Yoga for Stress

Do you feel great? Alive and vital? If not, consider the role that stress might be playing in your life.
Stress can greatly diminish our energy. Stress quite literally robs us of our vitality. We live in an
increasingly stressful world and the potential for the experience of stress comes at us from many
places: work, relationships, current events, life events, social media and information overload can all
create the sensation of stress in our bodies and minds.

Thankfully, yoga and the tools of yoga offer us a way forward to a healthier and happier way of
being. There are three simple steps that you can take right now, utilizing what you’ve already
learned from your practice.

#1 – Shift your attitude. Studies have found that those people who believe that stress will kill them,
do in fact die from stress related and stress induced illnesses. Rather than allowing yourself to hold
such a powerfully negative view, shift into seeing the power of the positive. When you feel yourself
experiencing stress, rather than freak out- affirm that this is what it feels like when your healthy body
responds to challenge. This one simple shift could save your life.

#2 – Move! Get out there and move! Move your body in yoga- any yoga practice or run or walk or
skate or swim or- you get the idea. Our stress response is created through our sympathetic nervous
system. This system reacts to a true life threat in the same way as the experience of traffic making
us late for work. There is no distinguishing the levels of threat- just the same reaction. Our bodies
prepare us for stress by enabling us to run or fight. One of the ways that we can release some of
that response is by moving our bodies.

#3 – Breathe. Allow yourself to not only notice your breath but also begin to work with it. Simple
pranayama (breathing techniques) are incredibly effective in shifting and handling the energy of
stress. Next time you feel stressed- shift your breath- begin to breathe long and deep. Do a practice
of equal inhale/exhale. Allow yourself to inhale for a count of 5 and exhale for the same count. A few
minutes of this will shift your entire perspective and you will begin to feel better right away.

YOGA FOR LIFE: AN INTEGRAL                                  APPROACH

Brief History of Yoga

Yoga was developed in ancient India, approximately during the period of 3300 to 1900 BCE. For several centuries it was an oral tradition only – and in some aspects it continued to be like such for millennia to come.

The earliest written material about yoga is found in the Rig Veda, which was first written down between 1500 and 1200 BCE. On the other hand, some scholars point out that astronomical references in that book indicate that is must have been at least partially written in the fourth millennium BCE.

Yoga deeply influenced the development of several religious movements in Asia, including Buddhism (Buddha was a disciple of two Yogis), Jainism, Taoism, Sikhism and Sufism. Throughout the centuries, many different schools or types of Yoga have developed. The main ones are:

• Raja Yoga / Patanjali Yoga
• Jnana Yoga
• Bhakti Yoga
• Karma Yoga
• Hatha Yoga (including all it’s modern developments)
• Kriya Yoga
• Tantra Yoga (including Mantra, Kundalini, Laya, Nada, and Hatha yogas)

Here is an interesting documentary covering some basic concepts in each of these paths.

In the late 19th century, Yoga made its way to the West through Swami Vivekananda, who spoke at the Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893. This kindled a strong interest in Yoga, and opened doors for many other masters to visit the US and Europe.

If you want to learn more about the history of Yoga, check out this article and this video. Or go through the most complete book on the subject, The Yoga Tradition.

Many Levels of Yoga

There are four core aspects of Yoga practice: body, breath, mind, and life. These levels are an alternative reading of the eight “rungs” of Yoga, codified by Patanjali in his Yoga Sutras.

BODY

The yoga postures (asanas), together with the practice of certain body locks (bandhas) and purification exercises (shatkarma), help us keep our body healthy, strong, flexible, and full of vitality. This aspect is what is most commonly known of Yoga, but it’s far from being the whole of it.

Some of the general benefits associated with the practice of asanas are:

• Lowers blood pressure
• Lowers blood sugar levels
• Lowers production of cortisol (stress hormone)
• Increases flexibility, core strength, and balance
• Increases vitality and energy
• Boosts your metabolism
• Calms down the amygdala (the center of fear and anxiety in your brain)
• Improves sleep quality
• Improves posture
• Improves immune system
• Reduces chronic pain

Each pose also has particular health benefits and therapeutic effects. For example, the shoulder stand pose (sarvangasana) stimulates the thyroid gland, revitalises the ears and tonsils, and balances the digestive and endocrine systems.

From a secular point of view, a daily and well-rounded practice of Yoga postures is great preventive medicine, packed with several health benefits.

