Miriam Austin - Cool Yoga Tricks

This book would have been impossible without the care, concern, and expertise of my most influential teachers, Ramanand Patel and Nancy Stechert. Ramanand and Nancy taught me most of the tricks featured in this book and encouraged me to share these insights with others.

Their teacher, Yogacharya B.K.S. Iyengar, is recognized as the world's leading authority on hatha yoga. Mr. Iyengar developed a method of practicing yoga that includes attention to precision, detailed alignment, and the use of props, which allows students to perform postures they otherwise would not be able to do safely and allows the treatment of many illnesses, injuries, and stressrelated conditions. His genius is unsurpassed. Although I say that Mr. Iyengar is my teacher, I have only had the privilege to study with him once.

Over my many years of teaching, my students have become my greatest teachers. Their willingness to trust me and allow me to help them work through their physical, and sometimes emotional, problems is a rare gift. I have asked students to use many of these tricks and their results have left me with a sense of amazement and humility. Many times when students have told me that through yoga they have been cured of a certain injury or illness, I have asked with wonder and surprise, Do you really think it was the yoga? When they have assured me that nothing else in their life had changed except the initiation of a yoga practice, I have been awed by and grateful to the mystery that surrounds this ancient discipline.

I am thankful for my literary agent, Michael Broussard, who long before he met me in person had great faith that I would be a successful author.

I could not have been more blessed than to have Maureen O'Neal as my editor at Ballantine Random House. Within a few minutes of our first meeting, she said, I was born to publish this book. With her great talent, insight, and success with other authors, Maureen was born to do much, much more than this book, but I sincerely appreciate her faith in this project and in me.

I am grateful to the many people at Ballantine Random House who have spent many long hours working on this book. Although I haven't met most of you, I truly appreciate your efforts.

My appreciation for Lubosh Cech, the designer and art director for this book, goes far beyond his extraordinary professional skills. He has become a friend and trusted adviser.

Many thanks to my photographer, Barry Kaplan. Barry has done a magnificent job of capturing the essence and the subtleties of the poses with his discerning eye and camera lens.

The models have helped make this book a visual treat. You are all an inspiration and I thank all of you for your enthusiasm.

Special thanks to Wally Chapman, our makeup artist, who helped us all look our best.

While writing this book, I neglected my husband, family, and friends. Thank you for enduring my absence so patiently.

I am eternally grateful that I have been given the opportunity to write this book. Thanks to everyone who made that possible particularly you, the reader.

The reason millions of people are practicing yoga is that yoga gives us a sense of freedom and expansiveness in our bodies, minds, and spirits. This sense of freedom is different from the endorphin high that people experience in Western exercise. As various poses are mastered, the practitioner experiences enhanced self-esteema sense of mastery of his world. Strength-building poses give us a sense of both internal and external strength, and as we become more flexible in our bodies, we become more flexible in our attitudes. Inversions help us find our internal balance and poise when our lives are upside down. Back bends open our hearts with love and compassion for ourselves and for others.

Practicing yoga poses leads to a much quieter mind. Internal mind chatter is what causes stress, and as that diminishes we have many more internal resources to offer to ourselves and to others. Ultimately, yoga practice leads to a completely quiet mind, which all spiritual traditions claim is the experience of God and/or the experience of our own divine nature.

While millions are practicing yoga, most people are physically unable to perform the classic poses. It can take many years of practice to acquire the strength, flexibility, and body awareness to perform some of the most basic yoga postures correctly. Yet, the more closely we can duplicate the classic poses, the more freedom and expansiveness we feel. This is one reason people stay interested in yogathere is always an opportunity to improve their postures. And accordingly, always the opportunity to feel more alive and more connected to themselves, to others, and to the cosmos.

In light of that, this book is geared to the beyond beginner, but far from accomplished student; to preintermediate and intermediate practitioners.

Cool Yoga Tricks contains more than 200 tricks that involve the use of propsyoga mats, straps, blocks, blankets, chairs, and wallsto enhance your yoga practice. By employing these tricks, you will be able to move more fully into postures and enhance your sense of physical and spiritual freedom. Through the tricks, you will experience that ah-ha feeling that comes from performing the postures in the manner that is most correct for your body.

While all of the techniques in Cool Yoga Tricks will improve your ability to perform yoga poses more easily and effortlessly, the tricks specifically assist in:

• bringing an enhanced feeling of freedom in your body and spirit

• increasing flexibility, strength, and endurance

• lengthening your spine and back muscles more completely

• strengthening back muscles, which can bring a permanent end to back problems

• opening your hips more fully, which also eases back pain

• releasing the neck and shoulder muscles, allowing healing of neck pain

• expanding awareness

• improving concentration

• allowing practice of certain postures if you are injured, ill, or overly tired