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Showing posts from February, 2013

Yoga Dreams - Why I Decided to Go to India

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I showed up to my first yoga class when I was 16 years old. I can’t remember what got me interested enough at such a young age to pursue it, but I kept showing up every week for more. I think the teacher liked me because I was so young, by far the youngest in her classes. One thing I will always take away from these beginning days are the loving smile and support of my very first yoga teacher, and her wonderfully relaxing savasanas topped off with Bergamot-infused shoulder and neck alignments. That smell is still nostalgic for me today. I found yoga to be a magical, happy place where anything lingering on my mind would melt away and my body and breath came to life like a well-oiled machine. It was nurturing, honest, luminous. I felt whole. Over the years, I’ve relocated a few times and explored many yoga studios and teachers. I’ve recently deepened my practice and begun to create my own routines at home, infusing them with meditation and energy practices. For the majority of

Yoga As Therapy

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If you would like to use yoga as a therapy or as an alternative medical treatment then you will have to learn yoga differently than what is offered in a general yoga class. You would probably like to target a particular medical condition like cancer. For this, you will require a personalized yoga program and a yoga teacher who is not only trained with good anatomical knowledge but who has experience in conducting yoga classes for someone with your kind of condition. Yoga Teacher training in India Yoga Chikitsa or yoga treatment uses natural methods including Ayurveda to treat medical conditions. Yoga therapy is mostly used as a preventative method but is now being used along with other modern medical interventions as a curative measure too. Traditionally yoga is a practice that leads to spiritual awareness and yoga was used to ensure that the body remained in good health so deep meditation, which required being in one position for long periods of time, would not have a negat

Importance of Breath in Yoga

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Yoga is being seen more and more as a means of merely exercising the body and keeping it slim. Breathing which is the most important aspect of traditional yoga like hatha yoga is being overlooked. Without breathing in the correct way when undergoing yoga asanas the benefits of the asana will only be superficial. Breath is the vital force that energizes the body. It helps to harmonize the body, mind, and spirit and when all three aspects are in harmony then healing and immunity will ensue naturally. Somehow we have forgotten how to breathe in a deep and beneficial way through the belly. We all breathe in a shallow way and through the chest. This does not bring oxygenated breath to the lungs fully and so does not circulate in the body with energy. Yoga in Rishikesh, India Besides the physical benefits, breath is the source that can take us to through that space where peace is supreme and this can only be achieved through the correct method of breathing which makes us awar