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Being a smart yogi means understanding that your muscles not only move your body, they provide the necessary infrastructure for helping you to feel your body.

If you can learn to feel your muscles (and attached connective tissue), and control them, you can then work intelligently towards fixing pain, improving strength and flexibility, and becoming more present.

You don't even have to do yoga poses to become a smart yogi.

Smart yogi index

Improving balance

Just getting started, or too busy for yoga practice?

If you are just getting started exercising, or you just haven't got the time for a full on yoga practice, then Smart yogi PE may be just the program for you.

PE stands for Proprioceptive Elements. This program focuses on simple exercises that you can do while standing or sitting. The exercises are designed to help you better feel and control your body. And rather than trying to learn it all at once, the focus is on specific clearly defined elements.

The exercises themselves are designed to be done slowly and smoothly, and because the sensations themselves are clearly defined, you may find that you get into the flow while doing these exercises.

With these exercises, you'll develop better awareness of your shoulders, ribcage, abdomen and spine. You'll also learn to feel your knees and hips and the muscles of your thighs. Plus you'll learn to feel how you relate to the earth. In other words, you'll learn the basics of how to balance.

How do you fit all of this in to a busy schedule?

Smart Yogi PE is a series of videos. Each video focuses on a particular exercise. You can watch a video, learn the exercise, and then practice the exercise throughout the day, whenever you have the opportunity.

For each exercise, there is a particular movement that you learn to feel. Being able to practice an exercise whenever you get the opportunity, you learn to feel that particular body part or the particular action that you are repeating. If you have more time, you may choose to practice 2 or three exercises throughout the day.

What's the advantage of these proprioceptive element exercises?

Once you learn to feel a proprioceptive element, you'll have a better chance of feeling and controlling that element in other activities.

Note that smart yogi PE is designed to introduce you to these elements. To really be able to use these elements in any situation you'll have to practice them in different situations. That being said, smart yogi PE is a good start, and once you have learned to feel these elements, it is relatively easy to learn to feel those same elements under more challenging circumstances.

Once I finish the program, what then?

Doing the smart yogi PE exercises is roughly equivalent to learning to ride a bike. Once you've learned the exercises, they are difficult to forget. And actually, it's not so much the exercises that you are learning, instead, you are learning to feel and control your body.

Some of the exercises can be used to keep your body limber. If you do nothing else, you may find that you can adopt some of the exercises as part of a daily warm up, or something to keep your joints healthy. Perhaps the most important area in this regard is the spine. Other areas that you need to keep limber will depend on your regular activities.

If you find yourself ready for more, then you can try any of the other smart yogi programs where the focus is on using these proprioceptive elements in the context of yoga poses.

Are there flexibility requirements

With a few exceptions, the bulk of the smart yogi PE exercises are done while standing or sitting in a chair. Extreme flexibility is not a requirement.

Is there any value here for advanced practitioners?

Even if you are a more advanced practitioner, but have never learned discrete elements of your body, Smart Yogi PE can still be a learning experience.

Just getting started and have time and space for an hour long yoga practice...

Say you are just getting started, but rather than spending a few minutes at a time building body awareness, you'd like to do yoga poses and learn your body at the same time.

5 sensational yoga routines for beginners is the rough equivalent to the PE course, but with the additional benefit of practicing body awareness in the context of yoga poses.

This program includes 5 yoga routines. Each routine is different, however, there is some overlap. You get a taste of how you can organize yoga poses differently. The exercises in each routine also build on each other. And each exercise or posture is demonstrated with props where required so that even if your flexibility is limited, you can still follow along.

If you are short on time, but like the idea of doing yoga poses while you practice body awareness, then the poses can be practiced in relative isolation.

You can also order both programs together and get the benefits of both.

Interested in improving flexibility?

With Smart yogi MCP (muscle control and proprioception), you get 6 routines each focusing on a particular awareness or muscle control technique.

This program has been specifically designed to make it easy to learn to feel and control your body. It takes into account the challenges some students have learning to feel their body. And so, the routines are sequenced so that learning to feel your body, and control it, is easy, no matter what your current experience level.

