You’ve likely heard of yoga’s sister science, Ayurveda, a holistic system of medicine from India. According to Ayurveda, our bodies come in three basic types: vata, pitta, and kapha. Each type has a corresponding season, and autumn is vata season. More precisely, autumn is vata seasons once it begins to get colder. That means if […]
It’s National Yoga Month! Did you know? If not, it may be because it was only in 2008 that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officially named September as National Yoga Month. The goal of National Yoga Month is to educate people about the health benefits of yoga and inspire more people to […]
A dynamic yoga teacher I know mentioned her affinity for yoga therapy. It can, she told us, keep us fit and independent as we age. Even if you don’t think of yourself as “aging” yet, you may benefit from yoga therapy. Yoga can help heal many chronic ailments, whether associated with age or not. The […]
As you probably know if you’ve practiced for a while, yoga improves balance. I don’t just mean emotional balance, though that’s important. I’m talking about physical balance here. If you’re feeling unsteady, practice yoga for balance! Balancing poses are not the most glamorous yoga poses, but that doesn’t make them less valuable than a strong […]
If I said you should not practice yoga for weight loss, would you turn to aerobics or the boot camp at your local gym? I hope not (unless you enjoy those activities), because if you need to lose weight, you probably will probably if stick with your yoga practice. Yoga is a lifestyle. It doesn’t […]
If I took an informal survey of yogis to find out why they started their practice, I’d expect many responses to be, “I started doing yoga to manage back pain.” Stress relief would probably be up there too. And since stress often contributes to back pain,people who use yoga to manage stress may have less […]
For the most part, we don’t think of bending over backwards in a positive way. That is, unless we’re talking about yoga poses! And even then, backbends may not be your favorite thing to do. No matter how you feel about practicing backbends in yoga classes, the fact is they’re part of most sequences for […]
The other day while practicing triangle pose, my yoga teacher mentioned the pose is a hip opener. It got me thinking about why we do hip openers in yoga. What’s the benefit of having open hips? And what does it even mean to have them? According to Yoga Journal, our hips are physically connected to […]
If you study classical yoga or consider yourself a traditional yogi, you know yoga is much more than a physical practice. You may even like to point that out to other yogis who seem to only do yoga for fitness. Asana (the “exercise” part of yoga) is just one of the eight limbs mentioned in […]
There are a lot of yoga poses. Some we do in most classes. Others we do intermittently depending on the level and style of yoga we practice. It’s a good bet you do at least one variation of virabhadrasana most times you practice. The group of poses known as warrior are unique both in the […]