Funky Focus | Active Stretching & The 8 Limbs of Yoga
Stretch it Out: Turning Passive Postures into Active Adventures
Written by LJ
In yoga, postures are often categorized as either active or passive stretches. Understanding the difference between the two can help you elevate your practice, ensuring that each pose is performed with intention and awareness. This month at Funky Buddha Yoga, we are focusing on how to activate your postures—transforming passive stretches into more dynamic, engaged experiences that promote strength, flexibility, and mindfulness. We’ll use the term active to encompass active, dynamic, ballistic, and PNF styles of stretching.
But Wait… What the Funk is Passive Stretching?
Passive stretching occurs when a posture is held without significant muscle engagement. These poses rely more on gravity and time to deepen the stretch.
For example, in Seated Forward Fold (Paschimottanasana), you might simply let your body fold over your legs without engaging any muscle groups, allowing gravity to pull you deeper into the stretch.
Passive postures offer incredible relaxation benefits and help promote mobility, flexibility, and range of motion. We LOVE passive postures for a great wind-down. When we add variety to our practice, like muscle engagement and activation to our stretching, we gain more strength, more mobility, and a greater understanding of our body’s needs.
So Then… Active Stretching?
Active stretching, however, requires engagement of specific muscle groups to support a pose. Instead of relying on external forces, you’ll use your own strength and control to deepen the stretch. Active engagement helps stabilize joints, protect muscles, and may prevent injury.
For example, in Seated Forward Fold (Paschimottanasana), actively pressing your heels into the mat and engaging your quadriceps (the tops of your thighs) as you fold, helps support your hamstrings (back of your thighs). This creates a dynamic stretch where your muscles are both lengthening and stabilizing- allowing for new sensations and a greater range of motion over time.
Key Tips to Activating Yoga Postures:
Here are three ways to engage and activate your body, transforming passive stretches into active, powerful postures:
1. Ground Down and Lift Up
We can consider groundedness in so many facets of our practice, from mental composure to physical stability, whether you are looking for an active or passive stretch, grounding is our first step!
In any stretching posture, think of your body as having two main forces: grounding and lifting.
For example, in a Crescent Lunge, ground down by pressing your front foot firmly into the mat while lifting your back leg’s kneecap toward the ceiling. This dual action creates strength, stability, and energy in your stretch, while also protecting your joints.
2. Engage the Opposite Muscle Group
One of the best ways to safely deepen a stretch is to engage the muscle group opposite to the one you’re lengthening.
For example, in a forward fold (Uttanasana), instead of simply reaching for your toes, try gently activating your quadriceps by pulling your kneecaps toward your hips. This action sends a signal to your hamstrings to lengthen and release more fully.
Engagement isn’t always big muscle activation or strong powerful movements; we may consider how each aspect of our time on the mat can be engaged. As we fall into flow, we engage our mind-to-muscle as we sync breath with movement. Then through each posture of a sequence we have an opportunity to dial in and find a positive amount of engagement to support, activate, and grow our practice!
3. Use Your Breath to Create Space
Breath is the heart and soul of our practice on the mat. It leads us from one posture to the next, deepens our poses, and keeps us grounded on the mat. From warming up to cooling down, your breath is a powerful tool for activation.
In a deep stretch, use your inhale to create space in your body and your exhale to deepen into the pose. As you exhale, imagine your muscles subtly relaxing into gentle activation, giving you both the support and flexibility you need to go deeper with ease. Think of breath as the connector between strength and stretch.
Okay, so Why the Funk are we Activating?
Activating our postures allows our yoga practice to be intentional and mindful experience. It helps build muscle memory, strength, and stability, ensuring your body is aligned and stable. Plus, it offers us mindfulness, fostering concentration and a deeper connection between breath and movement.
At Funky Buddha Yoga, we encourage the exploration of both passive and active stretching, but this month’s focus is on turning passive stretches into dynamic, controlled movements. Not only will we deepen our practice, but we’ll also develop the strength and awareness that supports long-term growth.
Join us this month to dial in and dial up our postures, as we pay close attention to the subtleties of our yoga poses!
The 8 Limbs of Yoga: Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara
Written by Larissa
We’ve been exploring the 8 Limbs of Yoga for a few months now, beginning with the Yamas and Niyamas, which are the foundations of our way of being and then our actions. We’ll move from these amazing tools that help us understand ourselves and choose wise behaviors, to how the Sutras invite us to be in our bodies.
