Yoga Enjoy – Page 14 – All About Yoga: Poses, Types, Benefits, and More

10 Benefits of Restorative Yoga Practice for Older Adults

May 18, 2017

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Commencing a yoga class, when you are past 50 years, can be an overwhelming or intimidating task, especially if you are obese or dealing with life-threatening diseases like diabetes or cancer. Although you may not wish to join a yoga class with younger practitioners, beginning a gentle yoga practice for starters is a good way of staying active and lowering your stress levels.

What is Restorative Yoga?

Restorative yoga involves the alignment of your physical and mental state using gentle movements or stillness over a period of time. It also includes the concept of mindfulness which allows the practitioners to be conscious and aware of everything that happens around them. Mindfulness not only increases the fitness levels for older people but also improves their sleeping patterns.

Restorative yoga is not only safe for older adults but also helps to keep their mind and body healthy. If you are past 50 years and want to start a yoga therapy course, then you need to find an instructor that will meet your needs.

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Benefits of Restorative Yoga in Fitness for Older Adults

Increased Flexibility

If you are searching for gentle stretching exercises that will help you achieve greater flexibility, then restorative yoga is a greater option. Flexibility exercises like restorative yoga are great if your joints are stiff or achy. A recent study conducted to investigate the effectiveness of yoga therapy in managing arthritis in older women, researchers concluded that restorative yoga offered th[……]

Prenatal Yoga

Bump & Flow Prenatal Yoga

April 7, 2017

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Are you cooking up a cute new addition and looking for a safe, accessible and budget-friendly way to keep active during pregnancy, to help prepare you for an active birth and get you set up for quicker postnatal healing? Well then you’ve come to the right place.

The Bump & Flow Online Studio is home to over 15hrs of specialist prenatal yoga videos that are suitable for everyone that has been cleared for movement.

Never done yoga before? This is a GREAT place to start? All these videos are suitable for beginners as well as more practised yoga lovers and you can practice them all through your pregnancy, right up until the day your sweet babe arrives!

“These prenatal yoga classes are SO much more than just “yoga poses that have been adjusted for pregnant and bodies.” They are designed to support you body, mind and heart throughout your pregnancy, to prepare you for physically and mentally for birth and put you in the best place possible for post natal healing.” – Kat x

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Pranayama Yoga

Pranayama: The 4th Limb of Yoga Explained

March 4, 2017

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It’s not for nothing that the breath plays an important role in asana class. You begin the class by focusing on your breath, and everything kind of settles down. The day and its activities start seeming more distant, and all of a sudden there is no hurry anywhere anymore.

The breath truly is the key in moving distractions from the mind.

What is Pranayama?

Pranayama is the fourth limb of the eightfold path of yoga. Prana is the vital life force and energy that runs through our body. This beautiful energy is constantly flowing through us, and through all living beings.

My yoga teacher used to say that the quality of our breath determines the quality of our lives, and many yogis believed that the length of one’s life is determined by number of breaths, not by number of years. The deeper you breathe, the longer you can live.

Pranayama is the act of controlling and directing this energy, namely by controlling the flow of breath. Pranayama involves many different breathing techniques that aim at slightly different results.

We can use the breath to calm and balance ourselves, to energize the body and the mind, to cool or heat the body, but it always aims at promoting and maintaining our overall health.

The Effects of Pranayama Practice

When we can control the breath, we can control the mind. If the mind is anxious, usually the breath tends to be shallow and fast, which in turn sends a signal to the nervous system that something is wrong.

By focusing and deliberately guiding and con[……]

Power Yoga

6 Tips for Modifying Your Power Yoga Practice During Pregnancy

February 27, 2017

I am almost three years out from practicing and teaching power yoga while pregnant but I still receive questions all the time about modifying power yoga for pregnancy while still maintaining a strong/regular practice. I recently relocated these prenatal yoga photos that Scott Broome shot for me a few weeks before my due date and just received the same question from a fellow expecting teacher and was inspired to write a post on the topic!

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The most important thing to remember is that every single body is different and what feels good for one pregnant woman might not be the right thing for another. Personally, I was able to practice throughout my entire pregnancy and felt really great in my body but I have friends and students who either greatly scaled their practice or stopped practicing all together during pregnancy because it wasn’t working for them. I truly believe there’s not a black and white, right or wrong for practicing yoga during pregnancy and so much of it is unique to the yogi’s body and the baby they are carrying.

