A Guy's Introduction to Yoga Poses.

Downdogs, Updogs and a Cobra?

We've all seen people moving and stretching their bodies into different yoga poses whether watching it on television commercials, dvds or staring through the glass at the yoga class going on at the gym. Guilty! But just what exactly are these people doing? Let's first start off by explaining about asanas.

What the heck is an asana?

Asana is the aspect of Yoga that is most commonly thought of, and it involves the learning of specific postures for the direct improvement of physical health and vitality. The postures are said to 'open your joints' and give your body freedom and energy. When people speak of exercises called Downward Facing Dog, Cobra, and Pigeon, they are talking about asana.

Many people from all over the world have benefited from the practice of asana in its many varieties of expression. Ashtanga Yoga, Bikram Yoga, Power Yoga, Jivamukti Yoga, the list goes on and on, and it can be very confusing! However, despite the many different names and the details of instruction, they all share at their heart the cultivation of physical and mental ability on your path of Yoga.
While some of these poses look easy like Mountain Pose from the 'Big Four' yoga poses page, you should always be careful and remember to actively breathe. Sounds easy enough but sometimes when we get into a particular pose and things start to go array, we forget that it is better to exhale rather than to hold our breath. As I will explain later on the yoga-for-men.com breathing page, if we are not breathing we are dying! This especially goes for when we are trying to lift something heavy like a 300 dead-lift, a screaming child or a 24 pack of your favorite beer. Actively exhaling is the name of the game guys. So don't hold your breath!

There are hundreds of different styles of yoga and with that hundreds of different named poses to go along with them. Sometimes you will find a pose that is named differently in another style of yoga. No worries, guys. Rather than trying to remember all of the different names for one particular pose it is best to just be able to 'do' the pose. This guide will serve as a crib sheet of sorts to help you reference a particular pose when in need. Once you get the basics down feel free to move on to other poses and just because a pose isn't listed in the 'basics' area doesn't mean it is not important.

One other thing. Read the directions! Don't just look at the picture and go 'Hell, I can do that!'. These aren't the directions for putting together a toy for your kids. Get these poses wrong and you might wake up with a few extra aches and sores. Well, to be honest, doing these correct could even cause a bit of a sore body the next day. But in a good way.

Check back here regularly for updates on new poses and their explanations.

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