First, let’s revisit the 8 Limbs as a whole.
The 8 Limbs & Why They’re Important
The 8 Limbs can be broken into 3 broad categories:
- How to navigate the world, inner and outer
- Limbs 1 & 2: Yamas and Niyamas
- How to take care of your body and energy
- Limbs 3, 4, & 5:Asana (to sit, to pose), Pranayama (breath work, life force expansion), Pratyahara (sense withdrawal/enhancement)
- How to take care of your mind and spirit
- Limbs 6, 7, & 8: Dharana (pointed concentration), Dhyana (open awareness), Samadhi (freedom, bliss, wholeness). These 3 together are sometimes called the “Innermost Quest”
The purpose of the 8 Limbs is to give us concepts to understand through practice and ponder practical tools to apply to life. The whole system is meant to move us toward the ultimate goal of yoga: Freedom (Jivanmukti, liberation while still in the body). It’s said that a Jivanmukta, a person who’s reached this state through the practice of yoga, has perfect equanimity and contentment, unwavering peace, deep abiding joy, bliss, and mercy, exquisite gentleness, and is free from doubt, ego, greed, and fear. Phew! Sounds freaking sweet, right?? This doesn’t mean there are no more issues in life, just that a Jivanmukta is no longer swayed by every external event. Your ability to hold both suffering and immense joy increases, so you are no longer bound by trying to cling to joy or avoid suffering; you are simply and fully living.
A Look at What Asana, Pranayama, and Pratyahara Mean:
Asana, from Sanskrit, originally meant to sit, or manner of sitting. Since language is not a solid entity, it evolves and changes, this word also now means to pose.
Asana, though now a wonderful and expansive part of traditional yoga practices around the world, is only mentioned in 3 of the 196 aphorisms in the Sutras. The only true instruction in the Sutras for Asana is that an Asana should be steady and comfortable (sthira sukha asanam 2.46). In the Hatha Pradipika, there were only 15 original postures; designed as postures to stay in for longer meditations, or to prepare for meditation. Eventually there were 84 postures, then 112, and now thousands of postures we work with in our movement practice.
Pranayama is most easily translated as breath control but can have many more meanings as we dive into the original Sanskrit. Prana can mean life force or vital energy, or more simply, breath- which is certainly a life force within all of us. Yama as we now know, means control or restraint, though ayama means expansion or stretching. Together, this term can mean breath control, life force expansion, energy control, or energy expansion. In simple form, we are practicing Pranayama every time we breathe. We can explore this practice through modulating our breath, watching how our energy moves throughout the day, and practicing either containing or expanding our energy.
Pratyahara is similar in that we can have the standard translation, but as we dive into the original word, the meaning deepens. The standard translation is sense withdrawal, something as simple as closing your eyes. Prati means toward, and ahara means to gather. Together they point toward gathering our sense awareness to experience the present, without the constant stream of information through our eyes, ears, etc. It’s deciding to block out distractions and focus on one sense awareness at a time, and then eventually allowing our sense awareness to fall away all together (more on that next month).
Integrating Them in Practice:
We certainly practice Asana every time we participate in a yoga class, but you can practice Asana all throughout the day! In a long meeting, or driving somewhere, just ask your body if it’s comfortable; are you feeling the balance of effort and ease? Or are you feeling a little tense, maybe even a bit disconnected from your body?
Try this and encompass all three: Take 30 seconds to notice your feet touching the floor, or the inside of your shoes; flex and relax your toes (Asana). Take a deep enough breath you can feel your ribs expand, then watch your body as it softens on your exhale (Pranayama). If you’re able, close your eyes, and take one more breath (Pratyahara). See what happens. Notice how you feel. Repeat as often as needed and remember, this is yoga too.
We’ll continue to dive into consciously living these practices through practical application in our morning meditations. Join our morning sangha for support, connection, and deep mental rest.
If you’d like to dive deeper, we invite you to join us for our monthly meditation circle!
Check out our Youtube for an overview of these concepts or a meditation practice to try them on <3
As always, we hope that you join us M-F at 7:30am for Funky Buddha Yoga’s free, live, virtual meditation to learn how to integrate these principles into everyday life <3
