[jome]

Hi,

Certainly you can do "non-yogic" stretches. Simply exhale as empty as you can - that's already a pretty good one. Then "pull up" the diaphragm for extra stretching.

I prefer to do them lying on my back. I start with my knees bent, exhale, pull the diaphragm up and the for additional stretching carefully straighten the legs one at a time and finally reach my arms up (finswimming style). This starts to get pretty easy after a week or so (doing it every day), and then I start to add negative packing after the exhale, increasing the amount of packs gradually.

You don't need to do super long breath holds and in fact I recommend against that, because it is really easy to bo/samba doing statics on empty lungs. 15-20 seconds per stretch, 2-3 stretches should get you good progress.

You should feel the stretech, but not pain - so if you do, take it slowly.

In addition to this, basically any kind of mundane upperbody stretching will benefit you tremendously.