You should be able to see your chest over the ball Yoga poses to stretch back . Lift your elbows to engage your chest muscles, or pectorals. Move the ball in Yoga poses to stretch back a swooping figure-8 shape, beginning at one shoulder and changing direction at your pelvis. The ball should stay within the frame of your shoulders and hips. Repeat 6 times. 12 BEGINNER Rolling Front Lunge BENEFITS: Stretches your hips flexors the muscles that run from the bottom of your torso to your upper thigh and hamstrings, while working your quadriceps. Stand in a parallel lunge position with about two feet between your front and back legs. Your weight should be on the ball of your back foot.
When this new hatha discourse finally called itself yoga’, it was probably in the general meaning of being a sadhana – a disciplined goal-oriented practice. Had the early hatha creators chosen the Indian word sadhana or the Greek word ascesis – both meaning practice, exercise, single-mindedness – we might all today have been doing sadhana ‘ or ascesis ‘ instead of yoga’.
The early hatha-yoga texts contained all kinds of discourse. Many of the new hatha-yoga signs were clearly rural Tantric in character. Especially so was the purpose of hatha-yoga, which was often very this-worldly, aiming for immortality and magical power. At other times, however, the goal was other-worldly and clearly belonged to urban elite discourses. Here people aimed for living liberation and release after death. The latter goals clearly belonged to non-Tantric discourses of ascetic wisdom and monotheism. Other aspects pointed further away from Tantra. Normally, Tantric sadhana was utterly dominated by mantras, mandalas and mystical experiences. But such topics were often totally left out of early hatha-yoga texts. The texts were down to earth, promising quick results, like marketing pamphlets. So this was social strata and a cultural system trying to distinguish themselves from typical Tantric discourse.
