yoga for dummies

There have lots of the "for dummies" books published over the last two decades. One of the most popular, is of course yoga for dummies. And while you can get a really good overview of the practice in different types of yoga by using yoga for dummies, there are also other resources that you might want to consider if you are really serious about practicing yoga.

If you're ready to get started and really jump into a good yoga system without having to read through tons of material, you might want to also consider the resource yoga book for anyone. Written by a master yogi from Kuala Lampur in Malaysia, this book will walk you from beginner to advanced yoga easier and faster than you might think it's possible.

The neat thing about yoga book for anyone is that the emphasis is placed on the simplicity and health benefits of yoga. You don't really need expensive clothing props or classes to do yoga. In India and Malaysia, close to the seat of the creation of yoga, you'll find people practicing yoga almost anywhere. No special equipment or suit is needed, just a quiet place and the right kind of teaching. If you have a few square feet where you can concentrate, even in your backyard, you can learn.

Mr. Saguna draws on his 40 years of yoga mastery while making yoga so easy that even your child can learn to do it with you. Instead of marketing clothing as requirements, Mr. Saguna instead merely goes through the process of teaching you how to completely revitalize your health through the simplicity and beauty of the yoga style.

You'll learn the 12 pillars of yoga as well as how to utilize yoga for weight loss, preventing or reversing arthritis, and even athletic performance improvement by using yoga book for anyone. You don't have to be a dummy to find a program that is simple and easy to use when it comes to yoga. They have book for anyone, while good for even the dummies it's also for you smart people as well.

Click to learn more about Yoga for anyone. 

teen yoga

Teenagers, unless they are interested, many tend to ignore physical fitness while they pursue more social activities. While this is not entirely a bad thing, it would be better if they could find a style of exercise that suited their personality. And they don't have to go to the gym or run 4 miles in order to achieve really great fitness. As a matter of fact, one of the best types of exercise for teenagers and even children is yoga.

One of the most overlooked aspects of fitness is flexibility. Football players, basketball players, and other sports put little effort and emphasis on flexibility and rely instead on brute strength and agility. But there are few athletes of any kind whose athletic performance would not improve with increased flexibility. One of the main reasons for this is that flexibility allows the body to put more strength into their performance.

But you don't have to be incredibly strong or agile to begin with flexibility. Playing professional sports is not one of your goals anyway, you can do just as much to lose weight or keep it off as well as improve posture and stave off stress with the regular practice of yoga as you could with any other combination of physical exercise combined. What does this have to do with teens? I'm glad you asked.

Yoga doesn't have to be practiced in public, although if you want to learn it with your friends that's always a good idea. All you need for yoga is a little peace and quiet and a few feet of open the floor space. While  yoga can benefit people of any age, young people tend to have more natural flexibility, and the early practice of yoga can lead to faster advancement than when your body has had years to get stiff.

Yoga has been proven to be one of the best ways of achieving and maintaining a healthy weight, posture and balance of all the available forms of exercise. It's cheap, easy and you can do it almost anywhere. Beginning to learn and enjoy yoga at 18 can put it somewhere on a lifelong pursuit of excellent health. Besides all of those benefits, is also an awful lot of fun, and once you learn some of the more difficult poses it's not a bad way to show off a little bit either.

dynamic yoga

There is something about Americans when it comes to exercise. While you can find great athletes all over the world, there is perhaps no other society where pushing the limits is more prevalent than in the United States. Yes, I know that there are more fat people here than in any other country as well. But there are also quite a few type A personalities that somehow believe that pushing yourself to the outer limits is the only way to go. It as a result, the more aggressive forms of yoga such as dynamic yoga and power yoga have become very popular in the US.

When you're talking about dynamic yoga you are most likely referring to the practice of a style called Vinyasa.  Vinyasa yoga, although it has many sub sets, is one of the more vigorous styles. It is based on a series of asanas called the Sun salutations that combine poses, movement and deep breathing and end with some very intense stretches indeed. But while this style is more aggressive than many other forms of yoga, it isn't at the top of the list.

Ashtanga yoga is a very intense form of yoga often referred to as power yoga. The poses, of which there are more than 200 are always performed in the same order.  These sets of the poses are done more quickly than in the other styles with coordinated breathing and movement. The entire experience is more like a rigorous dance or other athletic pursuit, and more closely resembles the kinds of work outs Americans typically enjoy. But this style of yoga is definitely not for beginners. You will need a certain amount of experience and flexibility before you will be able to complete an entire series of Ashtanga poses in a set.