From a spiritual point of view, the goals of the physical practices are to:

• Calm your body and mind before meditation
• Prepare your body for sitting motionless during long meditation sessions
• Free your body from disease, so that the practice need not be interrupted or weakened
• Make you more resistant to cold, heat, hunger and pain, so that you are less distracted in practice
• Increase your vitality (because going into deep meditation requires tremendous energy)
• Increase your life-span (so you can meditate more)

Indeed, a healthy and strong body is a great foundation for deep meditation practice. It is also a benefit in itself, regardless of any interest in spirituality, for people of all walks of life (including kids).

On the other hand, when we practice the asanas carefully, these yoga poses themselves are a form of dynamic meditation. For that, turn off music and distractions, keep your mind focused on your body and breath, relax into the asanas, and remain at ease in the present moment.

BREATH

Another element is the yoga breathing exercises, called pranayama.

The breath and the mind are very tightly connected, so by working on the breath you can change your mental states, and vice-versa. Also, it is also much easier to calm your breath than to calm your mind, because the mind is rather subtle and volatile. So breath work is a powerful tool for physical health, emotional wellbeing, and meditation.

There are many different pranayama techniques, for different purposes. In general, though, they all involve taking a seated posture and breathing deeply (usually through the nose), in a specific pattern. In pranayama we

• use abdominal breathing rather than chest breathing
• make our breath as even, deep and smooth as possible
• usually make our exhalation longer than the inhalation, to induce relaxation
• learn to work with breath retention for extended periods of time (more advanced)

Below are some instructions for a very simple pranayama practice that anyone can do. I call it “Square Breathing”.

• Breathe in counting 4 seconds
• Hold your breath for 4 seconds
• Breathe out for 4 seconds
• Hold empty for 4 seconds

That makes up one cycle. Do 12 cycles like this, and your mind will be in a different state. It takes only about 4 minutes, and you can do it anytime, anywhere.

In this practice, breathing in and out should be done through the nose, and be as deep, even and silent as possible. If 4 seconds is too hard, you can do 3 seconds; if it’s too easy, you can increase the count to 5 or more.

From a secular point of view, the goal of pranayama is to oxygenate the blood, regulate your emotions, calm down the nervous system, and strengthen your rational brain (prefrontal cortex). Among other things, pranayama has been proven to help recover from PTSD (here and here).

From a spiritual point of view, the goals of pranayama are to:

• Pacify the mind, making it calm, focused and introverted (pratyahara);
• Increase your lifespan and health;
• In the traditions of Kundalini Yoga, Kriya Yoga and Tantra Yoga: to purify the nadis,balance the vital energies of prana and apana, make prana flow through the center channel (sushumna) and awaken the kundalini. For these purposes, pranayama is accompanied with specific visualisations, mantras, locks (bandhas) and other yogic processes (all too technical to explain in this short article).

If you are looking to get started with pranayama, have a look at my Breath of Life program featured on Daily Yoga app (iOS, Android).

To explore some of the scientific reasons behind pranayama, I recommend this video, by Dr. Roger Cole PhD.

MIND

The major focus of Yoga is actually meditation, not postures. All yoga practices exist to prepare you to meditate effectively, and to support your meditation practice. When there is stillness and ease in the body (asanas), and evenness in the breath (pranayam), the mind is in a much better position to meditate properly.

As you can imagine, there are many methods of Yoga meditation. The most typical ones are:

• Chakra meditation. This means focusing the mind on one of the seven main energy centers in the body, called chakras. This focus is usually accompanied with specific visualizations or mantras.
• Mantra meditation. Also called japa, in this meditation the yogi keeps repeating a sacred word during the whole session, while at the same time focusing on a particular feeling related to that word. Examples of mantras are OM, So-Ham, Ram, and Om Namah Shivaya.
• Trataka.  This involves fixing the gaze on an external object, typically a candle, image or a symbol (yantras). It is done with eyes open, and then with eyes closed, to train both the concentration and visualization powers of the mind. After closing the eyes, you should still keep the image of the object in your “mind’s eye”.

The techniques also vary depending on the yogic tradition. In Tantra Yoga there is a great variety of meditations involving visualisation and energy work. In Bhakti Yoga, God is the object of concentration. In Jnana Yoga, it is the Absolute, or pure awareness.

Generally speaking, the yogic tradition has great flexibility as to meditation methods. It is said that the yogi can meditate “on whatever he/she prefers”. The general approach, though, is always concentration meditation.

From a secular perspective, the purpose of meditation practice is to improves one’s health, well-being, and performance (see here for meditation benefits).

