Find Out More About Yoga

Yoga is a very popular form of exercise as it is relaxing and also helps to tone and shape your body plus help to improve flexibility. It also helps with relaxation using meditation and breathing techniques and improves posture and can help in rehabiliting and recovering from some injuries.

Yoga can seem complicated at first when you are trying to learn the different movements and poses plus the language and terms are also quite difficult to learn.

But if you follow a yoga class regularly you will find that it is easy to start at beginners level and move up to more advanced stages.

There are lots of different types of yoga classes including yoga stretch, yoga for meditation, general yoga, yoga fitness and yoga dance.

A lot of dancers, athletes and business professionals all take Yoga and find it helps to destress and relax their bodies and minds.

The breathing techniques used in Yoga are also very useful and help to use breathing as a way of relaxing and in stretching and fitness.

Yoga for fitness

Getting in shape with Yoga

Yoga can help you to improve your fitness levels, flexibility, tone and shape up. By increasing your metabolism you can burn off extra calories and if you do Yoga as part of your fitness program you will find that your muscles become stronger and that your body becomes more well defined and in shape.

It will also help you to improve your fitness levels, showing you how to breathe for exercise and by increasing your muscle strength and flexibility.

In addition to losing weight you will also find that mentally you have an increased ability to concentrate and focus, a higher resistance to stress factors and an all round healthier way of living.

How does all this work? Your metabolism is regulated by the thyroid, a component of the endocrine system. The thyroid is often unbalanced and can lead to feelings of tiredness, mood swings and lack of motivation. Yoga uses a series of twisting poses that stimulate the bodies metabolism, which burns more calories and can reduce your body weight. Balancing your thyroid and improving your circulation through breathing and doing the yoga movements and poses will help to clear any energy blocks you have, get the oxygen and flowing more evenly round your body and regulate your body rhythms. This all leads to a healthier, more energetic body. If you use Yoga as part of a calorie controlled diet and fitness program your body will start using the excess energy needed for workouts and help you to lose weight.

Different back bends, combined with forward bends, are used to stimulate metabolism. Poses that affect the neck area, where the thyroid gland is situated, are especially useful if a weight problem is caused by a hormonal imbalance. These poses can be those of the camel, rabbit, plow, bridge and shoulder stand. Moving quickly between a series of poses can accelerate the process.

For people who are very overweight or unfit some of the bends may be too difficult to begin with. In this case you should start with some easy exercises and gradually increase the difficulty of the postures until you are able to do more complex exercises.

Muscles can also be strengthened and your body toned using resistance and stretching in some of the standard poses.

To support this holistic weight loss and fitness system you should also eat a good diet. Food rich in fiber, vegetables, fruit, beans, pulses, whole grains, less saturated fats and oily foods will help with your diet and fitness goals.

Yoga Breathing For Better Health

Breathing in exercise is very important. If you don't breathe properly you may find your muscles get tired easily, you feel more dehydrated and less energetic. In fact you can experience nausea and feel dizzy if you don't have enough air in your lungs to pass around your body. Practicing breathing techniques can show you ways to fill your lungs with air and pass it around the muscles and rest of the body when exercising. This can help you to have more strength and power when performing certain skills and fitness exercising.

Inhalation: The diaphragm contracts and flattens; this reduces the pressure in the chest cavity thus increasing the volume of the lungs. Air is drawn in to equalise the pressure. Inhalation comes as a natural result of a full exhalation.

Exhalation: The diaphragm relaxes and rises, the pressure in the chest cavity reduces and the air is forced from the lungs.

In yoga, the breath is the vital link between the mind and the body. The purpose behind basic breathing is to establish a practice for life; using the breath to manage your response to situations, particularly in challenging or stressful situations, and to help relaxation.

These practices include; simple breath awareness, nostril breathing, linking breath to movement, lengthening the breath, the complete yoga breath.

The Yoga Breath

In yoga a complete breath has 3 physiological phases;

Diaphragmatic (abdominal)

Thoracic (ribcage)

Clavical (upper chest/collar bone)

These phases need to be experienced independently. When this skill is achieved, the breath needs to move in one smooth wave.

Inhale abdominal thoracic clavical

Exhale clavical thoracic - abdominal

The idea is that you breath in filling your abdominal area with air as you continue breathing in you can fill your chest and lungs with finally your wind pipe. You should be able to do this in a controlled way without using your stomach muscles to bloat out your stomach and chest. When you exhale you breathe out from your neck to your stomach.

Using these breathing techniques helps you to strengthen your core and you can apply them to any part of the body you want. If you want more power in your legs you can use your air and breathe it into your legs. This helps the blood flow more freely, stopping energy blocks and muscle tension.

Yoga Guide for Day-to-Day Practice

This is an outline of the 3 essential components in the practice of Yoga. Swami Sivananda said that Sadhana has three routes, like a Trisula (trident):

A Daily Routine of Practice. Have a fixed procedure of practice every day. One must keep fixed hours and discipline his personality. In a daily routine, three items should be very important:

JAPA - chanting some Mantra over and over to maintain the same consciousness (this is often useful when meditation is difficult);

STUDY - reading scriptures or texts on Yoga, e.g. Upanishads, Bhagavadgita, The Sermon on the Mount, The Imitation of Christ;

MEDITATION - should be performed at a fixed time and in a fixed place every day (you should not change the place); face the same direction daily (either the East or the North) and sit in the same Asana (i.e. posture) every day.

An Annual Resolve Make some conscious decisions to change some things about your life and stick to your plans to do this

A Spiritual Diary Keep a diary about the day. What your exercise was like, how did meditation go, what steps you are taking to change your life.