Friday, August 31, 2007

Yoga Pilates

In the 20th century Joseph Pilate invented yoga pilates. These can be very helpful, as long as you are properly following the rules of Pilates exercises.

What Yoga Pilates Are?

Yoga pilates are a regimen of exercises that can be both beneficial and enjoyable. Simply stated, these are the contemporary part of the older yoga movements. There are actually 500 exercises that can be performed using only 5 main instruments. The basics here that you must master are movement to and from the center of your body and revolving around this area.

Maintaining a good health and well-being are the main reasons why people would want to do yoga pilates. Regular exercise will leave a positive impact on both your physical and your mental life. After you start doing yoga pilates for a while you will notice that you are actually more flexible. This is because there is a lot of stretching involved in yoga pilates and this stretching will lessen the threat of injuries.
  • Here is a video showing you a 10 minutes pilates routine to trim and slim your waist line...


The Benefits Of Yoga Pilates

The biggest benefits of this type of yoga is that your body’s balance will be greatly improved. Over time you will also find that your aches will also greatly reduce. As you probably already know, regular exercise will strengthen your muscles and thus you will have more stamina and energy. You will also discover that your body and mind will be a lot more relaxed. This is because you will be practicing specific breathing patterns.

For these various reasons many specialists suggest that their patients engage in this form of yoga. Those who teach yoga pilates agree that this is a good exercise for many people, regardless of their body shapes. In fact, yoga pilates teachers tend to consider this to be yoga with the use of machines or with strength conditioning.

Conclusion

Yoga and pilates tend to compliment each other as both will help you with your mobility. Pilates simply takes this a step further and helps you to strengthen your body. So, if your job requires you sitting at a desk most of the time, you will greatly benefit from yoga pilates. This is because you will learn ways to support your backbone. It is also a great form of exercise for dancers and professional athletes as it will help them to become more flexible while also growing stronger. Many celebrities also like to take up this form of exercise, which can help them to keep in shape and relax.

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Yoga Exercise Routine For The Core

In this video, Tara Stiles will teach you an exercise routine that combines yoga, dance and pilates techniques.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

A Guide to Namaste Yoga

Yoga is a spiritual practice or discipline that helps to unify the body, mind and heart. Although there are various different styles of yoga that you can choose from to practice, Namaste yoga is one of the most beneficial and easiest to learn, so it is perfect for yoga beginners.

Namaste yoga is based on the Hatha Vinyasa style of yoga, with this type of yoga, the breath is the guide for the body. It is a form of yoga that really works in unison with the heart and focuses largely on breathing exercises, postures and poses.

Click the image below to watch a 5 minutes video previewing Namaste Yoga.



The Advantages of Namaste Yoga:

There are many advantages that can be gained from practicing of Namaste yoga. In fact, the healing benefits of yoga are so great that you will feel revitalized at the end of every yoga session. Yoga is an exercise which is able to greatly enhance your understanding of life, and it can change an individual’s entire perspective about life.

The positive effects of yoga begin to show almost immediately, as the sense of feeling good starts to envelope around you. Yoga can help to clarify your deepest desire in life, your motivations and aspirations, thereby helping you to restore confidence, self-awareness, and self-esteem.

The driving force behind yoga is aimed at the more monumental and life-changing discovery that helps you discover who you really are and what it is that you are looking to get out of life in general. Therefore yoga can help you with issues that you never even knew existed – it can help you to find out who you are and live the life that you always dreamed.

Whether you practice Namaste or another form of yoga, you will reap such benefits, and there is no other type of exercise that comes even close to this when it comes to advantages for your mind, body and soul. If you haven’t tried yoga before, it will truly be a life changing experience when you finally do, and it is definitely something that you will never regret trying.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Weight Loss Through Yoga

Without any doubt, yoga can help to stretch the muscles and increase flexibility and nimbleness. But now there are many people practicing yoga to lose weight. Although there is no hard and fast scientific data to support this fact, there have been many success stories about weight loss through yoga.

As most yoga exercises are not strenuous, weight loss through yoga is probably not the result of burning calories through strenuous exercises. It's believed that the weight loss is a result of reducing stress and having a heathy lifestyle. Also, by helping you to reduce stress, yoga can help to eliminate the bad habits of overeating, which in turn helps you lose weight.

Weight loss through yoga techniques such as the bending, inversions, twisting, and others promote stimulation of body's endocrine system. This will help raise the metabolism which will help you to burn more calories.

The Right Diet and Lifestyle

Of course weight loss through yoga exercises will not be effective if you don't change to a healthy diet and lifestyle. A healthy diet will incorporate high amounts of fiber, whole grains, and vegetables. Alcohol, cigarettes or anything that is not healthy for your body MUST be stopped.

If you are trying to lose weight through yoga exercises, you must remember that yoga won't give you immediate result. Your weight loss through yoga program must be combined with healthy diets. This weight loss process would last from two weeks to six months. Start with easy postures first. And once you get your comfort level, you can opt for more rigorous yoga exercises.

Hatha Yoga exercises are exceptionally good to serve the weight loss purpose. You can also try hot yoga exercise, it's also very effective for weight loss. If you could make yoga and its practices part of your life, you would be able to solve your weight loss problem forever.

If you want more information about weight loss through yoga, check out this great book: "YOGA WEIGHT LOSS SECRETS".

Hatha Yoga Exercises

Hatha Yoga exercises are the most common practice of yoga in the Western countries. Unlike the original version of yoga, hatha yoga exercises focus more on the physical regimen that aims to give mental, emotional, and physical well-being.

The History

The history of hatha yoga exercises dates back in the 15th century India when Yogi Swatmarama, a sage during those times, introduced it as a form of “a stairway to the heights” of Raja Yoga which is the preparatory stage of physical purification that makes the body fit for the practice of higher form of meditation.

