Yoga Exercise Ball

The stability ball or what has now become popular as the exercise ball originated somewhere in Italy in the 1960’s. Initially though most American Physical therapists (who happened to find the exercise ball in use amongst the Swiss) called the exercise ball the Swiss ball, under the impression that it was the Swiss who had come up with it.

Later they found that the balls being used by the Swiss physical therapists were in fact manufactured in Italy. Nonetheless they continued to refer to the exercise ball as the Swiss ball for a long period of time and it is only recently that the names Stability ball or Exercise ball has become popular.

The Aura Wellness Center in the USA was the first American fitness-training center to use the exercise ball.

The ball they procured for themselves came from the Italian manufacturers Gymnic Balls. Down the years many other companies have begun producing exercise balls but a number of loyal customers still swear by the Gymnic Ball tag.

No matter which manufacturing company your ball comes from you can use it for performing a variety of physical workouts, including Yoga and Pilates. A number of gyms, professionals and specialized athletes also use these balls in order to improve their coordination capacities.

The use of the exercise ball however is not confined to professional use alone and a number of beginners have also found them to be of particular help during their exercise sessions.

If you are a beginner at a Yoga class you can greatly benefit from the use of a Yoga exercise ball. Such a ball has been known to help various Yoga neophytes to keep themselves steady during many of the asanas. For instance new students performing the Wheel posture (or Chakrasana) often find the use of a Yoga exercise ball and a nearby wall particularly helpful.

This is because the Chakrasana involves an arched stretch of the body that not too many people can manage on their own right at the beginning.

The Chakrasana is fantastic asana that helps enhance a person’s spinal elasticity and thereby improves his/her posture. It is also known to stretch out important internal organs such as the kidneys, liver, pancreas and even the heart, improving blood circulation. Despite the usual profit it bears for students however people with high blood pressure are advised to refrain from practicing this posture. Also, students with a back or spine problem must take proper medical permission and the help of a qualified Yoga teacher to carry out this asana.

Yoga Clothes

The practice of Yoga is directed at relaxing your mind and body. Hence, you must not wear something that is uncomfortable or non-functional or distracting during your yoga sessions. Make sure your yoga outfit feels good against your skin and allows you maximum mobility if you don’t want to be constantly reminded about them during the course of the session.

If you have a choice in the matter go for absorbent materials that will easily soak up perspiration from your body. You don’t want to feel clammy and smelly during your yoga session, no matter how much you might be exerting yourself.

In the following section we give you a list of the few essential details that you ought to keep in mind while selecting yoga outfits for yourself.

1. The Yoga Pants – Yoga pants are of various kinds. Some of them are long and extend up to the end of your ankles while others end above your knees. Most of them are clingy and fit your body snugly. Wearing such a form-fitting outfit has its advantages. For instance, many instructors claim that such closely fitted wear allows them to spy the exact alignment of their students’ bodies and thereby allows them to make the necessary changes in their postures.

However, if you are personally not comfortable in such tight garments go for loose cotton trousers instead. No matter what sort of pants you choose for yourself make sure you are comfortable in them and that they allow you the freedom to bend and twist in an uninhibited manner.

Also, ensure that the waist area of the pants do not have any bulky tie which may bite into your
skin and prove cumbersome after a while.

2. Yoga Shorts – Yoga shorts are your best choice in case you mean to do Bikram or hot yoga. This is because such yoga is practiced in a hot room, which can sweat you up a bit. Shorts are also a good choice during the summer months when the temperature is too high to allow long pants to remain comfortable.

If you are choosing Yoga shorts for yourself make sure you ensure that they don’t ride up your body during exercises. Form fitting shorts tend to stay put in their pace and are perhaps the best choice you have.

3. Yoga Tops – No matter what sort of yoga tops you choose for yourself and there really is a wide variety you can choose from make sure that it doesn’t fall all over your face when you do difficult asanas.

Pick up a few fitted tees or even a sports bra in case you practice Bikram or hot yoga for your yoga classes. These sort of outfits are both form fitting as well as revealing enough to show your alignment to your instructors.

However when choosing a sports bra make sure you don’t end up choosing something you’d be too uncomfortable to wear in a class. Also, ensure nothing falls out of your top while exercising, you don’t want to be concerned about what you might be revealing while concentrating on your asanas

Yoga Teaching Tips

If you teach Yoga you have got to give out a prenatal warning to all your adult female students at the beginning of every class. Women have a habit of keeping matters such as this a secret and unless you explicitly spell it out they are most likely to not tell you about it. So prevent any such discrepancy and cover the prenatal warning everyday before you begin your class.

To make sure your students know all about the Prenatal Yoga warning include details regarding it in the handout or questionnaire you give out to your new students.