All of these techniques have different benefits, and so even though one is taught before another, you can use all techniques interchangeably once you've learned them.

Being flexible isn't about forcing your body into whatever shape you are trying to achieve. It involves noticing how your body feels or is at any given moment in time and responding to what you feel. You then can move intelligently into the shape you are trying to achieve.

With these different awareness and muscle control techniques, you'll have different options for how you operate your body.

Each technique involves slightly different muscle activations, so even within the same yoga practice, you may find that changing techniques gives you an opportunity to actively rest, to rest by doing something different.

Smart yogi MCP could be used as a natural progression from the previous two programs, however, it has also been designed so that you can jump right in.

If you are interested in improving flexibility, MCP includes the techniques that I've used to improve flexibility. Note that no single technique seems to work in all cases, and that's another benefit of the MCP approach. You learn a variety of techniques, and on any given day you can use the technique that feels best for helping you to improve the flexibility of a particular body part.

In the process, you'll also learn how to improve muscle strength. And underlying it all you'll learn to get a better feel for your body as well as a better understanding of how you can use it.

Additional Benefits

Smart yogi programs are designed to make you a smarter yogi in the way that you use your body. The main reason for focusing on muscle control and proprioception is that you can use them in any activity. And so another way get improved flexibility is in your ability to use your body with awareness in any activity that you do. A large portion of the exercises in this program focus on using your connection with the earth in different ways. Through this practice, you'll improve your awareness of touch (as well as your awareness of your muscles). And these are qualities that you can utilize in any physical activity.

What is mindfulness?

Mindfulness is another way of being present. You can also think of it as being in the flow or simply noticing what is happening now. A big advantage of being mindful is that it can lead to better performance. You notice what is happening as it happens, as a result, you can respond earlier and more effectively.

All of the exercises in the Smart Yogi MCP are instructed in such a way that you can easily be mindful while doing them. A key element for all exercises is moving smoothly and slowly. You can also find a rhythm in the exercises. That rhythm can vary from day to day, but when you play with the rhythm you may find that the exercises turn into moving meditations. You may find that they feel pleasant or at the very least they make it easier to stop thinking.

Explore your body

With Smart yogi MCP, you'll learn to feel your body and as a result, you may find that you can then start exploring your body. The exercises offer a simple means for you to explore your body and notice meaningful reference points. It's muscle activation and the associated connective tissue tension that gives you access to these reference points. From there you can begin to explore your body and that's what can make the Smart yogi approach interesting and engaging. It also makes it quite valuable since you are then learning to become your own teacher.

Interested in focusing on your hips?

Interested in focusing on your shoulders?

Having difficulty with wheel pose

Learn your anatomy

Want to learn more about getting into the flow

Ebooks Videos Collections

Ebooks Videos Collections

Ebooks Videos Collections

Exercises you can do anywhere
(even at the Office)

Smart yogi PE (proprioceptive element) exercises can be done while standing or sitting and that means you can do them at work or at any time you are just "hanging around" (perhaps while waiting for your latte... "I'll have mine with regular milk please!")

Benefits similar to meditating

If you've ever wanted to start meditating but find sitting still difficult, smart yogi exercises allow you to get similiar benefits to meditating because the focus is on feeling your body.

But hey, don't breathing exercises do the same thing?

They do.

However, smart yogis can learn to feel other muscles (not just the ones you breathe with) with similar benefits. The smart yogi approach can actually make breathing exercises easier to learn!

You can learn to feel your body

If you don't think you are capable of "feeling your body" don't worry. Smart yogi exercises have been tested in the field over the last 10 years with people of all skill levels.

And you don't have to be an athlete to become a smart yogi. Most, if not all, of the smart yogi exercises have been tested with everyday regular people.

Plus, they are backed by a practical understanding of anatomy.

Serious yogi's:
yoga poses from the inside out

If you are a more serious yogi, smart yogi exercises also include regular yoga poses, but with a difference. Rather than focusing on the external shapes of various yoga poses, smart yogi poses are designed from the inside out. The focus isn't on using particular poses, but on using your body (effectively) within each pose.

If you've ever wanted to work towards the splits, but weren't sure how, smart yogi exercises give you the tools to do just that.

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