ashtanga yoga and gymnastics

Some sports train juniors into top athletes, while other sports enable adult hobbyists to stay fit. In team ball games, ice hockey is the serious sport while floorball is the sport of choice for amateurs. Many schools and companies have a floorball field reservation for their students or employees. In martial arts, wrestling trains young professional athletes while krav maga, kickboxing and various schools with Japanese names train adults.

For gymnastics, the closest matching adult sport is Ashtanga yoga. Yoga covers those parts of gymnastics which are realistic for adults, and which are not better trained at gym.

• Flexibility exercises - included in Ashtanga Yoha
• Static strength positions - included in Ashtanga Yoga
• Pulling and pressing - better trained in gym
• Dynamic acrobatics - out of reach for adults

Many static positions are part of both gymnastics and Ashtanga yoga, with different names:

• Handstand is Navasana Vinyasa Out
• Frog stand is a fundamental preparatory exercise for plance and handstand. Kukkutasana and Marichyasana B Vinyasa Out are more difficult variations of frog stand.
• Planche is called Mayurasana
• Headstand is called Muka Hasta Sirasana A
• Going to Navasana and back to the ground is called a V-up in gymnastics.
• Split is not part of Ashtanga Yoga, but Supta Parsvasahita is close.
  

Alexandra Kroha in a split.