From a spiritual perspective, the goals of meditation are to

• (1) Purify the mind from negative emotions and thoughts;
• (2) Liberate you from limiting beliefs and identifications;
• (3) Achieve the superconscious state of Samadhi, which is Yoga’s highest tool;
• (4) Ultimately achieve realization/enlightenment/liberation, which is also termed Self-Knowledge or union with God, depending on the philosophical metaphysics behind each Yoga style.

LIFESTYLE

Adopting Yoga as a way of life or a serious spiritual practice, invites us to integrate its core values  into our daily activities. This will support our practice goals, be they secular or spiritual.

Here are the 10 Life Principles of Yoga. These principles are not imposed. Rather, their value must be discovered by each person individually, in one’s practice and life.

Five Principles (yamas)

• Nonviolence (ahimsa). Not causing harm to other beings or to ourselves through our body, words, and thoughts. Related virtues: compassion, kindness, modesty, love.
• Truthfulness (satya). Not speaking falsehood. Also involves being truthful to yourself and sincere in your relationships. Related virtues: honesty, integrity, sincerity, reliability.
• Non-stealing (asteya). Not taking what is not given. Related virtues: fairness, respect.
• Continence (brahmacharya). For monks and ascetics (who invented Yoga), this means celibacy. For “city yogis”, it means not obsessing over sex, and also being responsible in ones sexual relationships. Related virtues: self-control, moderation, contentment.
• Non-possessiveness (aparigraha). Not being attached to things, and living a simple life. It also means cultivating a mind free from greed and cravings. Related virtues: non attachment, contentment, simplicity.

Five Disciplines (niyamas)

• Purity (saucha). Keeping the body clean, and the mind free of negative emotions and thought patterns.
• Contentment (santosha). Cultivating an attitude of acceptance. Being cheerful and satisfied, here and now, regardless of external circumstances.
• Self-Discipline (tapas). Intensive practice that stretches your limits and creates inner transformation. “Tapas” literally means heat.
• Self-Study (swadhyaya). Introspection and self-reflection. It is the study of oneself, of one’s behavior patterns and intentions. It also means study of yogic texts.
• Self-Surrender (ishvara-pranidhana). Surrender to a supreme Reality. For some this means faith in God; for others it is surrender into the source of being, the Self or Awareness.

In the beginning these principles might be felt as a limitation, or a sacrifice. But as you progress in your practice, you see that they are intelligent guidelines to help you make the best decisions in every circumstance, both for yourself and for those around you.

With time we start seeing that whenever we don’t follow these guidelines, we experience some sort of trouble as a result. When that happens, following these life disciplines becomes the same as following your bliss.

Yoga For Life

Yoga can give you much more than a flexible body. If you are ready to go deep, you will find a system of practice that can help you achieve mastery over yourself and great inner transformation. This is yoga for life!

Yoga is already quite popular in the West. My hope is that during this International Yoga Day we can help the deeper aspects of this art be more widely known and practiced. Especially meditation and the lifestyle disciplines.

WHAT YOGA MEANS TO ME

The first question we got asked during our yoga teacher training was “what does yoga mean to you”? Now don’t get me wrong, I had plenty of reasons to why I practice yoga, but I couldn’t find the words to answer this question. It wasn’t until recently that I found the answer to this question.

Before I would have told you that yoga helps you to find some peace of mind, balance even, and besides being great for the mind, yoga also does wonders to the body. Apart from this I would struggle to explain the deeper meaning of yoga. 

Note: Keep in mind that yoga could have a completely different meaning to you, which is ok. Yoga isn’t a fixed thing, neither are we, our perceptions are different, which makes us unique, yet the same. 

Now, my answer would be quite different. The thing that transforms a simple gymnastics class into a yoga class is the connection to the breath, making it mindful. Working with the body to find resistance, while maintaining the breath, finding silence in the midst of a storm.

The mind and body will react to the postures creating resistance, some postures ask us to challenge ourselves and find our limits. Connecting to our breath helps us observe the body in these postures, what do you feel, and can you let it go?

In the end I can talk about this topic for ours, but you really have to experience it for yourself. You have to be ready to transform and grow. Because yoga isn’t just an exercise you do, a real yoga practice challenges us. You might even feel sensations or emotions you were unaware you had, stored deep inside ourselves.

So what does yoga mean to me? Yoga to me is a lifestyle that isn’t limited to the yoga mat, my teacher would say that “the real yoga practice starts the moment you leave the yoga mat”, to which I’d have to agree. Yoga has transformed my life, helping me to be present and aware in everyday life. It challenges me, shakes me to my core, and there’s a lot of resistance, which I observe, and ultimately helps me grow.