Hatha yoga is also known to be called as “hatha vidya” and the word “hatha” is a combination of the words, “ha” which means sun and “tha” that means moon. They are said to refer to the prinicipal “nadis” or the energy channels of the body and must be fully operational to attain the state of “dhyana” or a certain state of meditation.

The Concept

The whole concept of the hatha yoga is a holistic yogic path that includes moral discipilines, physical exercises, breath control, and meditation. The hatha yoga exercises that are mostly practiced and popular in the western countries mainly composed of the “asanas” or postures.

Hatha yoga is only one of the two concepts of yoga exercises that focus on the physical culture and the other yoga is the Raja yoga but both of these are referred to as Ashtanga yoga. The main difference is that the Raja yoga focuses more on the “asanas” or postures to get the body ready for a prolonged meditation. The hatha yoga on the other hand focuses on balancing the mind and body through physical exercises, controlled breathing, and calming the mind through meditation and sheer relaxation.

Different positions or postures are recommended by practitioners to help alleviate or avoid health problems ranging from constipation through cancer. Doing Hatha Yoga exercises on a regular basis can help to reduce stress, pressure, and other mental worries that many of us are exposed to these days.

If you are interested to learn more about Hatha Yoga exercises, check out this book: BANDHAYOGA. Just click the image to see more information.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Names of Different Types of Yoga

Yoga is one of the most popular exercises exists today, but not many people are actually aware of the names of different types of yoga out there. Each has its own features, qualities and advantages, and so in order to be able to determine which is going to work best for you, you need to learn the basics about each of the most major types of yoga.

Here are some of the names of different types of Yoga:

Hatha Yoga:

Hatha Yoga is what most people in the West associate with the word "Yoga" and is practiced for mental and physical health. It was introduced by Yogi Swatmarama, a sage of 15th century India, and compiler of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika. In this treatise Swatmarama introduces Hatha Yoga as 'a stairway to the heights of Raja Yoga', hence a preparatory stage of physical purification that renders the body fit for the practise of higher meditation.

The Raja Yoga were what the Hindu Yogis used to physically train their body for long periods of meditation. The word Hatha is a compound of the words Ha and Tha meaning sun and moon and refers to the principal nadis (energy channels) of the subtle body that must be fully operational to attain a state of dhyana or samadhi. Hatha yoga follows the same principles as the Raja Yoga of Patanjali including moral restraint yama and spiritual observances niyama.

Iyengar Yoga:

Iyengar Yoga, a form of Hatha Yoga, focuses on the structural alignment of the physical body through the development of asanas (postures). Through the practice of a system of asanas, it aims to unite the body, mind and spirit for health and well being. Iyengar Yoga is considered a powerful tool to relieve the stresses of modern-day life which in turn can help promote total physical and spiritual well being.

With Iyengar yoga, there is an emphasis on holding each pose for a long period of time, rather than moving constantly from one pose to the next, as you do with Ashtanga yoga. Iyengar yoga also uses various props such as blocks and straps in its practice, in order to help align the body into the different poses.

Bikram Yoga:

This is another popular types of yoga and is also known as ‘Hot yoga’, because it is practiced in a room that is heated to 105 degrees, with a humidity of around 40%. Bikram Yoga was developed by Bikram Choudhury and a Los Angeles, California based company, it is now practiced all over the world.

There are many names of different types of yoga, however the ones mentioned here are the most major types. So if you are just getting into yoga you will want to make sure that you get yourself started with one of these types of yoga, then you can try out the others once you have got the basic idea of how it all works. Of all the types of yoga, Ashtanga yoga is the best to start off with, because it allows you to learn all of the different aspects of yoga in general.

Want to learn more about the names of different types of Yoga? Check out the following great resources that will teach you how to do Yoga exercises at home. Just click the images below for more info.

Health Benefits Of Yoga

What are the Health Benefits of Yoga?

Yoga is known for being one of the most beneficial and fun exercises in the world, and it can be practiced by people of all ages. It is good if you can understand the health benefits of yoga before you start practicing it, so that you can have a better appreciation for it.

While each different type of yoga will have its own health benefits and results, there are some basic benefits that you will receive, regardless of which specific type of yoga you practice.

Yoga, at the physical level, has been proven as being extremely effective not only for your health in general but also for various types of disorder. Yoga is extremely effective in increasing flexibility, as it has positions that act upon the various joints of your body, even including those which have never really worked out with other forms of exercise.

It also works to massage all of the organs in your body, and in fact it is considered as being the only activity that is able to massage all the internal glands and organs of the body in a thorough manner. It really is able to act in a wholesome manner on the various body parts, and this stimulation results in keeping away disease and notifying the body earlier when there is something wrong.

Other health benefits of yoga involves relaxation, as this is actually one of its main purposes. Yoga promotes meditation and relaxation, particularly through its breathing exercises, thus yoga is great for dealing with stress and depression.

Another health benefits of yoga include total body detoxification. By gently exercising and stretching the muscles and joints, your body’s blood supply begins to work better and smoother, this helps in the flushing out of toxins as well as providing nourishment to the body.

As your muscles are toned gradually from practicing yoga, they will become fit and stronger. Weak or flaccid muscles are stimulated repeatedly to get rid of fat and flaccidity. Hence, another health benefits of yoga is to help you to lose weight. Your body will feel great not only spiritually and emotionally, but physically as well.

As you can see there are many health benefits of yoga, and so it is really no wonder as to why it is considered as being one of the best exercises in the world that you can do. Because of the health benefits, Yoga is widely practiced worldwide, particularly in the West and the East, where it first actually originated.