I find that when I do The Flamenco pose 1, I can only put my legs about 30-40 degrees to the floor (yes I use a strap) without bending my legs. When doing this pose wouldn’t gravity be working against me as I am not past the 70-90 degree mark?

Also is there any other stretches to help me getting both my legs to the 70 degree mark?

This is a common challenge in The Flamenco pose, you are right, the gravity is not working with you but it’s still very beneficial pose and to get gravity to work with you is to when you hold on to a strap that’s wrap around your foot, make sure your arm is all the way straight and just lean back and the pressure of your straight arm pulling on that strap, that’s gravity helping it. It will go just fine, just stick with it.

The gravity stretches are really painful for me, making it pretty impossible for me to relax and breathe through them. Do you think I am doing something wrong, or is this a common problem when someone is just starting?

The stretches are intestinally intense and your job is to relax, if you find hard to relax and hard to breath even when it feels really bad in a short turn, in a long turn it means you will get some really amazing benefits and you going to get them very quickly. The key thing is just to do what you can so if you can only relax and breath during those first 30 seconds then do that and build from there, the more challenging it is when you start, the bigger benefits you will see right away.

I’ve recently switched over to a plant-based diet and I feel great, but I can’t afford to buy everything organic. How much of a difference will that make, eating some fruits and vegetables non-organic?

And also, because of the mineral depletion in our soils described in the movie “Food Matters”, shouldn’t I use a good quality multivitamin daily to avoid mineral deficiency?

This is very complicated question. To eat organic or non-organic and there is no one answer, depends where you live, different countries have different organic regulations, even different states or provinces. Where ever you live it is impossible to eat 100% organic – not everything is available, not everything will be available so you just have to do the best that you can. Couple things to keep in mind: some things are more important than others to eat organic, work with a local grower like if you go to the farmers market. Also wash you fruits and vegetables really well so if you can’t afford getting everything organic just wash your stuff well! Nobody’s does it, nobody even washes the organic stuff. How to wash them well: fill your sink with water, slightly warm water and then add white vinegar, if you don’t have that you can just use salt, good table salt put into sink, you should let them soak like for 15 minutes, to make it kind of a ritual. It’s really effective! The other thing you can do is to peel the non-organic vegetables. Try to buy with local, try to work with the local organic box service.

I have done yoga and left 4 years back and I put on weight around 89kg, I want to reduce weight around 75 kg.

What should be my diet so that I can reduce and my stomach also.

Weight lost and yoga go hand in hand. When you start this mind-body connection and this mind-body awareness and your brain starts listening to your stomach a lot better. If you practice yoga with an intensity, it can be very helpful. If you want to lose that quantity of weight there area also some other things going on in your life, financial worries, family problems etc. Often something else is going on. Some simple food tricks that sometimes work (they can make a big difference). Don’t drink any calories when you want to lose weight, I mean no juices, milk, coffees with sugar. You can drink water, water with little lemon in it, you can drink herbal teas with nothing else in them, non caffeinated teas. Don’t eat any bread and if you want to take step further, don’t eat any rice, any grains at all. If you eat those regularly and if you get rid of them, you could lose like 5 – 10 kilos just by that. That’s a good way how to start, we will talk about losing weight more in the future.

I’m a yoga teacher but because I’ve been a runner in the past (serious runner) I have super tight hips still.
Should I do the hip stretches every day? Is there a chance of injury if I do?

Also, how do I know that my restriction isn’t bone on bone compression? Is there a way of finding out if that is the issue instead of just tight connective muscle?

Runners have often very tight hips so yes, you should do the stretches every day, if you have a problem area, work on it every day. The way how you know you do too much is if the next day when you try to stretch it just feels too intense, too much pain.

Yes, with yoga as with anything, there is a chance of injury so just listen to your body, take it slow, make sure you are breathing, don’t try to push too hard.

I don’t need to lose weight. In fact, I need to gain. I’m 5’4″ and 100 pounds. I want that little extra ability to stretch completely and move into classes to help me learn more poses. What kinds of foods do you recommend for weight gain with the raw diet?