Yoga helps me to find balance at times where I have non. It helps me breath and flow through life and be present to experience life as it is. But most importantly it has given me moments of bliss which I experience during and after my practice.

Power Yoga Workouts for Fatloss & Improve Strength And Flexibility Of Your Body

Power yoga mainly emphasizes on improving strength and flexibility of your body.
Power Yoga is also known as Dynamic Yoga. The Power Yoga trend started emerging during mid 1990s. It was introduced by two American Yoga teachers. As the name suggests, 'Power', Power Yoga is fast paced and a strenuous exercise. The two Yoga teachers gave a new edge to Yoga by making it a fitness tool. They took lessons of Yoga from an Ashtanga Yoga master from India and re-invented Yoga in the form of a technique called Power Yoga.
The core of Power Yoga is Ashtanga Yoga. The stress on fitness makes Power Yoga different from other forms of Yoga. This technique of Power Yoga can be used for a heavy work out. It does not have any fixed poses to be followed. The poses may differ according to the teacher or instructor. It gives more importance to strength and elasticity of the body.
You can follow Power yoga when you are already fit, if you enjoy exercising and if you want a minimal amount of chanting and meditation.
Mind Power yoga secrets the greatest mysteries of life, which are exposed by simple process of respiration and circulation.
Power yoga used for the healing disorders such as acid stomach, asthma, bronchitis, cancer, constipation, heart disorders, hypertension, insomnia, menstrual disorders, obesity, sinus and many other problems are treated.
The power yoga is helpful in treating different illnesses such as sclerosis, cerebral palsy and osteoporosis. Power yoga is also used for controlling different functions in your body which includes blood pressure, temperature of your body, metabolic functions and many other functions.
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Benefits of Yoga

At the physical level

yoga and its cleansing practices have proven to be extremely effective for various disorders. To get a sampling of how yoga benefits health disorders.
More importantly, yoga is extremely effective in:

Increasing Flexibility – yoga has positions that act upon the various joints of the body including those joints that are never really on the ‘radar screen’ let alone exercised.

Increasing lubrication of the joints, ligaments and tendons – likewise, the well-researched yoga positions exercise the different tendons and ligaments of the body.
Surprisingly it has been found that the body which may have been quite rigid starts experiencing a remarkable flexibility in even those parts which have not been consciously work upon. Why? It is here that the remarkable research behind yoga positions proves its mettle. Seemingly unrelated “non strenuous” yoga positions act upon certain parts of the body in an interrelated manner. When done together, they work in harmony to create a situation where flexibility is attained relatively easily.
Massaging of ALL Organs of the Body – Yoga is perhaps the only form of activity which massages all the internal glands and organs of the body in a thorough manner, including those – such as the prostate - that hardly get externally stimulated during our entire lifetime. Yoga acts in a wholesome manner on the various body parts. This stimulation and massage of the organs in turn benefits us by keeping away disease and providing a forewarning at the first possible instance of a likely onset of disease or disorder.

One of the far-reaching benefits of yoga is the uncanny sense of awareness that it develops in the practitioner of an impending health disorder or infection. This in turn enables the person to take pre-emptive corrective action

Complete Detoxification – By gently stretching muscles and joints as well as massaging the various organs, yoga ensures the optimum blood supply to various parts of the body. This helps in the flushing out of toxins from every nook and cranny as well as providing nourishment up to the last point. This leads to benefits such as delayed ageing, energy and a remarkable zest for life.

Excellent toning of the muscles – Muscles that have become flaccid, weak or slothy are stimulated repeatedly to shed excess flab and flaccidity.

Harness the power of yoga and gain the 3-fold Advantage of Fitness + Freedom from Stress + Happiness...

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International Yoga festival

The annual International Yoga Festival is organized jointly by the Uttarakhand Tourism and Parmarth Niketan Ashram in Rishikesh, India.

The Festival will take place from Saturday February 28th to Sunday March 8'th, 2009.

For the last two years over 400 people from 30 countires travelled to Rishikesh, India to experience one of world's largest Yoga events.

During the one week Festival, you will have the opportunity to participate in over 60 hours of Yoga classes from world-class Yoga teachers practising mutliple styles of Yoga including Kundalini Yoga, Power Vinyasa Yoga, Iyengar Yoga and Kriya Yoga.

Please review the Presenters and Festival Program sections for further information.