So when it comes to dynamic yoga styles you have several options to choose from. We recommend that you begin with the more common form of dynamic yoga by learning and becoming comfortable with Vinyasa before attempting to move into the most rigorous of all - Ashtanga.  Either style is sure to challenge even the most fit and athletic person, whether they happen to live in America or not.

different styles of yoga

People can to speak about and think of yoga as though it were something unique in and of itself. But the more you learn about yoga, the more you find out that there are literally dozens of different styles and types of yoga.

Yoga, in a sense, is a bit like mentioning racquet sports in the fact that with in the larger category there are several different sub types. Tennis, racquetball and badminton are all racquet sports that use some type of projectile struck with a racquet on a court of one size or another. And while they all have have certain similarities, they all also have some major differences.  It is much the same way with yoga. All styles of yoga have certain major elements that define them as yoga, but within each of the major elements can be found some differences from one type of yoga to the next.

What most people in Western cultures typically overlook is the spiritual aspect of yoga. To a certain degree all yoga stems from a religious system. In traditional yoga practitioners seek to reach a state of enlightenment through meditation and physical practice of the forms. It since this type of spirituality is often incongruent with other forms of religion, it is often overlooked or shunned by those following other religious systems. The various different types of yoga are often defined by their approach to the emphasis or downplay of the religious component of the style.

Another factor that can define a yoga type is the actual practice of the forms themselves. Certain styles of yoga will rely more heavily on breathing and slow movement between the asanas, while others, such as ashtanga move much more quickly. From calm methods like Hatha to the most rigorous types in Bikram and Iyengar, there are broad varieties of physical emphasis on everything from more flexibility to perfecting posture and precision of alignment in the asanas.

You can define more than 20 major styles of yoga in the United States alone, and far more as you study countries where yoga has been practiced for hundreds or thousands of years.  Hatha is the most popular form and is typically referred to as the root type of most other styles.  We have also mentioned the challenging Ashtanga as well as Bikram and Iyengar forms, but there are at least fifteen more styles practiced in many countries that you can read about as well.  A good overview can be found at: http://www.matsmatsmats.com/yoga/yoga-disciplines.html if you want to know more.

yoga basics

The popularity of yoga tends to wax and wane in the United States according to how popular the person promoting this art form is at any particular point in time.  While there are always avid practitioners, it has taken more than 100 years for the practice of yoga to really take hold and get a following that could be described as anywhere near as large as other activities such as aerobics.

A big part of this has to do with a cultural difficulty that many people find it very hard to overcome. While you may think that yoga has more to do with standing in strange ways that you cannot positively imagine getting yourself into, its traditional roots focus more on the spiritual quest and a religious goal than they do exercise. Because they key components of a yoga are part of a larger religious practice with a direct conflict with the two major religious organizations prevalent in the West, yoga has either not been taught, or has had to delve more into placing its emphasis on the physical aspects of the style while gradually shifting away from the Zen and meditation practices that would be more common in Hinduism.

You can still find teachers of yoga that would be happy to train you in the spiritual aspects of yoga. However, if your association with Islam or Christianity would cause this to be a conflict, you can also find those who will happily teach you the poses and leave out the bits that might offend you and your religious sensibilities.

But understanding the roots behind those sorts of religious matters has virtually nothing to do with the fact that practicing yoga in its various forms has some tremendous health benefits for your body that you certainly might be missing in your regimen. Most Americans do not spend anywhere near enough time working on flexibility and posture. They tend to concentrate far too much on strength and endurance; as a result their bodies tend to become unbalanced because of tension unbalancing certain joints and areas of the body. Yoga can do wonders to relieve these muscular and skeletal stresses as well as improving your posture and even such things as your sleep patterns.

So whether you are wanting to learn yoga for just the physical or you want to include the spiritual aspects you are sure to find a teacher nearby that will walk you through the process. There are dozens of great resources available on video and online. Even though I don't go into the spiritual aspects of yoga I highly recommend yoga for anyone interested in finding out just how good they can feel.

hatha yoga for beginners

You may be surprised when you first begin to look at practicing yoga just how many different kinds of yoga there are. I know it was that way for me, I figured yoga was, well, yoga. I didn't know that there were at least eight different forms of hatha yoga, and that hatha was one of five major Indian yoga at traditional practices. Needless to say it took a little time to figure out exactly what was going on, but in the end I was able to settle on a style that suited my needs best.

But let's begin by saying that hatha yoga styles are by far the most prevalent in the United States.  Regardless of which style is being taught, the basic movements and postures contained within each asana always remain the same. The variance has to do with where the emphasis is placed in aspects such as how the postures are done and the order in which they appear.  The key is, once you learn each of the postures, you could very well translate them into any other style simply by varying other aspects of the practice.

