Tratak - intense concentration on an outside object

Tratak has many potential uses, but the word may simply be translated as (intense) concentration. Actually it means an unbroken gaze or attention fixed on an object, a steady gazing at a particular point or object without winking - looking at or into it. Read more »

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Yoga how to: how to become a yoga instructor

Do you want to become certified as a yoga instructor? Yoga is now offered in nearly every gym and fitness-health club. Yoga is a very old complete method of health and fitness which originated in India. It is no surprise that Yoga has become accepted as one of the best ways to achieve health, fitness and balance. Yoga is not a belief or a religion but a way to reach our greater mental and physical potential. Yoga is an advanced system that works on developing and balancing strength and flexibility, stamina, focus and endurance. Read more »

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Beginner yoga dvd

Trying to find well-done yoga videos that are truly appropriate for beginners can be a discouraging challenge.

Most yoga DVDs these days aim at intermediate or advanced yoga exercisers and there are no explicit yoga positions for beginners. These yoga DVDs may offer a few beginner yoga moves here and there, but the instruction clearly is geared to yoga exercisers who already know what to do.

The few yoga DVDs that are marketed for beginners often are appallingly boring, as if flabby muscles always mean a flabby brain. And too often, they provide no way to add extra challenge or complexity to the postures routine, as if beginning exercisers are going to remain beginners forever.

Yoga zone conditioning and stress release beginner

It’s nice, then, to discover Yoga Zone: Flexibility and Tone, a beginners’ tape that offers the depth of instruction and easy pace that true beginners need.

When these yoga DVDs describe how the muscles of the feet ought to rotate through to the little toe, you’ll know — and be able to feel — just what to do.

But each move contains so many of these instructions that it can be a little overwhelming to try to master all of them at once.

Yoga for beginner dvd

Another well done yoga beginners DVD, although more focused on power yoga is Mark Blanchard’s Progressive Power Yoga. Blanchard has trained many fit celebrities including Jennifer Lopez, Kim Delaney, Rachel Griffiths, Willem Dafoe, Jennie Garth, Andy Garcia, James Wilder, Lucy Liu and Drew Barrymore. Blanchard also specializes in training golfers, basketball players and other professional athletes since he keenly understands yoga’s healing powers. “The internal practice improves mental focus, clarity and split-second concentration while the outward physical practice hones strength, speedwork and reaction-time,” he says. A leader of the Power Yoga movement, Mark Blanchard has his Studio City location in Southern California with ten others planned around the United States. Known as Mark Blanchard’s Power Yoga Centers, they are flourishing. “Students tell us how they appreciate the family atmosphere and friendly greetings when they enter,” says Mark Blanchard. “There’s no attitude in our studios. We come only to practice and to feel calm and in balance with the world around us.”

A solid power yoga program should help you feel more powerful, confident and balanced yet also simultaneously feel compassionate, fluid, gentle and kind. Basically, the term ‘Power Yoga’ was developed to help people understand that this style of Hatha (the physical kind) is a challenging practice with athletic movements that help you energetically flow from one pose to the next. But there’s so much more to it than that!

Yoga for beginners

Yoga positions for beginners are usually effortless to learn. If you have not experienced any beginner yoga class or have not seen one, that is not a problem.

If it is your first time to hear of yoga, you will of course wonder how these exercises are done and how it looks like. Since you are a beginner, you will also definitely ask what kind of positions will be best for you.

If you want to practice the yoga positions for beginners, you must believe that yoga as seen on yoga DVDs can be effective and will help you to gain more energy or be refreshed.

Yoga is not just a modern application like fitness or Pilates. It has been practiced and applied a long time ago and up to the present, the yoga practitioners are benefiting a lot from doing regular yoga positions.

A high level of joint flexibility is the main benefit that the yoga positions for beginners give. Although the yoga positions for beginners are just simple and basic, it can slowly bring up a healthy lifestyle and bring more when it is practiced over and over again.

