Basic Yoga Postures and Series In A Day For Dummies

What You Can Do In A Day  1

Foolish Assumptions  2

Icons Used in This Book  2

Chapter 1: The Ins and Outs of Yoga and Breathing 3

A Brief Introduction to Yoga 4

Breathing Your Way to Good Health  5

Taking high-quality breaths  6

Relaxing with a couple of deep breaths  7

Practicing safe yogic breathing 7

Reaping the benefits of yogic breathing  8

Breathing through your nose (most of the time)  9

What if I can’t breathe through my nose?  9

How about breathing through my nose all the time?  9

The Mechanics of Yogic Breathing  10

Appreciating the complete yogic breath  11

Belly breathing  11

Belly-to-chest breathing  12

Chest-to-belly breathing  13

Starting out with focus breathing  15

Realizing the power of a pause  16

Partners in Yoga: Breath and Postural Movement  16

Chapter 2: Please, Be Seated       19

Understanding the Philosophy of Yoga Postures  20

Looking at the Many Variations of Sitting  21

Chair-sitting posture  21

The easy posture: Sukhasana  23

The thunderbolt posture: Vajrasana  24

Chapter 3: Standing Tall         27

Standing Strong  27

Exercising Your Options  28

Mountain posture: Tadasana  29

Standing forward bend: Uttanasana  30

Triangle posture: Utthita trikonasana  32

Warrior I: Vira Bhadrasana I  33

Warrior II: Vira Bhadrasana II 34

Standing spread-legged forward bend: Prasarita pada uttanasana  36

Downward-facing dog: Adhomukha shvanasana  37

Chapter 4: Steady as a Tree: Mastering Balance  39

Getting to the Roots of the Postures  39

Balancing Postures for Graceful Strength  40

Warrior at the wall: Vira Bhadrasana III variation  41

Balancing cat  42

The tree posture: Vrikshasana  43

The karate kid  44

Standing heel-to-buttock  45

Chapter 5: Dynamic Posture: The Sun Salutation  47

Gliding Through the 7-Step Kneeling Salutation  48

Advancing to the 12-Step Sun Salutation  50

Chapter 6: A Recommended Beginners’ Routine   53

Starting Off Slowly and Wisely  53

Trying Out a Fun Beginners’ Routine  54

Corpse posture  54

Lying arm raise 55

Knee-to-chest posture  56

Downward-facing dog  56

Child’s posture  57

Warrior I  58

Standing forward bend  59

Standing spread-legged forward bend  60

The karate kid  61

Corpse posture redux  62

Chapter 7: Where to Go from Here      63

Taking Your First Steps  63

Visiting dummiescom  64