The participants will also be blessed with the presence, satsang and divine words of revered saints and spiritual masters from within India, including H.H. Sri Shankaracharya Swami Divyanand Teerthji, H.H. Swami Chidanand Saraswatiji and H.H. Swami Veda Bharatiji.

Yoga is not merely for our bodies, but rather Yoga is for our bodies, minds, hearts and souls. Yoga literally means "Union" - union of breath with the body, of the mind with the muscles, and most importantly of the self with the divine. Yoga is not a religon. It does not require you to believe in a certain God or chant certain mantras.

Yoga is an ancient science which leads to health in the body, peace in the mind, joy in the heart, and liberation of the soul.

The International Yoga Festvial explores the eight limbs of Yoga and how they apply to our lives whether we consider ourselves Yoga students or not.

Please join us as we breathe in the sights and wonders of India and meet one another on this path of discovery and awakening.

yoga4orgasms

Sex is an integral part of life. An individual can lead a happy and contented life only if his or her sex-life is satisfactory. Majority of the human population thrive to have a better and improved performance.
In this regard, yoga proves to be the most potent weapon. Our Yoga Routine for Better Sex has such great healing powers that people who are physiologically weak and to some extent or fully impotent may get back potency as they regain their physical health through Yoga. It focuses, stretches and strengthens your sexual core muscles, located deep inside your pelvis and connected to your sexual organs.
Real vajroli is not only about retaining semen during ejaculation, though this is what gets all the press coverage. With inner silence and ecstatic conductivity (kundalini) coming up in the nervous system, there is a constant release of semen at the root, and constant absorption up into the bladder, and beyond. Then inner lovemaking never stops. The bladder has a higher function, which is processing the energy upward into the higher neuro-biology. Spiritual biology happens in the GI tract also, and is very noticeable once kundalini is moving significantly -- a mixing of air, food, and sexual essences. It can be traced from the GI tract up into the head, and back down into the GI tract again in the form of nectar.Yes, I have vajroli of that natural ongoing variety, and also to a large degree during ejaculation, though I still use some blocking to aid it when necessary. The main thing is that the flow of sexual energy is being drawn up constantly, 24/7, and this is best stimulated by long term daily practice of the full range of advanced yoga practices.
Just as we continue to evacuate the bowels even as the spiritual biology is actively going on in the GI tract, so too do we continue to urinate even as the spiritual biology is going on in the bladder. Once the higher spiritual biology is established and stable, these functions become very strong and unshakable. Then there is not so much worry about performances like vajroli. Like with siddhasana, the mechanics of vajroli practice fade into the ongoing functioning of our spiritual biology, and we don't give it much thought once that stage is reached. We are off into ecstatic bliss and divine love bubbling out by then. That is how we are illuminated by sexual energy coming up inside.
Undoubtedly it is better to be having a constant steady feed of sexual essence going up into the higher biology that is little affected by urination, than to have a large infusion from a recovered ejaculation, by either blocking or vajroli, which is then mostly lost in the next urination. Hence the rationale for developing continence and/or holdback-style tantric practice which stimulates the long term upward cultivation of sexual energy. All of this applies to women also, with the mechanics being nearly the same.

When it comes to sex life, yoga can result in:
1. Increased sensitivity
Yoga's breathing exercises help a person breathe more fully, decreasing anxiety level and blood pressure.
Recent research has suggested that meditation, prayer and yoga can improve health. These relaxation activities change patterns of gene activity that affect the body''s response to stress. When a person evokes a relaxation response, the mind actively turns genes that are "switched" on or off by stress the other way. All of this makes a person more primed for intimacy.

2. More powerful orgasms
Yoga''s influence on orgasms is two-fold. First, in strengthening the sexual core, person has greater control over pelvic floor muscles and sex organs. Harnessing this during sex helps the individual to climax more magnificently. Second, the practice enables to release muscle tension, which, in turn, rocks the body for full-body orgasms.

3. Improved energy
In being physically active, learning how to relax and alleviating stress through breathing, and by simply having fun, a person will feel more energized. Yoga is invigorating.

4. Body knowledge and acceptance
Yoga is about embracing person''s form. A person becomes more aware of his or her body''s strengths and limits. At the same time, he or she develops our flexibility, coordination, balance and physical strength, all of which will help you in the bedroom.


5. Greater fitness
By tapping unused muscles, a person will feel fitter. In working out, body will become more toned. Better muscle tone will increase sexual responsiveness.

6. New Sexual Positions
Since a person is exercising his muscles, he will be able to engage in a greater variety of sex positions for greater pleasure.