If you are eating a raw food it’s very difficult to gain weight. It just depends on your body. If you try to gain weight one of the simplest way how to do it is to add liquid calories, just to make sure you add healthful liquid calories, I like to use the yoga protein-brown rice protein, easy protein shake, if you drink that before meal it won’t affect your hunger at all so it’s really easy way how to add some calories without your body noticing. Another way how to add calories is to eat 1 – 2 table spoons of raw processed coconut butter or coconut oil in the morning. Just make sure you get lots of fat.

Please could you help me with part 2 of the hamstring stretch (The Flamenco)? Following lying down holding your leg straight in your eBook states “next, using your right hand only open the leg to the right…” and has a diagram I am slightly confused as to whether I am bringing my leg down (from straight up in the air) to the right- or if I am bringing the leg from it laying on the floor in front of me.

When you start to do the crosses, when you first open your leg up to the right and the other part when you cross the leg to the side, you going to find that your leg is up in the air so your leg wont probably go all the way down on the floor. The key thing here is just hang with it, let your leg dangle in the air if it needs to but keep your arms straight and your legs straight. Everybody wants to bend their arms, their legs, don’t do it. Figure out how to keep your arms and legs straight and there is when you get the maximum benefits.

I have been practicing yoga for 5 years. Up until 1 year ago – my flexibility was quite good. In the last year I have been noticing that my flexibility is not easily reached. I find that my hamstrings are very tight and even bending in a simple forward fold is hard to do unless I am really warmed up. I practice yoga 6 times per week.

Do you know if it is normal to have set backs like this? PS my diet has not changed over the last year.

This is really weird so something is going on. If you are still practicing the same thing and getting stiffer, something is going on with your nutrition or you are doing something else meaning you start to do some kind of a resisting training or playing tennis, jogging or something like that. Take a look on what you are doing, something has changed dramatically in your body, the other option, maybe you are taking some new medications but you should never reverse flexibility unless you are doing something what had it happen.

I am fairly active – yoga, jazzercise and once a week tennis lesson.
Recently, I have started to have a lot of trouble with tennis elbow. It hurts the most during tennis and in some positions in yoga and when lifting weights.

I do not want to stop my activities. Do you have any advice?

All your joints, your knees, your lower back, your elbows, your neck you got to be really careful. If you push little bit too far with your muscles, they get sore, your joints, they can go really bad. I don’t have any great recommendations for tennis elbow. Yoga of course helps, what I would suggest doing is try to really cut back on the tennis and increase yoga. If yoga is not helping cut back that as well but you should work with someone locally and if you get in pain I would definitely take it seriously, believe in it because it can get really bad.

I am having trouble with the first stretch on the back day. I don’t feel it in my back. Can you help?

First stretch in the back day is The Lightning Bolt. If you don’t feel it in your back, that’s ok, you are not suppose to feel it in your back. When increasing the flexibility of the spine we increase the flexibility of all the muscles that support the spine. If you don’t feel it in your back, don’t despair, you are doing the right thing, take it slow, keep practicing – that’s one of the most powerful poses.

I have been diagnosed of Adult Still’s Disease and Diabetes (ASD) for 4 years. I have been taking Prednisolone, Methotraxate for ASD, Metformin and Glimperamide for Diabetes. Could you please let me know if YOGABODY helps my flexibility?

I get lots of questions like this. With anything that is related to a disease, definitely I’m not a doctor so for sure check with your doctor. For what I do know about those conditions if you have inflamed joints, stretching and flexibility and supplements like YOGABODY stretch can be helpful but its something you want to work with a medical professional or a doctor and I even recommend working with a local yoga teacher just to get some specific help.

I first got the YOGABODY splits info nearly two years ago. I have been diligently doing them a little each day. I still cannot do them. Any suggestions?

There are two different types of splits, there are frontal splits which is a fairly easy
pose to learn and there are side splits. The frontal splits you can learn very quickly, 6 weeks for a lot of people, sometimes can be longer if you are more stiff. The side splits are different because you actually have to practice the side splits to be better at it – try to work up to 5 minutes holds. The key thing is you need to beat your hold time – use a watch, use a timer and you measure your times and increase them a little bit. Give it a month, you will definitely see the progress there.

When my wife hangs upside down in the trapeze, she immediately gets an intense pressure in her head. Is this normal? Any suggestions?
 
