This is your body on exercise
Since the wiring of the brain blood flow in the veins, it is your guide to what happens when you physically. Put your body through your feet is like driving a stick: It is much easier to manage if you understand exactly how a car zips from zero to 60. I know how my body feels when I drive gunning during a workout or a race (you can say, “Shoot !”?), but now I have no idea what is really happening . Therefore, marked by leading fitness experts to find piecemeal painful exactly what is happening to my body during my last race, the Boulder Peak Triathlon, last July. Read more
What is Integral Yoga?
Integral Yoga, as its name implies, is a system of yoga that aims to integrate body, mind, and spirit. The system of Integral Yoga was brought to the West from India by Sri Swami Satchidananda. This system emphasizes the practices of hatha yoga, pranayama, and meditation as the way to develop physical and mental stillness in order to unlock inner truth. Integral Yoga is practiced and taught at the Integral Yoga Institute, which was founded by Sri Swami Satchidananda and has branches throughout the United States and the rest of the world. Integral Yoga hatha classes are offered by individual teachers, by the Integral Yoga Institutes and Integral Yoga Teaching Centers, as well as at Integral Yoga headquarters at Satchidananda Ashram-Yogaville, which is located in Buckingham, near Charlottesville, Virginia. Read more
Hatha Yoga: The Main Traditions
Hatha yoga means literally the “forceful yoga.” As its name implies, this approach to yoga emphasizes the vitality and life force of the physical body. Hatha yoga is undoubtedly the most well known, popular, and frequently practiced style of yoga in the West. It places great emphasis on purifying the body through a variety of means that include physical exercise, cleansing rites, and specific breathing techniques. These practices not only strengthen the body through the force of exercise, they can also help you to expand your own personal force, or store of energy, through their vitalizing effects. Read more
The Eight Limbs of Yoga
Raja yoga is frequently described as the scientific path to yoga. This is because it lays out in a very clear, simple, and systematic way a series of steps that a practitioner of yoga can follow to achieve enlightenment. These steps, which are detailed in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, form a sort of ladder, each practice building sequentially on the practice that precedes it. The eight limbs, or rungs, of raja yoga, presented from the first to the eighth are as follows: Read more
The Branches of Yoga
While yoga is a diverse system of practice comprised of many approaches to self-realization, many authorities on yoga concur that there are four major branches of yoga that over time have served as a point of origin for developing a practice of yoga. In addition to these four branches, there are several other systems of yoga that have gained widespread interest and attention in building a yoga practice. These might be considered offshoots, or mini-branches, of the main four branches of yoga. The following descriptions will help you understand the four main branches of yoga, with some of their most important offshoots. Read more
The Tree of Yoga
Yoga is frequently likened to a tree. Akin to a tree, it is a living, vibrant system, comprised of many branches and limbs. Akin to a tree, it sprouts new growths as it develops and evolves over time. Each of these branches and limbs has its individual name, as well as its own subsystems with their unique names. It is for this reason that yoga can sometimes seem confusing. Anyone interested in yoga soon comes to realize the myriad diversity of these systems of yoga – hatha yoga, power yoga, kundalini yoga, tantric yoga, and Iyengar yoga are just a few of the more frequently encountered terms. Read more
The Evolving Role of Yoga
Yoga is a lived experience. It is dynamic. It continues to grow and evolve, just as each of us continues to grow and evolve. As more and more people discover for themselves the diverse benefits of yoga, they are adapting yoga to suit specific interests and needs. This is especially true in the West, which has always prized individual creative energy. Yoga is exploding in new directions today as practitioners and devotees continue to find new ways to integrate yoga into their lives. Yoga is being adapted for use by handicapped and disabled persons, by individuals coping with HIV, by senior citizens seeking gentle exercise, and by athletes training for peak performance. Read more
A Note on Yoga Terminology
In referring to yoga, it is common to use the original Sanskrit terms for various concepts and practices, as frequently, equivalent words do not exist in English. Yoga for Men adopts the convention of presenting these words in transliterated English, with a literal translation of their meaning generally provided parenthetically. Understanding the etymology of the original Sanskrit word can often be a helpful key to unlocking its meaning in English. Read more
Yoga in the West
While many people in the West are only now discovering yoga, knowledge of yoga in the West is not new. In the late 18th century, interest in Sanskrit grew as scholars began to understand the importance and interconnectedness of the Indo-European family of languages. The Bhagavad Gita was the first Sanskrit text to be translated into English—in 1785 by the Englishman Charles Wilkins. American statesman Alexander Hamilton visited India, and even gave Sanskrit lessons in Paris, when he was detained there during wartime in 1802.
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What Is Yoga?
The world of yoga is diverse and multifaceted. While most people have probably heard of yoga, many people are somewhat mystified about what it is all about. A common perception is that yoga is a series of physical exercises based on some traditional Asian system. While yoga does indeed embrace a highly refined system of physical postures, it is much more than physical exercise. The clearest indication of the meaning of yoga is contained in its etymological derivation. The word yoga is derived from the Sanskrit root yuj, which literally means “to yoke” (this Sanskrit word is the basis for the words yoke and union in modern English). Read more