All prenatal yoga classes are directed at the well being of women who are pregnant. If you are trained to teach prenatal yoga only then should you go ahead and teach yoga to women who are pregnant. In case you are not trained for the same refer your pregnant students to some other yoga teacher who you know is qualified to teach prenatal yoga.

While teaching Forward bend make sure you ensure that none of your students are pregnant. Having taken care of that ask your students to fold their body by simply following their breath. The purpose of the posture would be to elongate the spine, as far as possible.

Once the elongation is complete the waist will be gently pulled into a point and the heart will be pulled towards the toes. While the instructions might sound easy but ultimately they are difficult to perform so make sure you guide your students correctly.

When you shift to the neck rolls remember to make sure that you exclude your older students out of the exercise.

The others, who are not so old should also be performing the neck rolls only after a bit of isometric exercises for the neck. Merge Pranayama with the isometric exercises for best results.

When teaching Sun Salutations or Surya Namaskar make sure that your students’ knees are right above their ankle during the lunges. If the knee is pushing forward, far from the ankle then the soft tissues in their knee joint can undergo untimely damage. This tip is of particular importance when dealing with students who already have a knee problem.

Being a yoga teacher your postures and asanas are supposed to be no less than perfect. But remember your students are not as good as you and therefore require constant monitoring and guidance. Keep a good look to ensure that all their alignments are perfect at all times.

For instance, during the second Warrior Pose many of your students will be required to be reminded about keeping the back arm at a certain specific level, lowering the arm will take away all the benefits of the posture.

Similarly, during the tree pose you will find many of your students forcefully pressing their foot against one side of their knee on the leg on which they are balancing themselves. Quickly help them relax their force on the knee to save the knee joint from untimely wear. Tell them to put their foot either above or even below the knee instead of pushing it directly on the side of the knee.

Yoga And Spirituality

Yoga is primarily a practice comprising of a sequence of mild actions and stances that improve our body’s flexibility, posture, blood circulation etc. Many who regularly engage in Yoga often relate how the practice has helped improve their physical and emotional well being.

What even many yoga enthusiasts do not know is that the practice can often help individuals cope up with tremendous emotional trauma or sorrow. Also, yoga has been known to have a particularly marvelous effect on older individuals. As many older individuals are likely to tell you this effect is not just physical but in many ways quite spiritual. People who are above a certain age have found that yoga greatly improves their life in a manner not usually associated with an exercise regime.

In Sanskrit ‘Yoga’ means to add together or unite. It is from this very word that the word ‘Yoga’ is derived. The practice of Yoga originated in ancient India thousands of years ago and has since then been recognized as a means of uniting the soul with the body and thereby finding one’s true identity.

Often the various Yogic postures are accompanied by the utterance of the ‘OM’ sound, but usually they are practiced in complete silence. Though here in the West yogic postures or asanas are what receive maximum attention Yoga in its original form also emphasized equally on practices such as breathing by means of a special method called pranayama, meditation or dhyana and tremendous concentration called dharana. As is obvious each of these practices have less to do with basic exercises and more to do with what can safely be termed ‘spirituality’.

Hence, regular practice of yoga can open up a new doorway in our lives and lead us to a level of spiritual well-being where most of us have never been before.

Due to your unfamiliarity with the word you might be wondering what Spirituality actually means. Of course we tend to use the word Spirituality quite loosely in our everyday lives but originally Spirituality refers to the attainment of a certain form of wisdom that one seeks, willingly in order to achieve equilibrium in his/her life.

Spirituality is about transcending the confines of ones own self by means of an assisting force that is in many ways far more powerful than the self itself. It is the only means of finding the true reason for ones own life and thereby achieving a form of enlightenment that grants you unconditional tranquility and boundless joy.

Spirituality is your key to coping with the surprises life springs on you in a calm and collected manner.

To gain such composure we must enhance our spiritual capacities by means of methods such as Yoga and meditation.

Meditation allows us to extend our inner tranquility to our outer space by forming a link between our mind and body. Meditation is not a religion bound practice rather it is a spiritual routine that may be carried out by one and all.

Meditation may be accompanied by relaxing music or a spiritually stirring bit of reading for best results. Many also think that the best time for meditation is sometime early in the morning or even late in the evening.

Yoga Types: Chose One Which Suits You Best

Yoga is becoming extremely popular all over the world today, even though it had been in practice in the East for centuries. There are a lot of places offering yoga classes taught by trained and experienced instructors, and there is also a great number of types of yoga available. There re types such as Ashtanga Yoga, Iyengar Yoga, Hatha Yoga, Bikram Yoga, Vinyasa Yoga, Power Yoga, etc. So, if you don’t take a well-informed person’s opinion, you can easily get confused as to which type will suit you.

