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.