...The Ancient Yoga Secret To Washing Dishes

Most people think of yoga as a series of exercises you do on a mat in special class but every part of your daily routine can become your yoga practice.

The great yoga secret is not necessarily that the activities you pursue from day to day change (although they might) but that you change the attention and awareness you bring to those activities.

The fundamental core of Yoga really is all about controlling your attention and your awareness.

Paying attention to your breath and all your physical actions gives you a place to put your mind.

This helps keep it from running around on autopilot filling your head with worries and intrusive thoughts concerned with the past and the future that serve no really useful purpose in the present moment.

Calming your mind helps calm your system and keeps you focused on what you're doing.

Calming your mind may also help keep you healthy.

A whole range of published studies show meditation can help reduce stress and anxiety and lower blood pressure.

Studies also suggest meditation could help decrease the symptoms of breast cancer, prostate cancer, depression, heart disease and lower back pain.

So practicing focused awareness in everything you do in your day to day life is a scientfically validated ancient yoga secret that can boost your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing.

You can turn something as simple as washing dishes into yoga if you do it with the level...more

Yoga is Like Sex

...on some level, that I'd be really sorry if I quit so I made a deal with myself to keep going back to yoga class twice a week for a month. No judgments, no analyzing, no deciding "like it or not." So I pre-paid the classes and took my body to yoga class. After that month, I was hooked. I highly recommend this approach... It changed my life.

Once you get yourself into yoga class, the next biggest challenge is self-acceptance. A yoga teacher of mine once said, "Begin where you are and stay there." Wise words, and a big relief! After all, there's no other place to start than by accepting ourselves right where we are and realizing that we'll never be exactly there again. Every yoga practice is different because we are different, day-to-day, and minute-to-minute. One of the basic lessons we learn from a yoga practice is not to judge ourselves. For most of us, that's a hard one. Our culture trains us to be competitive. We want to compare ourselves with each other, with the teacher, and especially with our image of what we think we should be able to do. If you want to enjoy your yoga practice, judge not! Watch yourself from the inside; explore the sensations and the new feelings. Experience yourself from the inside out.

Another big hurdle is overcoming the goal-oriented, "Type A" personality approach to yoga; the attitude that the body must conform to perfection and each pose must be the textbook ideal. Give it up! Not a good idea for a number of reasons. First, no body does perfect poses. Not even the teacher, even though you may think so initially. There is no perfect pose. Yoga is a process, not a goal. The perfect pose for your body is different from the perfect pose for my body, or for any other body. The pose that is most integrated and balanced, that give you the best stretch and honors your body's limits... that is your perfect pose.

Secondly, yog...more

The Purpose of Yoga- Getting Rid of Negative Thoughts

...Tranquility of mind is one of the main objectives within all forms of Yoga practice. It is amazing how many Yoga students, from physically challenging forms of Yoga, have not yet learned this. To practice Hatha Yoga as an exercise is a small piece of the pie.

Exercise is a wonderful thing, and it can help us purge negative thoughts. Yoga helps us attain our best emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical state. No exercise alone can help us attain optimum holistic health in this way. Some martial arts are close, but Yoga is the mother of all health maintenance systems, and Yoga has many more healing aspects...more

bikram Yoga - Sweating You Way To Radiant Health

...For many people, Yoga brings to mind an image of a man transformed into the shape of a pretzel. In fact, Yoga is a practice which has been developing for thousands of years, and there are new types of Yoga springing fourth generation after generation. One of the new types of Yoga to emerge recently is bikram Yoga, and herein we will discuss what sets this Yoga practice apart, and also the many benefits of bikram Yoga practice.

In Calcutta, 1946, bikram Choudhury was born. It was quickly evident that he was a Yoga prodigy, and he began the formal study of Yoga at age four with acclaimed instructor Bishnu Ghosh. After several years of study, he won the National India Yoga Contest at the tender age of thirteen. At the age of seventeen an event occurred that transformed his life. While weight lifting, he had an accident and injured his knee badly. He was told that he would never walk again. Not to be deterred, he insisted on b...more

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