Ashtanga Yoga: In Sanskrit, ‘ashtanga’ means ‘eight limbs’. This yoga is quite energetic and intense, and involves a set of asanas (poses) which is coordinated with breath. Ashtanga yoga can be quite exhausting as it requires you to shift quickly from one asana to the next. You have to be quite flexible to do this type of yoga, and it helps you to increase your body’s flexibility, strength and stamina a lot since it is so demanding physically.

Hatha Yoga: ‘Ha’ means ‘sun’ and ‘tha’ means ‘moon’ in Sanskrit, which is an Indian ancient classical language. In contrast to Ashtanga yoga, the Hatha yoga is slow-paced and mild, and it is best for a beginner to yoga to start off with this yoga. Since it does not involve any difficult asanas, a beginner will be comfortable with this type of yoga. Like all other types of yoga, the Hatha yoga aspires to bring together the body, mind and spirit.

Iyengar Yoga: This yoga is founded on the teaching of B. S. Iyengar and focuses on the proper alignment and form of the body. While Ashtanga yoga involves moving fast from one asana to the next in the sequence, Iyengar yoga concentrates on holding one pose for a longer time before moving on to the next. For this type of yoga, you will need blocks and straps to help align the body into various poses.

Power Yoga: This type of yoga is based on the Western interpretation of the Ashtanga Yoga. It does not always stick to the correct sequence of asanas as prescribed by the Ashtanga yoga, but it does involve moving through various poses without stopping and starting again.

Bikram Yoga: The Bikram yoga is also known as the ‘Hot Yoga’. This is because it is practiced in a room which is heated to 105 degrees and has a humidity of 40%. Usually, the Bikram Yoga involves a sequence of 26 different asanas, and the heated atmosphere helps to loosen muscles. The hot room temperature makes people perspire a lot, and this helps to wash toxins out of the body.

Vinyasa Yoga: ‘Vinyasa’ means a breath-coordinated movement and this is yet another rapid kind of yoga. It begins with salutations to the sun and continues to strong stretching. Each asana is balanced with a counter-asana.

There is no rule about you sticking to one kind of yoga. You can start with an easy one and proceed on to more difficult ones.

Yoga For Relaxation

Yoga has now become extremely popular all over the western world even though it has been known to the eastern world for thousands of years. A lot of yoga asanas are named after and emulate the plant and animal world, such as the eagle pose, the tree pose, the cat pose, the frog pose, etc.

The ancient Vedic seers must have been trying not only to imitate the postures and the character traits of these animals, but also to create compassion for them. By reading the old yogic texts, you can understand the connection compassion has with yoga and its aim of freedom from the earthly world.

You can understand the meaning of the Vedas only when you are deep in meditation, be it the Rig Veda (knowledge of praise), Yajur Veda (knowledge of sacrifice), Sama Veda (knowledge of chants), and Atharva Veda (knowledge of atharvan). When we can understand the teachings of the Vedas, we can experience an ecstasy which is beyond the material world.

When you have comprehended the Vedic sutras, then this humdrum everyday world recedes and you have a greater insight and more acute perception of things.

This feeling has been described by H. P. Blavatsky, who is an expert of Eastern sacred texts, in his The Voice of Silence. He says, ‘Compassion is no attribute. It is the Law of Laws - eternal Harmony, Alaya’s SELF; a shoreless universal essence, the light of everlasting Right, and fitness of all things, the law of love eternal.’

Yoga always instructs one not to strain oneself to do an asana properly, since straining causes discomfort and pain, which is opposed to compassion. This is because yoga believes that we are all part of the cosmic whole. If an individual hurts himself, then he causes pain to the entire world at large. Thus, strain should be avoided when doing yogic asanas.

There are many yogic postures meant to bring peace. Patanjali in the Yoga-Sutra says relaxation is the spirit of yoga, which shows itself in the asanas we practice today. Yoga demands that we respect our bodies and have compassion for its physical limitations.

Yoga wants us to see our bodies as heavenly objects and requires us to foster health in this mortal temple. Yoga experts know that their bodies have flaws, even though they look toned. While yoga encourages us to preserve the body’s health, it also reminds us that true freedom is achieved only when one is free from one’s body, when one has escaped the incessant cycle of death and rebirth.

Yoga is different from the western concept of exercising. The physical outcome is the only goal of exercise, but yoga aims for the betterment of the soul, with the physical results being an offshoot. Since the ancient texts stress that the mind and spirit are more important than the body, yoga stands apart from modern notions of exercise. It aims for unification with the divine, and the feelings of compassion can be merged into each pose.

