You may have noticed that Aura Wellness Center recently added a Power yoga course. Yet, people considering yoga teacher training courses often wonder what the “power” is all about. To some people the word (power) doesn’t seem yogic. So, what’s all the hype about this particular style?
By Bhavan Kumar How can you increase happiness with yoga? Since yoga moved onto the world stage, asana, pranayama, meditation, and other Yogic stress-reduction exercises have been studied as possible alternative treatments for mood-related disorders. However, the body of literature on the therapeutic benefits of yoga was relatively limited until the Internet propelled it forward. …
Anyone who practices any form of Yoga, on a regular basis, knows that the results go much further than longer, leaner muscles and greater flexibility. The breathing and meditative portions of a daily Yogic lifestyle can bring peace and understanding to the mind. Pranayama and meditation can teach one how to cope with daily stress and anxiety, while learning how to find overall peace within one’s self. The breathing techniques, alone, can be an extremely useful tool to apply in all aspects of life.
Chanting mantras and the sacred names of Gods and Goddesses with the ragas is an important element of Kirtan singing in the context of a Yoga practice. The musical arrangements of the notes themselves deeply impact the chakras. There are a number of Kirtan musicians who have recorded a variety of devotional chants in a classical Yogic fashion.
You may have covered mantras in your yoga teacher training, but there are many different purposes for this practice. Creating a state of…
Yoga training is a great practice for mindfulness because your yogic practice can teach you how to be more aware of your entire experience from start to finish. The great thing about adding mindfulness to your asana practice is that it can also help you to avoid injury.
The Mahamrityunjaya Mantra is from the Krishna Yajur Veda. Mrityunjaya is another name for Lord Shiva, the great Yogi who is actually said to have existed and to have conquered death.
In terms of Yoga practice, the internal process of self-reflection that leads to a visceral awareness of the essential divinity that lies within our own beings is similar to the process of peeling back layers of an onion. Many of our thoughts and beliefs are based on fundamental assumptions about ourselves and the world at large. These thoughts and beliefs are typically generated by our own life experiences and the effect that people have had on us through the years.
My distance from the latest technologies has had immeasurable benefits for my life, however, both personally and professionally. Those advantages are a large part of the reasoning for pratyahara, or sense withdrawal, one of Patanjali’s Eight Limbs. As I disconnected from an over-stimulating amount of sensory information from screens, the reduced amount that my senses then took in began to mean more for my overall subjective well-being. As the saying goes, less can be more.
The purpose of Yoga is to allow us to know who exactly we are and to be able to experience the freedom to be that person. As I have heard…