Puppy Dog Stretch Yoga-At-Your-Desk Series

The Puppy Dog stretch is good for your shoulders, back, and hamstrings. It will rejuvenate you from head to toe!

Stand up facing your desk and have the front of your body up against the edge of your desk. Place your palms down till they reach the edge of the desk. Place your arms shoulder distance apart and your feet hip distance apart. Ideally, the height of your desk should be more or less hip level. Now, walk your legs back until your hips are in line with your heels and you create a flat back. Keep the arms straight and draw the shoulder blades down the back. Lengthen the spine and sitting bones. Stretch the front of the thighs towards the back of thighs. Read more

Women’s Yoga

An Interview of Mark Whitwell by kyle roderick

Kyle Roderick: What asana can women do at different points of the day when they are at work or at home to remedy anxiety, restlessness or that spaced-out feeling?

Mark Whitwell: Although there is no substitute for a yoga practice somewhere in the day, to support this by some light moving and breathing randomly in the day routine is supremely helpful.

For a few moments move and breath with the arms raised inhaling and arms lowered exhalation. This is the exacting process of strength receiving, the healing of our system. Simply to move and breathe with light postures correctly designed for each person. Forward bends and twists accompanied by exhalation serve the releasing of stress and anxiety. They are strengthening and healing to our Life, while the inhalation is refreshing, receptive and restorative. Read more

New Wave of Healing

the new wave of healing meditation: kirtan kriya
Besides feeling blissful, relaxation is a medical fact. Thirty-odd years ago, Harvard cardiologist Herbert Benson, M.D. identified and scientifically confirmed what happens during the Relaxation Response, namely: heart rate slows down, brain waves slow down and move into theta, or the state of creative flow that is often only accessed when dreaming. The stress hormone cortisol stops flowing and natural feel-good, painkilling hormones such as endorphins are released.

Today, the medical aspects of various types of meditation are an emerging area of research. The first study of Kirtan Kriya kundalini yoga meditation by Dharma Singh Khalsa, M.D. and the Tucson-based Alzheimers Prevention Foundation International has recently discovered that this 12-minute meditation confers powerful cognitive benefits. Read more

Outdoor Yoga

written by ed moffett

My favorite way to do yoga is to go out to some beautiful place in nature where I can express yoga interactively with the natural symmetries around me.

Since every system of yoga has variations of the definition, it’s important to have some flexibility in our concept of what yoga is. Let’s face it- going to a yoga class involves a lot of work to prepare, travel, arrive at a certain time, position yourself in the studio room, participate in the class, pack up and go home. For many people, yoga class is the only time they ever do yoga, and some of us have a lot of resistance to the commitment. Others attempt a home “practice” where they follow a prescribed series of postures, duplicating what they learned in class. Read more

The Jivamukti Method

written by nicole nichols and heather fairfield

Practices For Liberating Body and Soul

Twenty years ago Sharon Gannon and David Life developed Jivamukti Yoga, a style that would become known around the world for its mix of challenging physical asanas and scriptural study blended with music, social awareness and devotion. Driven to communicate something extraordinary about human potential, in 1984 they created the Jivamukti method. The method quickly began to take hold in New York City where they started out with a few students in a small apartment. It has grown to become one of nine internationally recognized styles of Hatha Yoga. The method is taught in Jivamukti Yoga Centers in New York and Detroit, as well as internationally in Munich, Toronto, and London, where thousands of students commit to the study of this powerful transcendental method. Read more

Michael Bengry’s Gemini Track System

written by kyle roderick

breathing new life into yoga: michael bengry’s gemini track system
Like many devoted yoga practitioners and/or yoga studio owners, Michael Bengry of Golden Tree Yoga (www.goldentreeyoga.com) in Santa Barbara, CA. started practicing 14 years ago after a serious bout with back pain. While Bengry started taking a therapeutic back class, as his sciatica improved, he moved on to other yoga styles. Bengry studied with a number of instructors trained in the Iyengar method. Through this practice, he first started working with rope walls. Read more

Bikram Yoga

written by craig villani

Making the practice of hatha yoga accessible to six billion people worldwide is the primary philosophy underlying the development and growth of Bikram Yoga. Created by Yogi Raj Bikram Choudhury as a practical distillation of the classical eighty-four postures as set forth by oral transmission and recorded by the Vedic sage Patanjali, Bikram’s method of Hatha Yoga stands as a structured and foundational approach towards balancing the modern bodymind.

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Oceans of Yoga

by lisa miriam cherry/ photography by james wyinner

T. Krishnamacharya, the father of Desikachar, taught Pattabhi Jois and B. K. S. Iyenger. They were young boys and their teacher devised yoga practices to suit their individual body types and energies. T.K.V. Desikachar, a former-engineer-turned-yogi carries on his father’s values that were brought down from the Tibetan mountains–that the individual comes first and that there is only one yoga. His son, Kausthub, agrees. Read more

Mudras & The Fabric of Your Consciousness

written by chris hoskins

Mudra is a Sanskrit term that means seal or symbol. The translation can be taken literally, figuratively, spiritually, psychologically and emotionally. Since the beginning of our presence on earth we have used our hands to communicate. Before verbal language became refined enough to be the seed we now know is necessary to grow a culture, and the glue that initially anchors a culture, hand gestures dominated communication. Read more