Beginner yoga exercises

The yoga positions for beginners are very appealing and stimulating to perform. Beginners will never find it hard to keep up with the exercises because it is just simple. The technique of yoga gives a very big contributing factor to our internal glands and organs. It also includes the parts of the human body which is hardly ever stimulated.

If you want to learn the yoga positions for beginners, you can learn it easily at home through a suitable beginner yoga DVD or at school where yoga is taught.

Some basic yoga positions for beginners include standing poses, seated poses, forward and backward bends, balance and twisting. These yoga positions for beginners are not that far from those who are used to practicing yoga. Only that the extreme poses and positions are handled at the latter part of the exercise.

Another point to remember when practicing beginners yoga postures is that the duration in executing the positions are lessened because a beginner cannot fully cope up with a longer time exposure in practice. Rest is required of the beginner so that he will not be drained easily to prepare the body for further positions.

Self discipline is the only requisite required in the first months of practice. Yoga is not just doing yoga and executing the poses. If you haven’t mastered the basics yet, do not jump into the complex stages and positions because you will not feel the essence of executing the yoga positions for beginners.

What's happenin? Briefs for 9/05/08 issue (Beach Bulletin)

Submit calendar items two weeks in advance; notices are run according to space availability. If you have a social event you would like possibly published, post it on our virtual newsroom at Beach-Bulletin.com, fax to 765-0846 or e-mail Editor Melissa Schneider at mschneider@breezenewspapers.com . []

News from the Marblehead-Swampscott YMCA: Sept. 4 online edition (Marblehead Reporter)

Here’s the latest from the Marblehead-Swampscott YMCA, with headquarters at 94 Pleasant St., Marblehead, with news of new and expanded fall sessions of many kinds …. []

East Bay Events and Arts Calendars (Berkeley Daily Planet)

Baby & Toddler Storytime at 10:15 and 11:15 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. []


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Corrective asanas

The corrective asanas prepare various muscles, articulations, tendons and many reflex mechanisms, in a way to make the body and mind fit for higher yoga practices. Read more »

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Relaxing asanas

Yoga relaxation is directly connected with the awareness and it has for objective the lessening of tensions that operate on the level of consciousness (citta). The concept of cittavishrânti (stillness on the level of consciousness) has gained in importance from hatha-yoga, which attributes a great meaning to the mental relaxation. Read more »

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Bikram yoga class

Bikram Yoga is for beginners, as well as advanced students of yoga. Bikram yoga is a challenging of 26 asanas, or postures, and 2 breathing exercises and is generally considered as the most intense type of yoga. Bikram Yoga is ideally practiced in a room heated to 105°F. Read more »

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The Higher Achievements

One of the higher efforts and achievements of concentration of mind has been well described by Dr. Annie Besant in her book The Ancient Wisdom, in the following words: Read more »

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The Roads of Thought

The drift which I have so carefully described and you, I hope, have inspected in your own mind, is not a bad thing nor a disorderly one. It is the relaxed condition of the mind, and we can use it for resting when we are mentally tired. In the course of prolonged study involving mental effort we may stop awhile to rest and recuperate by simply leaning back, closing the eyes, relaxing the body — especially the neck — and quietly watching the mental drift. Read more »

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The Four Great Enemies

It is said in an old Indian book that there are four great enemies to human success: (I) a sleepy heart, (2) human passions, (3) a confused mind, and (4) attachment to anything but Brahman. [Each student has to attach his own meaning to this word, keeping it always flexible, so that it may expand and become illumined. Literally: the Evolutioner, Grower or Expander, not creator] Read more »

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Control of the Body and Senses - How to Sit

I HAVE already spoken of relaxation and muscle balance, and their relation to the practices of concentration and meditation. These are necessary so that (I) the body may not be injured by the mental efforts and (2) the mental work may not be spoiled by bodily discomfort. Thirdly, we have to remember that bodily attitudes are associated with states of feeling, such as lying down with sleep, and kneeling with prayer. That has to be taken into consideration when you are selecting a posture, but there is no objection to your lying down to concentrate or meditate, so long as you find that it does not conduce to sleepiness. Read more »