When I hang upside down, I feel like the seat is digging into my back to the point where it is a distraction and I can’t relax. I am 6′ 5″ tall and weigh 250 pounds. Does my size having anything to do with how I fit in the trapeze? Any suggestions?

Your body has this mechanism where protects the blood pressure in your head and the only reason when it would be dangerous if you have A) high blood pressure in this case inversions are not recommended or B) your taking some kind of muscles relaxance in this case sort of natural biological thing we have would be turned off. You will feel more pressure in your head, its natural. It will happen less and less the more you practice. The things I would suggest is going slowly, lower yourself slowly, take it easy and you will find you will become comfortable there very quickly.

This is very common question because what happens you jump into the trapeze and you are sitting in the sling and it’s too wide, naturally you have to shimmy the sling down so it’s just covering your bump so that the edge of it is right where your belt line and the front edge of it is right where your thighs kind of reach your bump. If you don’t do it sometimes you could feel pain in the lower back.

When ordering the trapeze I didn’t even think about the fact I have a severely torn rotator cuff (left) and cannot use that arm much. Are there still things I can do?

Rotator cuffs, knee and back problems with this stuff you really have to be very careful. You can do whole bunch of things on trapeze without using the rotator cuff, I recommend when you are starting its just to do the inversions that don’t involve your arms, when you get in and out the trapeze use a chair or you can even lower your trapeze. You also have to work with your doctor to help you through the heal process.

I’ve always been a strong believer of the whole “large amount of protein every third hour” and massive caloric intake for me to gain any weight.

Most recently (I’m 21 years old) I’ve become interested in vibrant health and been thinking about switching to a plant-based diet.
Can I build muscle on such a diet, and if so, how much will I need to eat (and of what primarily)?

Will my body recover from all the overconsumption of protein and empty calories I’ve been prone to the last years if I do decide to switch diet?

If your goal is to be a body builder, to build a mass you have to eat meal and the reason is that nobody knows about gaining weigh like body builders and they eat tons and tons of meat. There are vegan body builders, most of them really struggle, the biggest of these guys are the smallest of the body builders. If you just want to get strong, to have a functional strength like you get from something like a gymnast, an acrobat or a yoga student you can absolutely get enough proteins from a plant base diet.

I put up the Yoga Trapeze and can invert, but when I try to wrap my legs on the outside, they won’t go. Am I putting the seat too far down on my buttocks? Hangers too far apart? (They are in the doorway about a shoulder width apart).

Yoga trapeze is real simple thing to use, first of all go to my youtube channel (http://www.youtube.com/lrockwood) we have bunch of trapeze videos there, we also have more videos coming out. Inverting on yoga trapeze is very easy, just take it slow, just the sling like we talked about, just covering your bump (Bill’s question) and then just grab the long handles and start to lower yourself back and back and back and then wrap your legs around, hook your feet and you are just hanging there. For the first time you might have a lack of confidence when you don’t have any friend around but make sure you have someone there to support you, to help you.

I’m having a difficult time coming up with raw meals… do you have any kind of recipes I could look at? I’m 20, addicted to coffee, and have smoked for 6 years. My body doesn’t move, my joints click, my muscles are all off balanced.

Moving to raw food makes almost everybody feel better, the only exception would be if someone has a serious digestive issues. But almost everybody feels better eating more plant based foods so it sounds you are doing a right thing. The raw food meals take usually more time to prepare them so what I encourage you to do is to make sure that you are eating raw food in every single meal, try to eat at least 70-80 % of that meal a raw food. Just start to increase the amount of the raw foods you are eating. The simplest way to do it is start eating salads and really great fresh fruits. The trick in eating more salads is to figure out how to make good sauces and salad dressings. I always recommend 500 grams per day of dark green vegetables, things like spinach, all those bitter greens. It is something what all of us need more of. In terms of recipes there is a website called Vegweb.com, I like it a lot, lots of great recipes, free recipes and also feedback so you can actually see which taste good and which don’t. In terms of other stuff, being more flexible etc. I think it will come with time.

I find that The Blaster pose makes me feel quite nauseous! As a masseuse I know that releasing tension in the psoas muscle can cause this. But I just wondered – is this common?

