If you are a Yoga teacher or an experienced practitioner, the following tips may be of use to your students or friends. By now, almost everyone has probably heard about the benefits of Yoga. Everyone probably knows someone, a friend of a friend, or a relative, who practices Yoga and raves about it.
All in all, yoga is a tool for helping those many people in our society who might struggle with keeping with their well intentioned New Years’ Resolutions – or those made and attempted at any time of the year. Yoga instructors can be powerful facilitators in those processes through knowledgeable instruction appropriately tailored to each individual student’s needs and abilities.
Teaching Yoga at a gym may also offer instructors a predictable weekly source of income and supplement a private studio. Gyms typically pay instructors per class, rather than per student, making budgeting easier. Teaching at a gym can also be a good way for a new Yoga instructor to get established in a new city or area. Yoga mats and props are usually provided by the facility, so no start-up costs are involved.
Although Yoga training is known as a form of physical activity, it also has other benefits. While some people start doing Yoga as a way to get into better shape physically, they often find that improving their bodies also helps their emotional and mental outlook.
Hatha Yoga is a particular system of yoga that focuses on the purification of the physical body as leading to the purification of the mind and vital energy. Hatha Yoga marks the development of the full body postures now in popular usage. In its many modern variations, Hatha Yoga is the style that many people associate with the word ‘Yoga’ today.
Yogic techniques have been helping people train the mind since history was put into writing and most likely before that. The practical applications of yoga for humankind’s problems are infinite, but lets look at a few of the most rampant mental health issues and look at practical yogic solutions.
Yoga is a way of living and not a religion; it aims to have a healthy mind and a healthy body. We are all in a mental, physical and spiritual being. It helps us to promote balanced development of the three aspects. Another form of physical awareness is to exercise, which can only assure only physical well-being, yoga comes in a different way.
A good way to make your free time more relaxing is by doing some yoga. The primary focus of yoga is on the general well being of the individual. Yoga is good for your mental health and stress reduction, as it encourages the mind to focus and relax.
Taking the time each day to Journal some of these negating thoughts will help you to see these negative thinking patterns and beliefs more clearly. An easy way to begin to write down your thoughts on a daily basis is to set aside 5-15 minutes a day after your Yoga practice to simply let your thoughts flow onto the page, unimpeded by any self-censoring or judgmental thoughts.
If you have taken or seen a Yoga class you may have heard “Lead with your Heart Center” (or something else similar). The Heart Center in Yoga refers to the Heart Chakra. The Heart Chakra is the 4th of 7 Chakras (or Energy Centers in the body). These centers are often used as reference points in Yoga, Chinese Medicine, Thai Massage or other traditional healing methods.