The Principles by Which Yoga Works:

No one is perfectly balanced: Everyone, to some extent or another, is imbalanced.

Trauma, be it emotional or physical, exacerbates that imbalance and contracts soft tissue.

aging further exacerbates imbalance and soft tissue contraction.

Yoga, when appropriately practiced, facilitates movement toward balance and reduces soft tissue contraction. But when inappropriately practiced, yoga can further exacerbate imbalance and contraction.    

The  term "yoga" can mean different things to different people. To me, yoga is merely the process of paying attention ... and exploring the movement toward "balance and union" of body, mind, and spirit. This website explores the many mechanics by which yoga assists this exploration.

However, yoga is a proverbial double-edge sword. When appropriately practiced, yoga can cut-away much of the imbalance and pain that interferes with daily life. On the other hand, when inappropriately practiced, the other edge of this proverbial yoga sword can exacerbate your imbalance, or increase your pain, or even injure you making your life even more uncomfortable.

Thus, this website also explores in depth, how these very same mechanics, when inappropriately used, can both create injury and/or exacerbate previous injury, illness, or structural imbalance.

I would like to share a letter I received from Paul Rebhan, a spiritual man and world traveler. His commentary, as with every communiqué used throughout this website, is used with permission:

I recently took a yoga class and the teacher was saying things like: “If you are not feeling pain, you are not doing it right.” ''If you get dizzy, it's ok” “If you are not giving 110% on every position, you are wasting your time" “We don't do any of that touchy-feely yoga here!" etcetera.

A few positions required our legs spread 3 feet apart ... at my height, 3 feet is no big deal, but to someone much shorter, like the woman next to me, it is a much greater stretch - he kept badgering her about things like that - very disturbing.

It was a really rough workout and after the class, I didn't feel any of the release that I felt with yours or any of the re-balancing that I feel with my own yoga.

Anyway, thought you might be interested in hearing about the experience ... not surprisingly, I don't think I'll be visiting that studio again.

Although I fundamentally honor all yoga systems, Paul presents a situation where no one wins. At best, this type of presentation often causes students with lesser abilities to quit yoga; and at worst, willing students can, and often do, become injured. 

Paul's experience is unfortunately all too common and demonstrates a need for this website.

There is definitely a place for vigorous approaches to yoga but for it to be "yogic," I believe it must be taught in a way that does not adversely challenge the physical, emotional, or spiritual integrity of the practitioner. My experience is that by using the techniques shared in this website, anyone from world-class athletes to chronically ill and injured people can do  “appropriate“ yoga, with no one being excluded.

That's what I love about yoga: It's so "flexible." It can be "soft" (meditatively taught) or it can be "hard" (assertively or aerobically taught) or it can be anything in between. But to be “yoga,” all systems need to be non-aggressive and certainly not demeaning. I therefore bring you back to my two fundamental questions:

What is yoga? How does it feel?

The remainder of this web-book addresses these two questions in detail. The entire first section, "Mechanics of Yoga" and its chapters delves into the concepts and logic of ExTension and Recovery Yoga.

It all begins with the next page, "A Brief History of Yoga." It establishes the reasons why we, as Westerners, can benefit by looking at yoga today in relation to its historical foundations. The actual Mechanics of Yoga begins with the page after that.