This is common, it can happen from the psoa muscle and The Blaster does access the psoa muscle on the back leg. If it is too much to handle definitely back off and shorten your hold times. If you feel nauseous for few seconds I just work with it because the chances are it will pass soon.

What would you suggest to make your blood Alkaline? I don’t eat processed or junk foods.

That’s a great question. People always talk about eating more alkaline foods and the advice is really good but the confusion comes when people talk about blood alkalinity, your blood is alkaline already, don’t worry. If it was not alkaline you would be very dead or very near dead or very very sick. Your blood will never go acid unless you are in a very bad place. In terms of eating the balance of alkaline and acidic foods that’s really important but its only important when you eat a lot of processed foods and nobody even talks about it but as you can be too acidic you can also be too alkaline. It happens in a raw food world a lot where all people eat all alkaline foods and they don’t have any those strong acidic proteins and you get different effects but similar negative reactions like nauseous, people get weak, little bit foggy brain and can be just as bad for your health as being too acidic so as long as you are eating a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables chances you are finding the natural balance anyway.

Doing reverse prayer type poses, or shoulder Pow is really easy for my left side but much tighter on the right side. I stretch the right side much more in an effort to gain more flexibility there, but soon after stretching it’s tight again.
I wonder is more stretching required? Would you recommend a specific stretch for this situation?

Really great, really common question. Almost everybody has the same problem, everybody feels it just like you, feel the shoulder differences very very clearly. Your right hip is probably stiffer than your left hip because you have right body dominance. This happens in every single pose, these imbalances happen naturally because we perform one side of the body when we are doing things like riding, driving, typing etc. The key is how to stretch the other side, first of all, you will never get balanced, that right side will always be a bit tighter, not anything you can do to have it perfectly balanced but we always want to move toward balance – for me that’s what’s all yoga practicing about. So here it what I do- you never want to stretch just one side of your body so what I always recommend is to add 50% more to the tight side. I find this very helpful so give this a try.

I have very tight hips, I can almost get into front splits with no warm up but if I attempt to do side splits this is with much difficulty and extreme pain, The Butterfly or The Frog pose are so hard. So is the way I could get into the side splits or loosen up so I could sit and bend like normal without putting pressure on my knees? As I find these hurt the most when trying to stretch.

There are certain poses which are really challenging, for example the side splits is a really big pose, its intense pose and because you are exposing one of your most important regions of your body, your body is really resistant, you have to open up that part of your body easily. Even if you have the flexibility, even if you can do the pose every day. The same goes for the front splits but for whatever reason is something what you can learn much more quickly. The biggest thing I can recommend in flexibility – focus on the nervous system side of things – meaning your nervous system is not ok with you opening so that can keep you blocked. In yoga we train our nervous system to be ok with these poses. That’s why we always use the breathing during the yoga practices especially in the gravity poses because it really helps your nerve system to release.

I don’t really have any problems with mobility or pain. My problem is stiffness in my quadriceps (or front of thigh) – I can’t get into position to do The Lightning Bolt pose. I can’t even do The Hero’s pose (just kneeling) because of this tightness. I began trying Bound Angle Pose and last night looked up quadriceps stretches on YouTube but didn’t have much luck with that.
Can you recommend anything?

This is very common problem, tight quads are very common especially for someone who does other activities, and running is the big one. In terms of what to do, you just really need to keep doing those poses more, if you know what’s your tough and difficult area, spend more time there every day. You want to work up to 5 minutes holds in The Lightning Bolt or The Hero pose or if you can’t sit down on your heels or floor like you are mentioning, use a pillow, use something underneath you. You have to hold these poses for a very long time but always be careful of your knees. If you keep doing it for 5 minutes every day, you will see a huge difference.

I take YOGABODY Stretch and I’m looking for a good multi vitamin to supplement that. Any suggestions?

I’m actually not a fan of multivitamins, I do take them once in a while but very rarely but I don’t like them and here is why – first of all it is very hard to get enough of anything into one pill. There are good ones but you have to take like 6 or 7 horse pills a day to even get started. The second reason is actually more important because certain vitamins will make you sick or bad. I’m more of a fan of taking a look at your diet, what areas you might be lacking in and perhaps even getting some testing done. Blood test, hair analysis tests are pretty interesting.

