Yoga All-In-One For Dummies

Chapter 10

Basic Preparation, Compensation, and Rest Poses

In This Chapter

Preparation postures for warming up

Bringing your body back into balance with compensation postures

The art and science of sequencing in yoga, called vinyasa-krama (pronounced veen-yah-sah-krah-mah), is often referred to as flow. Paying attention to proper sequencing can help you achieve the best possible flow of postures and derive maximum benefit from your yoga session.

Although sequencing has many approaches, you can’t go wrong when you bear in mind the following four basic categories:

• Warm-up or preparation
• Main postures
• Compensation
• Rest

Chapters 2 through 9 of Book II outline a variety of main postures. This chapter explains common warm-up, compensation, and rest postures that you’re likely to perform in your yoga sessions.

Getting Started with Warm-ups

Any physical exercise requires adequate warm-up, and yoga is no exception. Warm-up exercises increase circulation to the parts of your body you’re about to use and make you more aware of those areas of your physical self. What’s different about the yoga warm-up (called preparation postures) is that you do it slowly and deliberately, with conscious breathing and awareness.

You typically perform warm-up postures dynamically, which means you move in ...