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Yoga
sova
delocalized fractyllic harmonizing Veteran
Hi everyone
Do you do yoga?
Do you have any recommendations on books or videos?
( And could we get a category on the site called "Yoga" ? how do you guys feel about that?)
Do you do yoga?
Do you have any recommendations on books or videos?
( And could we get a category on the site called "Yoga" ? how do you guys feel about that?)
0
Comments
I can recommend Yoga For You by Tara Fraser (book) and Elements of Yoga: Earth Foundation with Tara Lee (DVD).
When a therapist helped me get through the tendonitis she recommend Yoga and I have been doing it for five years and it is one of the best things I have ever done.
At first I thought the tendonitis meant the end but now it represents a new beginning and I actually see it as a blessing.
One of the great advantages of a regular Yoga practice is how much it helps with meditation posture.
"Light On Yoga" is a good book to start with.
If you're familiar with proper form and alignment and don't need videos, there are some great, free audio podcasts from yogadownload.com - about 20 minutes each.
Very similar to Buddhism, but those differences .. oh they are very major.
My mother had been a direct student of Paramahansa Yogananda back in the 1930's, so us kids were raised practicing yoga. Only later in life did I start to learn Buddhism from one of the Dalai Lama's monks.
Buddhism, in 12 years, has created far more inner change than yoga ever did over 4 decades of practicing. Maybe others will experience the opposite results, but I can only speak from my own experience.
Anyway, I tried classes and doing it myself, but I found that going to classes actually helped me more in holding the poses in the right way. I also found that doing it myself, sometimes I screwed up the counts, so going to classes helped.
My favourite would be Asthanga (sp) yoga. It is intense and also very relaxing after. I was always very energized after classes and man was I toned. The one studio that I went to also offered this class called "Drum Yoga" or something like that. We pretty much did yoga to the constant beat of the drum. It was hypnotizing and helped so much with the count.
Anyways, just wanted to share my experience.
Namaste.
Thank you for sharing your experience @TasiaW
Drum yoga sounds awesome! Boom boom boom boom boom
I went to a few sessions of this yoga class called "hot and powerful flow" -- they cranked the heat up in the studio to 88-90*F and then you do yoga for about an hour with some cool music/chanting stuff on in the background. That was way excellent and helped me learn a lot of poses.
some random words: one thing I learned recently about yoga is that it's kinda like rubbing two sticks together to generate heat, you gotta keep a regular effort up to get the tremendous benefits it can provide -- so I set aside some time to do some every day, even if it's just a little bit. Always good to sow some beneficial habits ^.^
You might be interested to know that prostrations are similar to the excellent Salutation to the Sun, in some ways . . . I also learned and taught 'Buddhist Yoga' a very dynamic system designed for martial artists
http://lolofit.com/apps/yoga_with_janet_stone :clap:
* Do it!
* Pick a good teacher. Because you probably won't know the difference at first, I suggest starting with Iyengar because you can be guaranteed that a certified Iyengar teacher has gone through a LOT of training. Many yoga 'teachers' simply did it themselves for a year or two, then did a teaching workshop somewhere, and then call themselves a teacher. The problem is that a bad teacher can lead to bad student injuries. Yoga done well is the most amazing thing. Done poorly (or poorly supervised) it can destroy your joints for life.
* For all the reasons just given, learn yoga in a class, not from a book or video. Otherwise there is a very high chance you will injure yourself. After you've been doing it for while a book/video can be a good reminder, but until then, just do a class.
* It's not a race, don't worry about how bendy everyone else is, just go at your own pace and know that, if you stick to it for a while, you'll be amazed at your progress.
* Enjoy!
Did the second lolo session today. Very short, maybe 15 minutes or twenty minutes. very well paced, for beginners. The app teaches vinyasa or astanga yoga . . . a system that nearly killed me.
This is what happened:
On the bus through South London, I would see an ashram entrance . . . always meaning to check it out . . . one fateful day I turned up. No one seemed about. Suited me. Upstairs was a temple with impressive looking photos of siddhas meditating. That must be my cue to meditate. So I did.
Some people began turning up and I began to realise this was a rather chic yoga studio, not really a temple. I began to make excuses to leave.
I think it was an intermediary class. I had not done yoga for years. Well somehow I was talked into staying . . . You never strain in yoga as you know. How hard could it be? Well it was astanga and it was hard.
Doing one Sun salutation after another and then some other flow.