I received my supplements back last winter, but stopped taking them. I am now taking them again and keeping them in the refrigerator. Is it okay to keep them in the fridge? Do they lose their effectiveness after being opened and kept on the shelf for a few months?

That’s a good question for supplements in general actually for nuts and seeds and oils in them. Pretty much everything stays fresh when it’s cold. There are certain things that don’t do great in a refrigerator and those are dry ingredient especially in capsulated ingredient and if you keep them in a bottle with a lit on very tight it should be fine and it will extend the shelf life. And keep in mind that the average nutritional supplement has about 3 years shelf life unopened and once its opened about a year but mostly it’s about 6 months. If you put it in the refrigerator it will definitely extend the shelf life. The important things you need to refrigerate are nuts and seeds, oils and especially probiotic which are beneficial bacteria – because they are living, they are bacteria if you keep them in a refrigerator, its slows down their metabolism, they live longer, they die slower. The more active they are, the more live they are, the more benefits you get.

I have just received my first order of Yogabody supplement. I am already taking a magnesium supplement, which is for migraines, and it has reduced the number of migraines I have markedly. Can you offer advice as to the magnesium content of Yogabody please.

Magnesium is another very interesting mineral especially for yoga students. Magnesium is the relaxation mineral. If you have troubles sleeping, if you have muscle tension. Magnesium can also be found in dark green vegetables.
Yes, you can take magnesium, make sure you are taking really good magnesium, not a cheap one – they can be toxic for your body. Try to get magnesium from natural sources. You can definitely take it with the YOGABODY Stretch, no problem at all.

For the raw food diet, how often do you eat per day? 3? 5 times? Does not matter? Is almond milk or rice milk a diary product?

Raw food is very powerful for yoga, for your health, for healing. In terms on how often to eat you will find people telling you all kinds of rules but the truth is your body can acclimate to any eating schedule you want, naturally people tend to eat 2 – 5 times a day. Everybody’s a little bit different. What I will tell you that if you eat smaller meals more often your body tends to run hotter. So when you eat less and less often it’s very calming of course depending on what your activities are. All these milks have to do it with a culture, almond milk is great, I’m not a huge fan of dairy products – it can cause your stiffness, your breathing is not good, your yoga is not good. I’m not a huge fan of rice milk either.

As a college student I have been helped by several of the stretches you teach. But there is one place that I have a lot of trouble with tension and I don’t know what to do to stretch it – my back in between my shoulders. Positions like The Hangman help to open the shoulders, but in the wrong direction – I need something to spread my shoulders apart rather than push them together, to stretch the muscles close to my spine. Do you know of something that could help me?

The best thing I would recommend is to do daily practice of Sun Salutations, Sun Salute and Sun Salute B. If you don’t know what those are you can search on our website, we also have free videos for that. I would do that everyday – 5 of Sun Salute A, 5 of Sun Salute B. If you did nothing in yoga except Sun Salutes you get amazing benefits. If we are dealing with the muscling balance, tension in your shoulders, dynamic movements with Down Dog holds are really going to be helpful for you.

I am new to Yoga and my body is very stiff! I suffer from lower back pain. I ordered your Yoga Trapeze and am looking forward to trying that! Was wondering what info you have available for beginners – I would like to increase my flexibility and strengthen as well – please advise!

Lower back pain is really common. Everybody at some point has some back pains. The back pain is caused of all kind of things and that’s great about yoga – we try to give your body the balance. To get rid of the lower back pain I would start with the YOGABODY trapeze for sure, spend few minutes a day just to hang there upside down, it’s good for your spine and it just feels great. It’s going to be a big benefit for you. Just try to work daily stretching every day, even just 15 minutes a day – that will make a big difference.

I am now 53-years-old and workout and run but I’m frustrated with my lack of flexibility and stiffness. I don’t want to perform superhuman feats. I simply want to be in good enough shape to enjoy life pain free and be as flexible as possible. I have always been intrigued by yoga but also intimidated by my lack of flexibility and feel like I will never reach even a basic level. I welcome any thoughts you might have on how I could get started with yoga.