For many Westerners with type A personalities the rigorous and challenging Ashtanga style is preferred.  This particular style contains 240 postures done in six consecutive groupings called vinyasa.  Ashtanga is by far the most physically challenging of all the yoga styles.

Iyengar Yoga has much more to do with precision than it does strength and endurance when compared with Ahstanga.  It is the most widely taught yoga form in the Western world. It relies quite heavily on props to achieve perfect alignment and balance in each of the postures. Because of its emphasis on getting it just right, as opposed to getting it done, you this style of yoga chance to go at a slow or moderate pace.

As we stated before, there are other styles of yoga available in many different locations. You can also find excellent instructions and tutorials on virtually any style in both video and written format on the Internet. Just keep in mind that when you are looking for yoga you might want to figure out exactly which kind of yoga is being taught.

indian yoga

In a certain sense all yoga is Indian yoga. While an American might think of the killer poses done by those who practice the art, it is actually a system of spiritual meditation that also includes those types of physical activities. Certain forms of yoga of are present in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.

There are five major branches of yoga that stem from the Hindu philosophy including Hatha, Jnana, Karma, Bhakti, and Raja, with the largest following being that of the Raja system.  Raja is so preeminent that it is known as simply yoga as part of the tradition of Samkhya. 

The word yoga has its origins in Sanskrit and the root "yuj" can mean something akin to the phrases: "to yoke," "to control" or "to unite."  The larger term is "yujir samadhau" and carries with it the idea of contemplation. While both terms are completely viable, the latter seems to fit better with the over-arching Raja traditions.

In countries outside of India the single word yoga is more than likely links directly to another form - Hatha yoga.  It is the most typical to see asanas used in yoga practice as a form of exercise that concentrate almost solely on the physical aspects of the postures while virtually ignoring the traditional Hindu spiritual teaachings.

Hatha is a particular style of yoga compiled by the yogi Swatmarama from the Hatha Yoga Pradipika some time around 600 years or more ago in the 15th century.  It is unique among other forms of yoga in that it concentrates on the phsyical far more than the internal aspects that are more prevalent in other forms and styles.

Yoga also has its place in Buddhism, but there it is primarily as a meditation exercise and has little to no physical component. For Jainism it can most properly be stated that some older form of Yoga developed into a full fledged relogious system.  In other words, Jainism is, in a way, yoga as a religion.

There is also a form of yoga present in Islam as Sufism, but this sect has been rejected in a fatwa in 2008 that stated that these hindu teachings could lead to blasphemy and is therefore forbidden. Likewise, Christianity considers yoga as a danger and warns that practices in Zen and Yoga can lead to a person degenerating into a form of cult of the body and mind.  Since yoga is also a primary focus and part of the New Age Movement, it is quite inconsistent with Christianity.

But regardless of all of the spiritual aspects in tradition surrounding yoga, there are still many people who find it physical benefit from the poses involved in forms such as hatha.  He does spiritual distinction goes a long way in explaining why people in the West and to practice the postures with little or no regard to anything that might be found in Indian yoga.

astanga yoga

astanga yoga is a style of yoga originally taught in the united states by Pattabhi Jois at the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute.  It comes from a far more ancient form of yoga that was recorded by the sage Vamana Rishi although the exact age of this text is difficult to pinpoint. 

More properly spelled Ashtanga Yoga is literally translated as "eight limbed yoga" and describes a path of purification for the revelation of the universal self through eight practices:

Yama - moral codes

Niyama - self- purification and study

Asana - posture

Pranayama - breath control

Pratyahara - sense control

Dharana - concentration

dhyana - meditation

Samadhi - absorption into the universal

While the first four of these are external practices this second four are internal. Mr. Jois taught that imperfections in the first grouping were both tolerable and correctable, while defects in the latter group were not. His belief was that only by removing the defection could bring a true and complete universal cleansing.

It's easy to see why there is a bit of a disconnect in Western thought with the overall practice of yoga regardless of style or form. Especially as Americans, we tend to be more doers than sit still and breathers. So the idea that pops in your head first when you think of yoga is standing on your head with your feet wrapped around your bellybutton somehow. But in reality, the poses practiced in yoga represent only one part of the eight, the asana.  The rest is all related to a much more spiritual and mystic pursuit.

To correctly perform the asanas in ashtanga yoga requires the proper implementation of two other elements; the vinyasa and tristhana.  Vinyasa is proper breathing and vinyasa is a system of moving between the poses themselves.  Each movement has one breath, so an entire asana is performed according to a certain number of breaths at very precise times both in the poses as well as moving between them.

You can learn much more about the history and practice of Ashtanga yoga by following this link to the terrific historical and practical research done by Betty Lai at http://www.ashtanga.com/html/background.html.