The teacher was not very experienced, just fit. Never thought to ask my level of fitness or health. He very kindly decided to be my personal torturer. The end of the first section we rested in the corpse. Just as well, I was sweating, out of breath and despite the teachers best efforts to get me out of the corpse, I rested there for the rest of the session . . . feeling the need to return to non-suffering. They then over charged me for this NDE. :hair:
Anyway the lolo session is much kinder.
:clap:
A class I went to recently, the teacher is really knowledgeable. He mentioned once that if you imagine the breath (breathing in and out) as the thread of the routine, the poses are each like beads on the thread. So it was cool to view it that way, and really work from the "inside out" so-to-speak
I have been fortunate to have some very good Iyengar teachers over the last few years and find it to be a very spiritual practice. It is a constant learning process and well worth the effort.
My wife has started Iyengar teacher training, which is a three year process, and one of the books on the list of required reading is "The Bhagavad Gita."
Another system which my sister does is Pilates. Bit more Western. No religion.
@FoibleFull Hatha yoga leads to rajayoga as you know. Interestingly you can meditate in each asana. Imagine doing a 25 minute meditation using 5 asana.
My sequence would be child, warrior, tree, bridge, corpse . . . :om:
I have inspired myself. I am gonna try that . . .
May I suggest that you find a good yoga teacher who can understand and help you with your particular situation. You are not "irreparably stiff" and yoga may very well be the best thing for your inflexibility.
My favourite teacher was a vegan friend. We did the corpse after every posture.
When I did Chinese Yoga, we did the corpse and relaxation was automatic as the body had worked hard. Good classes do yoga Nidra, which I think leads to meditation. Every yoga class I can think of does the corpse at the end.
This morning I needed to do a Very simple beginners session. Somehow I ended up doing sit up, boat type, core work. I had to abandon the youtube session and do my own routine.
Anyone know of an uber gentle youtube vid?
I used to do this and another one (Fitness coach) regularly. Got to get into it again. The Wii moves into an asana and stays there. This means you have to relax into dukkha and is more akin to older styles of hatha yoga. Brilliant.
Good to do the shoulder stand again. I have also narrowed down the yoga on the Ipad. Lolo is dynamic and excellent. Some have let me down or too short, overly advanced even when designated for beginners etc. I have another one to try soon called 'Daily Yoga'. So many great ways of doing yoga :om:
But there are LOADS of videos on YouTube, and some regions have yoga channels on TV or you can pick up DVDs pretty much anywhere these days. They even sell yoga mats in the bookstores :screwy: :lol
I'm not saying it can't be spiritual, but I do think people ascribe a lot of things to yoga that simply aren't there. I watched a movie about it once, too. There was this chick (she was just so irritating) who felt that yoga was like this, life changer, so she followed this guy who started a regular yoga practice for the first time. He was a cool guy, not pretentious, had no idea about spirituality really which made him really open and honest about his experiences, and he was like, I feel fitter, but no more spiritual. She got really mad at him
I would qualify things like prayer, chanting, meditation.., that kind of thing to be intrinsically spiritual.
That doesn't mean other things can't be spiritual, too, I just don't think yoga is at the same sort of level as things like prayer.
@karasti I agree with you to a point, but I think there are degrees to which a spiritual practice is beneficial. They all have their place, but they're not all equal.
This might be of interest. It's a comedy site, but you can go into their forums and have a look at all the references and where they got their information from if you like to fact check.
Like, crime feels good to a criminal, you know?
I think that sometimes, going on how we feel about things doesn't lead us to the truth. That's not to negate the importance of intuition, it's just I think that we have to learn to discern the difference.
And I have nothing against yoga by the way, I just don't think it's the magical, mystical cure all that some people (yoga teachers, mostly lol) would like us to believe it is.
I don't have anything as horrible as abuse to compare to, but for example, my sister was run over by a car when we were kids. We still live on the same street, and every day I have to walk by the place where she was laying, and where her blood pooled and where her shoes lay in the street, and I picture it and associate negative feelings with that place. Is it just my perception? Or can the energy around a place change when something bad happens there?
I would say that the street remains pretty neutral and that the cathedral would remain a holy place because what the street is and what the cathedral is aren't really related to what happened there.
Is Normandy any different because of what happened there? I would again say no.
But Auschwitz would be a very negative place because it's purpose was so awful.
I think something like that could and would affect the perception of the individual, but I don't think it affects whatever the place or thing itself is.
It kind of makes me think of superstition. Like, you wouldn't live in a murder house even if the building was sound and the price was good. The house itself was in no way affected, it doesn't change it, but our perceptions and associations change.
That's just like... Me thinking out loud. I might change my mind on it