And now….here are my top tips for modifying your power practice for pregnancy with the assumption that you are listening to your body, practicing within the scope of what’s reasonable for your body and that your midwife or doctor is on board. Most of these tips are most applicable to the second half of pregnancy when your belly starts to really grow but can be implemented throughout all of pregnancy.

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1. Widen legs and soften knees in forward folds.

Wide[……]

Kundalini Yoga

Kundalini Yoga Meditation – Benefits & How to Do?

January 6, 2017

Do you want to achieve enlightenment? Learn Kundalini Yoga meditation, the school of yoga that awakens your full potential for awareness of the spiritual.

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Introduction

Kundalini is a powerful style of meditation that can help you achieve enlightenment through a combination of different techniques. In this article, you will learn everything you need about Kundalini Yoga meditation, its potential benefits, how to practice it, and other meditation styles to help you achieve your goal.

Intro to Kundalini Yoga

“Kundalini” is a Sanskrit term meaning “coiled,” as it lies at the base of your spine (Root chakra), coiled like a snake. It is a specific type of meditation that may help you achieve the ability to have full awareness, awakening, or enlightenment.

Where Kundalini came from is not clear. However, according to studies, it has been practiced in India since 500 BCE. Practitioners of Kundalini believe that everyone has the divine within them. This divine sometimes lays dormant and needs an awakening.

In the west, Yogi Bhajan popularised the Kundalini Yoga meditation. He developed and introduced his style of Kundalini yoga in the United States in the late 1960s. Since then, it has become popular.

Practitioners of Kundalini yoga meditation report the following benefits:

Increase in awareness

Improvement in how they communicate with themselves and others

Being more inspired

Increase in mental clarity

Feeling more self-confidence

Feeling of greater purpose

Kundalini Yoga meditation[……]

Karma Yoga

Karma Yoga and Equanimity of Mind

December 5, 2016

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Developing equanimity that remains steady under all circumstances whether favourable or hostile is a paramount teaching of the Gita. At the same time, cultivation of equanimity is indispensable for practising Karma Yoga. Attainment of liberated status of soul that remains unmoved by what happens in the outer life is the end of all yogic pursuits. This free status of self is attained when one develops the power to remain immersed in his inner life completely surrendered to the Divine. In case of Karma Yoga, one can perform actions in life as given to him by the Divine without being distracted by the outer life disturbances from his immersion in soul life.

Equanimity is difficult to attain, given constitution of human nature. We, the humans, are egoistic, emotional beings. We principally deal with the world emotionally as the power of reasoning is still a very weak force in our life.

However, as we progress in yoga our detachment with life deepens. As we grow increasingly detached, the normal reactions to the life situations fall off from our nature and consequently, equanimity becomes stronger in us. The Gita says that true equanimity comes straight from the soul. Equanimity attained through mind is unstable.

Karma Yoga in its true sense cannot succeed if we fail to attain the free status of our self that is ever unmoved by the caprices of outer life. This free status of self is not affected in the least even if we are dynamically involved in multifarious activities of life.

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Jnana Yoga

The Jnana Yoga of Adi Shankara

November 24, 2016

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Sri Adi Shankara is considered to have shaped the Hindu religion for the 1200 years following his disappearance from the world at age 32 in the early part of the ninth century. Having brought forth the advaita philosophy in its fully systematized and polished form, he is considered one of the greatest Jnana Yoga teachers. Swami Yoganandaji was the first person to be initiated by Swami Satchidananda into the Holy Order of Sannyas. Later, Swami Yoganandaji devoted his life to the study and dissemination of the teachings of Sri Shankara.

Integral Yoga Magazine: How did you meet Gurudev Swami Satchidananda, and could you share some memories of your early discipleship?

Swami Yogananda: I began my spiritual quest around the age of 14 when I discovered the practice of Hatha Yoga, while I was living in Paris. Three or four years later, I heard about Gurudev from a friend of mine who had met him at the Ramakrishna Vedanta Center near Paris in 1966, during Gurudev’s very first visit to Paris. I met Gurudev the year after, and I immediately felt he was of a divine nature. He gave mantra diksha [initiation] to me in 1969. A few months later, I went to India and stayed with a sannyasi (monk) in Rishikesh. From there, I wrote to Gurudev that I wished to utter the vow of complete renunciation, as I deeply felt there was no other way to attain peace. In due time, Sri Gurudev graced me with sannyasa diksha in 1971, at his Ashram in Kandy, Sri Lanka. I was 22. I spent one full month with Guru[……]