It happens with a lot of people – many people who have been working out for a long time are in great shape but they start to feel old or older and that happens because of muscling balances. In yoga we talk about Ying and Yang – to find the balance. So when working out – spend at least 25% of your time dedicating to stretching. The risk is if you don’t do you will slowly become stiffer and stiffer to the point when you often have injuries.

According to my teacher, I have to do gravity stretch The Rag Doll with straight knee, if with knee bent, no improvement. Currently I only can do The Rag Doll with bent knee (stomach rested on the tight). Any advice for me how should I improve The Rag Doll?

Bending your knees is special important if doing the long hold passive poses. Protects your lower back, protects your hamstrings and keeps you safe. The advice is to spend more time there, try to get your holds up to 5 minutes, you can lean your bump against the wall if you want and just take your time with it but for sure bend your knees!

I finally started to take the YOGABODY pills. It is my 3rd day now, 30 min after taking them I get really tired. Either I have a nap or I push myself during the period and then I am ok. Is this normal at the beginning?

This is really weird reaction, I have actually never heard about it before. I don’t think it’s related, everybody’s different, who knows what’s happening but if anything most people feel more energy so I don’t thinks it’s related.

How do I use Liquid clarity? How often? After or before the meal ? Is it a good supplement to the YOGABODY?

Yes, the good idea is to take it in the morning with your breakfast, tends to get people the natural lift of energy, they have done all the bunch of researchers with concentration and performance. So take it in the morning with food, that’s the best idea.

At the moment I take YOGABODY daily. What happens if I forget it?

Nothing happens, it’s a nutritional support formula so just helps you body. If you miss a day it’s like missing a good meal. Doesn’t matter, you will be fine. Get back right on it the next day.

I ran my first marathon in October and am planning on running another in Oct 2012. My muscles have always been very tight. I plan to continue to take the tablets and the recommended stretches while training for my marathon. I would also like to extend my practice and flexibility further. What are you recommendations? How many yoga classes should I aim to complete in addition to recommended stretches?

If you do an extreme training like a marathon you going to really struggle with your flexibility. If you love running, don’t stop running. Any activity that you love you should never quit for your flexibility, you just have to work on it every day. So if you run every day I would say as the absolute minimum is to run for 15 minutes per day If you can, try to get 30 minutes per day, it’s going to make a huge difference. If you are runner you really need to work on your hamstrings and your hips specifically, doing poses like The Lightning Bolt, doing poses like The Blaster, The Rag Doll. You really have to focus on those otherwise you will get stiffer and stiffer which is depressing.

I’m very interested in what YOGABODY have put together but I’m 21 weeks pregnant and it doesn’t say anything whether it is safe to take which supplements while pregnant. Can you suggest anything else that could work for me while pregnant?

If you are pregnant, take it really easy. Probably not the best idea, take it easy, do what you are already doing, I wouldn’t change anything drastic.

I started Yoga about 6 months ago but I’ve become a little stuck within my practice as I’m always getting colds and flu and this is happening every 2- 3 weeks! I have blood tests done to just check that nothing else is wrong and all is fine. Is there some deeper at work here that I don’t yet understand? Can you recommend any books I could read to help me through this process?

It’s tough, everybody’s in a different place, who knows what’s going on, maybe it’s stress, maybe it’s lifestyle, maybe it’s food, I’m not sure. In terms of books to help you get through it I would just say there some pretty good books out there, the good book I read recently it’s called The Primal Blueprint, it’s kind of the opposite of what I teach, a lot of meat but it’s an excellent book in terms of understanding your immune system. The immune system is often linked to too much sugar in your diet. Check it out anyway, really good book for understanding you insulin, hormones in your body. I would also try to increase the vegetables, 500 grams a day is what I always recommend. For most people it’s really hard so if you start juicing and eating them steamed you get to 500 grams pretty easily.

I just started taking the YOGABODY supplements yesterday since I got them and they work to reduce my pain for a few hours as well and I feel a bit light. I don’t know whether to stretch right now or just rest because my injury is still fresh (I have injured my back in Feb). What do you recommend I should do at the moment? I really miss deep stretching and going to the gym.

First of all if you are injured you don’t do really deep stretching, you want to do really gentle stretching but don’t stop stretching. Just take it easy. Great that the supplements are helping, that’s what they suppose to do.

I have a question to the pose The Noodle. Should the legs be straight? Where should be my shoulders? Would be great if you could explain in detail the position.

