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 Start by standing tall in Mountain Pose (Tadasana) with your weight similarly dispersed in the two feet. Shift your weight onto the right foot. Twist your passed on knee to take your left foot off the floor. Keep your left knee embracing toward your midline all through this posture. Natarajasana (Dancer Pose or Lord of the Dance Pose ) is a profound backbend that requires tolerance, concentration, and ingenuity. The posture is named after the Hindu god Shiva Nataraja, King of the Dance, who tracks down joy amidst annihilation. Like its namesake, Lord of the Dance Pose epitomizes tracking down steadying quiet inside. In anticipation of Natarajasana, stretch your shoulders, chest, hips, and inward thighs in similar way in which they will be tested here. Work on adjusting postures like Vrksasana (Tree Pose) and stretches like Gomukhasana (Cow Face Pose). As you stand on every leg in Dancer Pose, you'll fortify your lower legs and start to address any muscle lopsided characteristics ...

  Depends on your definition of stretching. To me any kind of movement that takes you to end range is a form of 'stretching.' So a deep squat for instance is a Ballet Stretching . If you work with full ranges of motion and seek to develop skill through as full a range of motion as you can tolerate successfully, then you are already 'stretching.' As we age we stop producing as much elastin, a protein that makes tissues more elastic, so taking the body to end ranges stimulates the body to produce more elastin and thus prevent more brittle tissues from laying down. That can be done in a variety of ways, only one of which is static passive stretching. If you train through partial ranges like I see many people at the gym doing, then eventually your muscle creates stiffness around that range of motion. So people who do lots of pushups and pullups but never go to end range will often display more stiffness at the elbow (or present with an inability to 'lock out')...