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The Five Bodily Exercises

1. The Standing Exercise.
With your watch in sight try to stand perfectly still (except for breathing and blinking) in front of a mirror for three to five minutes. Make no response to any twitching, tickling, itching, creeping, aching or creaking feelings that may arise. Think “stillness”, not “not-moving-ness”. Read more »

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Exercises in Sequence

Exercise 5.
Look round a room, noticing the various objects in order. Close the eyes and review them mentally. Again, follow a procession of the letters, of the alphabet, and any different alphabets you may know, such as the Greek, Russian, Hebrew, or Devanagari. Read more »

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Gnani Yoga - by Yogi Ramacharaka

The Yogi Philosophy may be divided into several great branches, or fields. What is known as “Hatha Yoga” deals with the physical body and its control; its welfare; its health; its preservation; its laws, etc. What is known as “Raja Yoga” deals with the Mind; its control; its development; its unfoldment, etc. What is known as “Bhakti Yoga” deals with the Love of the Absolute–God. What is known as “Gnani Yoga” deals with the scientific and intellectual knowing of the great questions regarding Life and what lies back of Life–the Riddle of the Universe. Read more »

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Sadhana

SADHANA is that which produces siddhi. It is the means, or practice, by which the desired end may be attained, and consists in the exercise and training of the body and psychic faculties, upon the gradual perfection of which siddhi follows; the nature and degree of which, again, depends upon the progress made towards the realization of the atma, whose veiling vesture the body is. Read more »

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Anusara Immersion program

The Anusara Immersion program is intended to give power to yoga practice through attentive study, practice and dialogue. The Anusara Immersion is a flight into the lessons of Anusara Yoga (Asana, Pranayama, Meditation). The Anusara Immersion is perfect for those that desire to research the mystery and deep practices of Anusara yoga. Read more »

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Inequalities and Diversities of Life

The doctrine of Reincarnation alone can explain satisfactorily and rationally the diversities among children and the reason of the many instances of uncommon powers and genius displayed in childhood. The theory of heredity has up to this time failed to give any good reason for them. Read more »

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What is Asana?

The term âsana literally means “sitting position” or simply “position”: it points out a bodily posture that contributes to the physical and mental stability and it generates a sense of comfort.

The term âsana is also used to point out a vegetable mat, or also a skin of well tanned antelope, which is a comfortable support to sit on the ground. In hatha-yoga the âsanas occupy a primary place, while they represent the third step in the eightfold yoga of Patañjali (astânga). Read more »

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A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga - by Yogi Ramacharaka

THE “I.”

In India, the Candidates for Initiation into the science of “Raja Yoga,” when they apply to the Yogi Masters for instruction, are given a series of lessons designed to enlighten them regarding the nature of the Real Self, and to instruct them in the secret knowledge whereby they may develop the consciousness and realization of the real “I” within them. They are shown how they may cast aside the erroneous or imperfect knowledge regarding their real identity. Read more »

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Will is the attribute of the Real Self

As we have said, the purpose of this lesson is to bring you in the way of the unfoldment of consciousness, rather than to teach you the details of the scientific side of the Yogi teachings. Development is the keynote of Raja Yoga. And the reason that we wish to develop this sense of the Reality of the “I,” and the Expansion of the Self, at this place is that thereby you may assert your Mastery over Matter, Energy and Mind. Read more »

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Dharana

The second step in Raja Yoga is what is known as Dharana, or Concentration. This is a most wonderful idea in the direction of focusing the mental forces, and may be cultivated to an almost incredible degree, but all this requires work, time, and patience. But the student will be well repaid for it. Concentration consists in the mind focusing upon a certain subject, or object, and being held there for a time. Read more »

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The Importance of Concentration

Concentration is a focusing of the mind. And this focusing of the mind requires a focusing, or bringing to a center, of the Will. The mind is concentrated because the Will is focused upon the object. The mind flows into the mould made by the Will. The above exercises are designed not only to accustom the mind to the obedience and direction of the Will, but also tend to accustom the Will to command. Read more »

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