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About the Book

I've played with active stretching in the past. It felt like it gave my stretching a little extra boost to help me break past my usual sticking points. As a result I didn't feel like I had to use this technique all the time. And so I played with other stretching and body awareness techniques.

I came back to active stretching because I lead most of my classes by example and when I injured my knee I had to figure out some way of continuing to teach while leading from the front. (I could have just talked my students through the poses but since we speak different languages, doing the class with them seems to be the more effective option.)

In many of the standing poses that I teach I found that active stretching made it possible to do most things without hurting my knee. If anything the actions actually helped it.

(That's no promise that the same will happen for you. I also went to the Chinese Equivalent of a chiropractor who "shook" my knee back into place. Plus I spent a lot of time playing with different muscle activations to help keep my knee joint in place.)

And so I went back to exploring active stretching with my students, finding different ways to effectively teach the active stretching actions. I found that the same instructions don't work with all groups and I also found out where some instructions were superfluous. I was able to make my teaching more effective which also gave me more time to include extra poses which gave a break from active stretching.

The active stretching exercises in this course focus on a few simple actions that are repeated in a number of different positions so that you have the greatest chance of understanding and experiencing them for yourself.

In all of the exercises the focus includes moving slowly and smoothly so that you have the chance to feel your body operating. This makes it easier to recognize and recreate the sensations that you need for active stretching. And it also means that you can learn to use your body with minimal effort.

The ebook includes lots of photos so that it is easy to see what you are trying to do and I've broken down instructions into parts and steps so that it is easy to work on each exercise well within your limits of understanding and ability. 

The goal isn't to get straight to the position as I show you, but to be able to control your body within your current limitations so that you can then work at expanding beyond those limits. 

This ebook is covered by the Leanpub Guarantee (if you buy it from Leanpub).If you aren't satisfied you have 45 days to ask for your money back. Refunds are handled manually but all it takes from you is a couple of mouse clicks and you are there.

Personally I think you won't be dissapointed. In my classes I work at making the concepts I teach easy to learn and easy to understand and you'll get the benefits of that experience in this book. And if you haven't experienced any of my work before then I invite you to check out my website, sensational-yoga-poses.com.

About the Author

Neil Keleher

@kneelkeleher

Hi, I'm Neil Keleher

I’ve been a yoga teacher for about 20 years.

I have a degree in systems design engineering from the University of Waterloo.

Prior to that I served for five years in the British army as an armourer.

As a yoga teacher I teach my students how to feel and control their body. In this context I’m like a driving instructor for your body.

One of my other hats is “indexing specialist”. One of my current ongoing projects under this hat is designing an easy to use indexing system for Chinese characters.