Anytime you pull in your stomach, tuck your tail bone, take a conscious deep breath or bring any awareness to your alignment or well being, you are doing yoga. Standing in line at the bank, stand in tadasana. Sitting in your car you can engage your bondas. Keep the thread of yoga woven through each day.
Namaste
Pranayama breath is not only and integral part of your yoga practice, it is the most important part. Long, steady inhales and exhales for a half hour, hour or two hours have long term positive effects on the body. Deep breathing gives the mind something to listen to, helping to clear cluttering thoughts and create a meditative peacefulness. Deep breaths fill the body with oxygen which cleanses the organs and rids the body of harmful toxins. Deep breaths energize, renew, invigorate. Deep breaths on combined with endorphins released from stretching the muscles and breaking up lactic acid crystals…..There is no greater high.
Breathe and enjoy!
Yoga is there to meet us where we are. You should never feel bad about where you are or wish you were more like your neighbor. There is a practice for you right now, just as you are.
- Kate Holcombe, founder of the Healing Yoga Foundation in San Francisco
Yoga has been a part of American life for almost 120 years. Yoga has changed Americans and Americans have made their mark on the practice. Asana practice has become more athletic, vinyasa flows are faster and new poses are being explored. The more asana practice evolves, the more important it is to learn the principles of alignment taught by some of yoga’s great teachers, such as BKS Iyengar.
We don’t transcend our lives through yoga; we return to the life we left behind in hopes of something better.
-Donna Farhi
I practice now not so much with ambition as with gratitude.
-Judith Lasater
Yoga helped reduce he number and severity of injuries I suffered. As preventative medicine, it’s unequaled.
-Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Nonsense, there is always time. Get on your hands and knees, pull your heels toward the ground extend your hips to the sky into downward dog. Close your eyes and mouth inhale and exhale deeply, in and out through the nose. Focus your mind on the sound of your breath. Breathe and lengthen out your limbs for as long as you are able to stay in downward dog. You are creating a meditative mental space that you can come back to throughout your day and life to bring you to your centered core place of strength.
My students are and endless source of inspiration for me. To simply witness people come to class, engage in their breath and their bodies, find their rhythm and see themselves through their practice is a powerful, prolific experience.
The senses are more powerful than the objects of desire. Greater than the senses is the mind, higher than the mind is the reason and superior reason is the spirit in all.
-Bhagavad Gita