Beginning Yoga

As you now know (if you didn’t know it when you started reading, that is!), yoga is a very interesting and ancient approach of uniting the body and the mind.  It has proven health benefits, including emotional and physical improvements. 

The chances therefore are, if you’re on the verge of starting a yoga program (perhaps at a local center or you’ve purchased a video or DVD and want to try it at home), you’re excited, optimistic, and anxious to get going!

Yet it’s wise to note that, before going into yoga practice, you should ask yourself some important questions.  These questions don’t have a right or wrong answer. 

They are merely meant to stimulate your own thoughts and give you the mindset that you need in order to succeed as a student of yoga for the long term.  

Here are the basic questions that you should ask before starting any yoga program:

* Do you want to use yoga as the means to stay fit throughout your pregancy?

* Would you like to continue yoga after you have your baby?
 
* Does my doctor or healthcare provider think yoga is riht for me?

* Are my goals for pursuing a yoga program (or programs) clear and positive?  Do I know what I    want to achieve?

* Am I prepared to commit the time necessary to really get the most of out of my yoga experience? 

*  Are there people around me who might negatively try and talk me out (or mock me out) of pursuing this path of personal development? 

As with all fitness disciplines, what you achieve is directly related to the level of effort or committmet you make.

But overall, you should kow that yoga is a low-impact, moderate type of exercise that has numerous health benefits for you, whether your arae pregnant, a new mom, or even thinking of becoming pregnant.

Yoga & Physical Health

Yoga does not see a distinction between the body and the mind; and this is an understanding that western psychology has also concluded for many years now (the link between mental health and physical health, and vice versa). 

If you’ve come to this book looking to understand yoga as a means to help your body heal or improve, then please don’t worry; you’ve come to the right place! 

Yoga is indeed a process that involves releasing blocked tension and energy in the body, and helping make the muscles, tendons, joints, ligaments, and all other components work to their utmost potential. 

Yoga believes that human beings are optimally designed, by nature, to be flexible and agile; and stiffness and lack of mobility only arrive when the body is unhealthy or out of alignment. 

Therefore, countless people have found themselves in a yoga class, or on a yoga mat at home in front of a Yoga video or DVD, in the hopes of improving their physical health; and perhaps you may be one of them.  If that’s the case, then keep reading! 

There are proven physical benefits of yoga, which include:

• Increased flexibility and range of motion
• Reduced pain in joints and muscles
• Stronger immune system
• Increased  lung capacity and therefore higher quality respiration
• Increased metabolism (which can lead to weight loss!)
• Higher quality of sleep (especially due to improved breathing and a more oxygenated body)

Given that certain yoga practices require postures to be mastered, yoga has always helped promote the body’s flexibility; it also helps in lubricating the joints, ligaments  and tendons. 

So please do keep in mind that, while yoga is often discussed in terms of its mental approach, there are clear and proven physical benefits that are a part of this approach. 

Therefore, if a healthy pregnancy or returning to your pre-baby body is your goal, or the ability to shovel the snow in winter without having your back ache for days, then yoga is as viable an option to you!

The Many Benefits Of Yoga

Yoga through meditation works remarkably to achieve harmony and helps the mind work in synchronization with the body.

How often do we find that we are unable to perform our activities properly and in a satisfying manner because of the confusions and conflicts in our mind weigh down heavily upon us?

Stress is the number one suspect affecting all parts of our physical, endocrinal and emotional system. And with the help of yoga this things can be corrected.

At the physical level, yoga and its cleansing practices have proven to be extremely effective for various disorders.

Listed below are just some of the benefits of yoga ………..

Benefit #1: Yoga is known to increase flexibility; yoga has postures that trigger the different joints of the body. Including those joints that are not acted upon with regular exercises routines.

Benefit # 2: Yoga also increases the lubrication of joints, ligament and tendons. The well-researched yoga positions exercise the different tendons and ligaments of the body.

Benefit # 3: Yoga also massages all organs of the body. Yoga is perhaps the only exercise that can work on through your internal organs in a thorough manner, including those that hardly get externally stimulated during our entire lifetime.

Benefit #4: Yoga acts in a wholesome manner on the various body parts. This stimulation and massage of the organs in turn benefits us by keeping away disease and providing a forewarning at the first possible instance of a likely onset of disease or disorder.

One of the far-reaching benefits of yoga is the uncanny sense of awareness that it develops in the practitioner of an impending health disorder or infection. This in turn enables the person to take pre-emptive corrective action

Benefit #5: Yoga offers a complete detoxification of the body. It gently stretches the muscles and joints as well as massaging the various organs, yoga ensures the optimum blood supply to various parts of the body.

This helps in the flushing out of toxins from every nook and cranny of your body as well as providing nourishment up to the last point. This leads to benefits such as delayed ageing, energy and a remarkable zest for life.

