Definition
Yoga is a word which means "yoke" or "union". What are we uniting in yoga? In most yoga schools it is defined as union of mind, body and spirit or something to that extend.
However in CST it is defined as the union of breath, structure and movement.
Therefore in the broader sense of the word, it can refer to any physical activity: weight lifting and swinging, running, jumping etc. As long as you need to coordinate breath, structure and movement you are doing yoga.
General Practice
In the narrower sense of the word, it refers to the specific physical practice of improving your quality of motor skills through the balance strength and surrender, usually using only the bodyweight (in poses and transitions) as a tool. Quality must be emphasized here as yoga practice (not yoga training) differs from bodyweight exercise or bodyweight strength & conditioning in that we do yoga not to do more, but to do better in our motor abilities.
We are seeking to improve our health, mobility and function, rather than attributes in yoga practice.
How often have you heard that doing yoga can help to improve strength and help with fat loss? And then how about those that say that yoga is "just stretching"?
Indeed you can use yoga for improving strength as there are poses that require a great deal of strength to perform.
Wheel pose (aka hand bridge)
However to separate strength from surrender is a physical impossibility. In the example of the bridge above, while everything on the back side of the body must exert strength to perform the pose, everything on the front must surrender to allow the strength from the back side to be expressed.
How about fat loss? The common practice of yoga with the emphasis on static poses has a limited use in terms of fat loss. Remember that there must be a middle point between resistance and velocity to produce the maximum amount of power. To elicit a fat burning effect, you also need to focus on the movement (aka transitions).
Specific Practice: Compensatory Movement
In CST, there is a specific practice under the second ring of Prasara Yoga for compensatory movement. The basic idea is that any kind of physical conditioning produces specific adaptations. These adaptations can be classified as the good (training effect) and the bad (residual tension).
Training effect refers to better strength, endurance or a combination of the two.
Residual tension refers to tension that lingers after training. If this tension is not released, it is going to cause a more chronic adaptation called myofascial density. The body recognizes the chronic tension and tells itself rather than and instead of maintaining muscular tension which requires energy, it would save the energy for the contraction by shortening the involved muscles and lay more fascial fibres to maintain the contraction.
Isn't it a very common observation (and warning) that doing "too much" crunches would cause shortening of the rectus abdominis and doing "too much" bench presses would cause tightening of the pecs.
And sooner or later (most likely later, over a long time, but it is a very real thing) you get sensory-motor amnesia, which is just the fancy name of forgetting how to move. Since the shortened tissues have been contracted for so long, the body forgets how to surrender them to lengthen.
This would happen if you do not release the residual tension through specific poses* to restore normal length to the soft tissues involved in your training.
*You can call these exercises "stretches" for all i care but they are not stretching in the traditional sense of lengthening isolated muscles past their normal length. You are also putting a stretch in the fascia (the connective tissues) and many other muscles. Isolation is a myth. The whole body works as a whole.
Sooner or later you are going to develop fear reactivity, which means that the body would tense up when you are called upon to perform unfamiliar movements. This is characterized by reflexively bracing upon perceived effort. This kind of sudden muscular contraction in soft tissue which are already tight from their limited range of motion is what causes a great deal of injuries to sedentary people. Heard of people injuring themselves lifting furnitures or other "heavy" weights?
Sooner or later you are going to develop fear reactivity, which means that the body would tense up when you are called upon to perform unfamiliar movements. This is characterized by reflexively bracing upon perceived effort. This kind of sudden muscular contraction in soft tissue which are already tight from their limited range of motion is what causes a great deal of injuries to sedentary people. Heard of people injuring themselves lifting furnitures or other "heavy" weights?
As a general rule, after training always do poses that are opposite to what you trained for. Even if you don't do physical training, you also need compensatory movement. Do you know people who sit on a chair 8 hours a day, 5-6 days a week? I do. Don't you think it is going to cause a training effect of making you more and more chair-shaped?
If this describes you, do a lot of the upward dog pose and/or pigeon pose to open the hips and the front of the body.
Upward Dog Pose
Pigeon Pose
Further, in CST there is at least one day in a microcycle, the Low Intensity Day, which is dedicated to compensatory movement.
Transitions Between the Poses
The majority of the yoga world focuses on the poses. But an overlooked aspect of yoga practice is the transitions between the poses.
The transitions are as important as the poses or maybe more important. Each pose has an entry and exit. The ability to entry and exit to and from different poses gives an indication of the overall motor quality a person has. Being good in poses doesn't guarantee you good movement between the poses. Movement is also a balance of strength and surrender.
Take a look at this video of Tumbleweed Flow from Prasara A Flows. The poses are classic yoga poses which any decent yoga athlete should be able to do. Putting them in a flow using different transitions make so much of a richer practice.
Furthermore, practicing challenging (mobility wise or strength wise) poses also prevents fear reactivity by practicing the skill of the movements and making them more easily accessible during activities.
Get started with Prasara Yoga with Prasara Primer:
