What is the difference between yoga and traditional stretching?
A. Traditional exercise is goal oriented: How many crunches can I do? I’m going to run faster today than I did yesterday. Yoga, by contrast, is a process. The idea is to focus your awareness on what you are doing and how you feel as you do the postures. In exercise, you fail if you miss your goal. In yoga, you succeed by trying. There’s also a difference on the physical level. Weight training, for example, makes you stronger by breaking down and rebuilding muscle tissue. It’s this breaking down and rebuilding that result in the bulky muscle look. Yoga increases strength by toning the muscles.