Benefit #6: Yoga is also an excellent way to tone your muscles. Muscles which have been flaccid and weak are stimulated repeatedly to shed excess fats and become more toned.

These enormous physical benefits are just a “side effect” of this powerful practice. What yoga does is harmonize the mind with the body and these results in real quantum benefits.

It is now an open secret that the will of the mind has enabled people to achieve extraordinary physical feats, which proves beyond doubt the mind and body connection.

In fact yoga = meditation, because both work together in achieving the common goal of unity of mind, body and spirit which can lead to an experience of eternal bliss that you can only feel through yoga.

The meditative practices through yoga help in achieving an emotional balance and a stronger, healthier body. This in turn creates a remarkable calmness and a positive outlook, which also has
tremendous benefits.

Supporting a Healthy Lifestyle

There is some very interesting psychology behind this that students of western thinkers (e.g. Freud, Jung, Fromm, etc.) will find familiar and, indeed, quite rational.

When an individual decides to be happy, something within that person activates; a kind of will or awareness emerges.  This awareness begins to observe the jungle of negative thoughts that are swimming constantly through the mind. 

Rather than attacking each of these thoughts – because that would be an unending struggle! – yoga simply advises the individual to watch that struggle; and through that watching, the stress will diminish (because it becomes exposed and thus unfed by the unconscious, unobserving mind!).  

At the same time, as an individual begins to reduce their level of internal negativity, subsequent external negative behaviors begin to fall of their own accord; habits such as excessive drinking, emotional overeating, and engaging in behaviors that, ultimately, lead to unhappiness and suffering. 

With this being said, it would be an overstatement to imply that practicing yoga is the easy way to, say, quit smoking, or to start exercising regularly.  If that were the case, yoga would be ideal! 

Yoga simply says that, based on rational and scientific cause and effect relationships that have been observed for centuries, that when a person begins to feel good inside, they naturally tend to behave in ways that enhance and promote this feeling of inner wellness. 

As such, while smoking (for example) is an addiction and the body will react to the lessening of addictive ingredients such as tar and tobacco (just to name two of many!), yoga will help the process. 

It will help provide the individual with the strength and logic that they need in order to discover that smoking actually doesn’t make them feel good. 

In fact, once they start observing how they feel, they’ll notice without doubt that instead of feeling good, smoking actually makes one feel quite bad inside; it’s harder to breathe, for one.

Now, this book isn’t an anti-smoking book, and if you’ve struggled with quitting smoking then please don’t be offended by any of this; there is no attempt here at all to imply that quitting smoking is easy, or just a matter of willpower. 

Scientists have proven that there is a true physical addiction that is in place, alongside an emotional addiction that can be just as strong; perhaps even stronger.

Different Types Of Yoga

It’s funny to look at it this way, but one of the things that has promoted the spread of yoga in the west, is the same thing that can sometimes prevent someone from truly exploring it and therefore experiencing its health benefits. 

Sometimes when there is only one of something – such as one idea, or one language, or one anything – it’s hard for that thing to spread outside of those who abide by it, agree with it, or simply want it to continue existing. 

Yet when there are multiple ideas and concepts, the chances of it spreading increase; there are just more people out there who will be able to access it, talk about it, and indeed, make it a part of their lives. 

What does this have to do with yoga?  Well, there are many different types of yoga; and the reason for this, as we initially discussed, is that yoga isn’t a religion; it’s an approach to being alive. 

As such, it’s very agile and flexible (no pun intended!) and carries well across cultural, country, and religious boundaries. 

Thanks to its diversity and different facets and types, yoga has spread very swiftly through the western world over last 110 years or so; and is spreading faster now than ever before (many western companies will now pay for yoga classes as part of an enhanced health benefits program). 

Yet this very diversity has led to some confusion; and people who have been exposed to one kind of yoga might accidentally think that they’ve seen it all.  This is more worrisome, of course, when one has been exposed to a kind of yoga that – for whatever reason – they did not like, or perhaps, weren’t quite ready for (just as how some people might turn away from a fitness program if they aren’t in the right frame of mind to see it through). 

So if you’ve experienced yoga, or seen it on television, read about it in a newspaper, or overheard a friend or colleague talk about it, then please be aware that there’s a very good chance that you haven’t been exposed to all that there is (which is wonderful, because it means that this next section will be very interesting and informative for you!).

Six Major Types

Yogic scholars Feuerstein and Bodian note seven major types of yoga, including:

*  Hatha yoga

*  Raja yoga

*  Karma yoga

*  Bhakti yoga

*  jnana yoga

*  Tantra yoga

There are many yoga avensues to explore, but no doublt you are here to learn about moms and yoga.  If that’s the case, please exple the rest of our site!