Beginners Tips For Yoga

Yoga has been around for centuries, but it has become popular over the world only during the past five years. It offers tremendous health benefits if only yoga is done regularly. For a beginner, yoga holds the door open to many possibilities, as yoga can cure a lot of health problems, help one reduce weight, and also tone one’s body.

Yoga: Types

There are many types of yoga to choose from. Since you are a beginner, you should go through all the various types of yoga and choose one which suits your personality, condition of health and fitness level.

Understand what each kind of yoga offers and select the sort which you know you will be able to perform without straining your muscles.

Yoga: Instruction

Since you are a beginner, you should definitely consult a yoga instructor. An experienced yoga teacher should supervise you while you do yoga. He or she will also help you select the type of yoga which is suited to your body’s fitness and health. It is vital that you are able to maintain the correct body alignment.

A yoga instructor will help you made adjustments so that you don’t hurt yourself, and also offer changes to the posture if you have any physical limitations. A teacher will also be able to help you get the most out of every yoga pose so that your health problems are all targeted and solved in the shortest time.

Yoga classes are offered in many gyms and studios. Since is many of these places the first yoga class is free, you can try different places and see which one suits you the best.

Yoga: Attitude

Your attitude is important during yoga lessons. You have to remember that yoga is absolutely non-competitive.

You only have to concentrate on your body and its responses to yoga. You might want to challenge your body and make it more flexible, but always listen to your body’s complaints. If you feel the slightest pain, then come out of the yoga posture or ease up a bit. As a beginner, you do not have to do each yoga pose perfectly. It is normal for your body to protest a bit. Always listen to it.

Yoga: Breathing

It is very important that you breathe properly during your yoga poses. Breathe in and out through your nose during yoga, and breathe deeply. Proper breathing will help you to feel more relaxed and also to do the yoga poses better. In case you feel a tense spot on your body, try and channel your breath to that area in order to relax it. Whenever you feel that you are not being able to breathe properly, immediately come out of the posture.

Get yourself a yoga beginner’s kit which contains a sticky mat, a strap, and a couple of yoga blocks and maybe a yoga video. Yoga is best done on an empty stomach, but do drink a lot of water before and after yoga practice to prevent dehydration.

Kundalini Yoga

The nuclear energy contained within a single atom is considered to be a source of great power. Tantric yogis firmly believe that the energy or the nuclear energy existing in the human psycho physical is actually comparable to that of atomic nuclear energy.

As atomic energy is released through the bombardment of the atomic nucleus or the core with high voltage alpha particles similarly, the high pressure of the concentrated biological psychic energy if mobilized by methods like mental focusing can unleash the immense power of the psycho nuclear energy of man.

This pressure of bio-psychic energy if harnessed properly gives a great sideways push and produces quite a few beneficial effects on the body, like:

1. Helps control and channel the sexual libido( retas ) into the much more subtler and purer ego - transcending or trans personal Being-energy (ojas).

2. If the psycho nuclear energy is awakened in a proper manner, it will then automatically appropriate the valve energy or the ojas, which would then produce an upward movement along the central canal (sushumna) of the spinal cord.

3. Will help the overworked, external organs of the body to rest by withdrawing a notable amount of energy from the muscles, nerves etc of the external organs. Also helps in keeping stress out from the vital organs of the human body.

4. Helps in slowly opening or activating the numerous energy centers and associated glands of the body. Thus if the focused meditation is done through days on end, it will help the body and the mind to explore the higher levels of consciousness, which are normally unattainable.

Modern sciences of all sorts, uniformly agree that at the bottom of everything, all existence is energy. And the Indian Tantric system too agrees on this point by proclaiming the importance of energy and by focusing on ways of cultivating and harnessing, this driving force behind everything-energy. According to Tantric parlance, the primordial energy is termed the mahashakti.

The Vedas tell us that the all pervading divine energy or the state of super consciousness and attainment of pure wisdom is experienced and attained by a person meditating at the absolute highest stage of cosmic consciousness.

Some believe that the primal energy or the kundalini is controlled by the right vagous nerve that controls the nerve phlex of the autonomic nervous system or the ANS. Therefore through mediation when the vital centre in the medulla oblongata is stimulated the functions of vital organs like the lung, heart and larynx are slightly inhibited while the functions of other organs like the stomach, intestine and digestive glands are increased.

The kundalini being the nuclear energy of the psycho physical system, when awakened stimulates the physical, vital, mental and spiritual senses of the human body. Some people call it the bio nuclear, others refer to it as the psycho nuclear energy, but it really encompasses all categories and attempts to name or classify it, for it is the most powerful nuclear energy governing man’s existence.

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