Seen as our Yoga Wellbeing theme is Yoga for Runners this week. We thought we would include a great all round stretches for alot of runners weaknesses. The pyrmaid pose stretches your spine but mostly stretches and strengthens the hamstrings. 

Step by Step

1.Stand in the mountain pose. With an exhalation, step or lightly jump your feet 3½ to 4 feet apart. Rest your hands on your hips. Turn your left foot in 45 to 60 degrees to the right and your right foot out to the right 90 degrees. Align the right heel with the left heel. Firm your thighs and turn your right thigh outward, so that the center of the right knee cap is in line with the center of the right ankle.

2.Exhale and rotate your torso to the right, squaring the front of your pelvis as much as possible with the front edge of your mat. As the left hip point turns forward, press the head of the left femur back to ground the back heel. Press your outer thighs inward, as if squeezing a block between your thighs. Firm your scapulas against your back torso, lengthen your coccyx toward the floor, and arch your upper torso back slightly.

3.With another exhalation, lean the torso forward from the groins over the right leg. Stop when the torso is parallel to the floor. Press your fingertips to the floor on either side of the right foot. If it isn’t possible for you to touch the floor, support your hands on a pair of blocks or the seat of a folding chair. Press the thighs back and lengthen the torso forward, lifting through the top of the sternum.

4.In this pose the front-leg hip tends to lift up toward the shoulder and swing out to the side, which shortens the front-leg side. Be sure to soften the front-leg hip toward the earth and away from the same-side shoulder while you continue squeezing the outer thighs. Press the base of the big toe and the inner heel of the front foot firmly into the floor, then lift the inner groin of the front leg deep into the pelvis.

5.Hold your torso and head parallel to the floor for a few breaths. Then, if you have the flexibility, bring the front torso closer to the top of the thigh, but don’t round forward from the waist to do this. Eventually the long front torso will rest down on the thigh. Hold your maximum position for 15 to 30 seconds, then come up with an inhalation by pressing actively through the back heel and dragging the coccyx first down and then into the pelvis. Then go to the left side.

At the yoga show back in November I really enjoyed watching the acrobatic yoga feats. Acro yoga is a new craze that is growing across the Atlantic. A small crowd of spectators oohs and ahhs over their breathtaking moves. This “flying” looks like fun, so I jump in and have a go.

My new friend becomes my base: He’s on his back, feet up in the air, and I lean over and lay my torso on his feet, ready to play airplane like a kid.  Before I know it, I’m in the Bound Angle Pose, but upside down.

The transition is thrilling. I’m not sure how I flip over, but now his feet are on my low back, my head near his chest, my feet on the level of his knees. I’m grabbing my ankles in the Bow Pose, but since I’m upside down. It’s very relaxing and liberating.

I’ve just gotten a taste of one form of fun being had by yogis who are letting loose—combining their love of asana with a passion for off-the-mat physical activities like circus arts, theater, dance, and outdoor adventure. These new yogic art forms—AcroYoga cultivate trust, connection, and playfulness. One thing I always try to remember when practicing is not to take it to seriously and to laugh as much as possible. Acro-yoga is a good reminder to make sure you keep that same playfulness in your own practice.

I don’t go to the gym anymore but when I did there was definitely a feeling of competition coming from fellow members. What happens when we let ourselves become consumed by competition with others, thereby sinking more on the side of comparing ourselves with people around us? Competition and comparison can eventually become synonymous. Strangely, yoga which doesn’t give you a medal of any kind, or have anything resembling a team which can play against another, can end up being an internal competition for ourselves.

Even in a yoga class, which strives to strengthen the person on the inside as well as the outside, you may find yourself watching other students or analysing your instructor. As a student turned teacher, I have caught myself doing both time and time again. Knowing that I have fallen into this pattern while practicing yoga is the signal to making a change. When I catch myself seeking recognition or wishing I could be a little bit bendier, I guide myself back to my mat.

So, why is it important to be non-competitive during our yoga practice? For one thing, we accomplish less when we spend too much time wishing we were something else. The thinking and wishing take away from the process itself. We need to stay in the moment.

Whether we find ourselves wishing we had something more or something less, we can always accomplish more by taking our focus back to our breath and the sensations we are feeling in each moment. We should be inspired by other people’s practice, rather than dejected. Remember that it is natural to compare ourselves to others, but we should try to let those feelings roll off of our backs more often so we can enjoy the moments of our yoga journey more fully.

Is yoga a woman’s world? According to a 2005 Yoga Journal market study, 77 percent of the yoga practitioners in America are female. Anecdotally, longtime teachers like Anusara Yoga founder John Friend and Power Yoga instructor Baron Baptiste, who both regularly crisscross the nation hosting workshops, believe the numbers might be even more skewed. After all, only about 1 in 10 subscribers to this magazine is male. “What I find myself constantly contemplating,” says Michael Lechonczak, a yoga instructor who teaches at Equinox Fitness in Manhattan, “is how to get more guys into class.”

It’s not that we don’t know what we’re missing. Nowadays, there seems to be a yoga studio on every corner; our girlfriends and wives are walking, talking testimonies to the practice. At home, we watch them rushing out the front door, brows furrowed, only to return standing tall, with big, tranquil smiles on their faces and compassion in their eyes. Because my wife Madeleine is a yoga instructor and an avid student, I witness this stress-to-bliss transformation several times a week. When she comes home, I often mumble to myself, “Don’t I want to be that happy?” Yet I haven’t practiced yoga consistently for years.

So I asked highly qualified doctors, scientists, and veteran yoga teachers exactly why so many men stick to yoga’s sidelines. I also polled members of that rare breed known as the male practitioner—from pro athletes to busy investment managers—to find out how they came to embrace yoga. In the end, I discovered social, physical, and emotional realities that discourage men from practicing. I also heard about the moments of inspiration that got men over such barriers—and ideas about what might help other men make the leap, too. If you’re a man who’s hesitated to try yoga—or you know a man you’d like to introduce to the practice—read on.

Get a man past his reservations about asana time with the ladies and he’ll still have a well-founded reason to drag his feet to a studio: Yoga can be painful.

Men, it seems, are naturally tight. Boys and girls may be born equally limber, with an ability to comfortably put their feet behind their heads. But by adolescence, boys generally lose flexibility faster than girls, and as boys become men, the differences in flexibility tend to grow. Researchers have noted this gap, although they can’t specifically link it to differences in hormones, musculature, or connective tissue. “It’s hard to attribute to any one thing,” says Lynn Millar, a professor of physical therapy.

Whatever is to blame, the typical man’s pursuits and lifestyle, from sitting at a desk all day to grabbing a quick pint , put little importance on flexibility.

Lasater says stretching takes a back seat in a male’s life as early as high school. “Look at the way they stretch in football—they push on each other and bounce. It hurts,” she says. “How could anyone emerge from that with a positive view of flexibility?” Investment manager Ron Bernstein was certainly ambivalent about stretching—until his 80-hour workweeks caught up with him. Back in 1998, Bernstein, a former competitive high school golfer who’s a managing director for the investment firm Marathon Real Estate in New York City, realized that “everything hurt,” he says. “My wife was doing some yoga and suggested that stretching would be good.”

Bernstein, 37, went to a class and muddled through. “On my walk home, my back felt so much better. All those Upward and Downward Dogs really worked.”