The Noodle is a passive backbend flopped over a chair or an exercise ball. Just let your legs flop, let your body flop, where should your shoulders be, don’t really think about it, just flop over the chair. Add more pillows to get more rounding in your spine and just relax. Is as simple as it looks. Just hang there.

How, as a long distance runner, can one get enough energy through raw foods for a race? I would load up on pasta the day before usually and feel I might flake if I don’t.

How, as a long distance runner, can one get enough energy through raw foods for a race? I would load up on pasta the day before usually and feel I might flake if I don’t.

Can I use ball to do the noodle stretch for alternative?

A: Ball good alternative, but sometimes exercise balls are too small and they don’t do much. If you do use an exercise ball, make sure it’s big and well inflated. If you’re using a chair, it is always a little awkward to get out of the pose, you just
have to roll out of it.

I strained my Achilles while mountain bike riding, please can you suggest stretches to help?

A: One interesting fact about Achilles injuries is that they are very tight directly to Antibiotic use, something to be mindful of. With all injuries you always have to be careful because the same stretches that will heal you can hurt you. The key thing is just to take things slowly. For the Achilles I would work on Downward Facing Dog and you have to be very careful with it, maybe to take very short stands, one legged down facing dog and I would do it every morning and you just really have to make a judgment call to see if it is helping or hurting. Downer Facing Dog, Warrior One, Warrior Two and all the Lunges. You just have to take it really slowly and easily, hope you have a quick recovery!

Hangman is really great shoulder opener, you lay down on your floor with your head against the wall, you are on your belly and you stretch your arms up and you hang from your arms with your head floating. Here is the variation – you put a pillow underneath your chest to lift yourself up, you can use couple of pillows if you need to and from there you will be able to get your arms up. Then just take it slowly and start to remove the pillows. Hangman is really brutal for the first couple of weeks but as you get into it, it will get easier and easier and you find out that within a month you should be able to do it with no pillow at all.

For the Wide Dog, I am not sure if I do it right.
Where should this suppose to stretch? Should u feel anything in the legs, too?

Flamenco:I’m using a belt in this pose. In the side stretches my knee or the muscle connections at the knee seems to get most of the stretch it is sometimes very painful, which leads to me bending my leg. Should I just try to endure (and flex my leg, which stops me from relaxing) or let go a bit of the belt?

In Flamenco you often feel funny things in your knee joint or hip but the key thing is you never want to fry your joints, you do not want to feel the pain, just make sure your knee is slightly bend, if you feel any weirdness it’s ok but not a sharp pain.

Butterfly: How far away can the feet be from the butt? I need cca 30 cm, otherwise the gravity will take me backwards. A pillow helps slightly. Any tips?

Everybody is different when doing poses, I tend to put them further out, if you had your hands in front of you it would be about 3 to 4 fists with distance away from your body, maybe even a little more if you want to rest your forehead down on your feet or down on your pillow.

Hangman: This was one of two poses that I felt really unsure of. It felt strange. Does it matter how close my hands are to each other on the wall?

There is no way around it, people moan but it is one of those most powerful poses for opening your shoulders! So Fredrik, just stick with it.

Lightning bolt: Is it ok to use pillows behind you to “land” on when you lean back, to start with?

The answer is NO, don’t use pillows, don’t use anything. Don’t lean back at all until you are ready to lean back. Don’t lay down on your back until it is very easy for you to lay down. Don’t be in a rush, don’t use pillows, don’t do it against the wall, you would hurt yourself, probably your knees or lower back. It has to be pain free.

For sure you can use pillows where should your butt be. If you feel uncomfortable on your chair use whole bunch more pillows (like 4 pillows).

I don’t know anything about contortionism. So to backbends – you want to do poses like the Lightning Bolt, you want to do the Hangman pose to open up your shoulders or if you are working on the Bridge which is also called a Four Wheel for sure you want to do that pose every day! You don’t want to feel any pain in your lower back but you want to hold it for as long as you can. I always teach students to work up to 3×30 second holds and even better to 3×30 breath holds. You will start to see huge differences, just sit there, 3 times, 30 seconds each to start with and then you can move to 30 breaths. Just hold it still and practice more!