Yoga General Information
Yoga Has Something for Everybody…
Yoga is a life style that is emerging as a complementary healthcare discipline and can be viewed as a method of taking responsibility for your wellness needs for your body, mind and spirit.
Having spent the greater part of my life as a Hatha yoga practitioner, I am convinced that yoga has something for everybody at every stage of life. Yoga promotes personal integrity on a deep and lasting level. Yoga teaches you to recognize how your truth, breath, thoughts, attitude, posture, diet, habits and discipline impact the quality of your life. Through steady continuous practice you become capable of experiencing your life in the present moment more consistently.
As a healing modality yoga allows you to embrace your strengths and weaknesses helping you to feel better everyday. Yoga improves your overall attitude and, like good nutrition, yoga becomes a way of life, an excellent tool to depend on through the highs and lows of our on going journey here on Earth.
Personalized Yoga Programs are ideal for you, your family and your business associates. Programs are tailored for each individual, you receive one on one attention, and specific needs are addressed using postures, breathing, relaxation, meditation, and spiritual texts to ease current challenges and overall health. Whether you struggle physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually or your simply want to take your life experience to a more positive place yoga has something for you.
Set yourself on the path to discovery, expansion and freedom through Yoga today. Click here to register for yoga classes at Marydale’s Param Yoga Healing Arts Center.
Top 10 Reasons to “Make the Yoga Connection”
Shared with permission from © 2005 Yoga Alliance
Give yoga a try and discover what it can do for body and mind.
A central premise in yoga is “everything is connected.” That’s clear when looking at the health and fitness benefits of yoga that have long been reported by practitioners and are now being confirmed by scientific research.
- STRESS RELIEF: Yoga reduces the physical effects of stress on the body. By encouraging relaxation, yoga helps to lower the levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Related benefits include lowering blood pressure and heart rate, improving digestion and boosting the immune system as well as easing symptoms of conditions such as anxiety, depression, fatigue, asthma and insomnia.
- PAIN RELIEF: Yoga can ease pain. Studies have demonstrated that practicing yoga asanas (postures), meditation or a combination of the two, reduced pain for people with conditions such as cancer, multiple sclerosis, auto-immune diseases and hypertension as well as arthritis, back and neck pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, fibromyalgia, eczema, irritable bowel syndrome and other chronic conditions. Some practitioners report that even emotional pain can be eased through the practice of yoga.
- BETTER BREATHING: Yoga teaches people to take slower, deeper breaths. This helps to improve lung function, trigger the body’s relaxation response and increase the amount of oxygen available to the body.
- FLEXIBILITY: Yoga helps to improve flexibility and mobility, increasing range of movement and reducing aches and pains. Many people can’t touch their toes during their first yoga class. Practitioners begin to use the correct muscles to make the movement and, over time, the ligaments, tendons and muscles gradually lengthen and elasticity is increased. These gradual changes can mean that more and more poses are possible.
- INCREASED STRENGTH: Yoga asanas (postures) use every muscle in the body, helping to increase strength literally from head to toe. And, while the postures practiced in yoga strengthen the body, they also provide an additional benefit of helping to relieve muscular tension.
- WEIGHT MANAGEMENT: Yoga (even less vigorous styles) can aid weight control efforts by reducing the cortisol levels as well as by burning excess calories and reducing stress. Yoga also encourages healthy eating habits and provides a heightened sense of well being and self esteem.
- IMPROVED CIRCULATION: Yoga helps to improve circulation and, as a result of various poses, more efficiently moves oxygenated blood to the body’s cells.
- CARDIOVASCULAR CONDITIONING: Even gentle yoga practice can provide cardiovascular benefits by lowering resting heart rate, increasing endurance and improving oxygen uptake during exercise.
- BETTER BODY ALIGNMENT: Yoga helps to improve body alignment, resulting in better posture and helping to relieve back, neck, joint and muscle problems.
- FOCUS ON THE PRESENT: Yoga helps us to focus on the present, to become more aware and to help create mind body health. It opens the way to improved coordination, reaction time and memory.
Commonly Asked Questions
The words Om, omen, amen and amin, which are spoken in all houses of prayer, are of the same origin. It is the power of the word that works upon each atom of the body, making it sonorous, making it a medium of communication between the external life and the inner life’. Hazart Inayat Khan—The Music of Life
Why do we chant Om at the beginning and end of class?
Chanting Om is an offering to the Divine, it can create a shift in consciousness, as it represents the passage of birth, death, rebirth, and the resonance is said to activate the seven major chakras.
One beautiful definition of Om is summoning God.
This is the traditional greeting in India with hands held to the heart in prayer pose (anjali mudra) and means the ‘Divine or Light in me, recognizes ( honors or bows) to the Divine (Light) in you. Often it is used in yoga class as an offering of one’s soul to the divine.
The first four stages of Patanjali’s ashtanga yoga concentrate on refining personalities, gaining mastery over the body, and developing an energetic awareness of ourselves, all of which prepares us for the second half of the journey, which deals with the senses, the mind, and attaining a higher state of consciousness.
I: YAMAS: (Behavior restraints.) Ethical guidelines for the yogi pertaining to her relationship with others in society, the outer environment, or Nature. All the yamas apply to actions, words, and thoughts:
Ahimsa: Kindness
Satya: Non-lying
Asteya: Non-stealing
Brahmacharya: Continence
Aparigraha: Non-greedy
II: NIYAMAS: (Internal-restraints): Ethical guidelines for the yogi pertaining to her daily activities. Observances of one’s own physical appearance, actions, words and thoughts.
Saucha: Cleanliness
Samtosha: Contentment
Tapas: Spiritual Austerities
Svadhyaya: Spiritual Reflection
Ishvara pranidhana: Surrender to God
III: ASANA: Postures, the practice of which leads to the habit of discipline and the ability to concentrate: necessary for mediation
IV: PRANAYAMA: Breath Control to gain mastery over the respiratory process while recognizing the connection between the breath, the mind, and the emotions and to extend life itself by the rejuvenation
V: PRATYAHARA: Sense withdrawal or sensory transcendence; focus inward
VI: DHARANA: Concentration; single-point focus
VII: DHYANA: Meditation or contemplation; being keenly aware without focus
VIII: SAMADHI: Union with the Divine: ecstasy; complete Self-transcendence; a profound connection to the Divine and an interconnectedness with all living things; “the peace that surpasseth all understanding”; the experience of bliss and being at one with the Universe—all to achieve what all human beings aspire to: peace
“Yoga leads to a body that is easeful, a mind that is peaceful, which results in a life that is useful.” —Paraphrased from Swami Satchidananda, a pioneer in bringing yoga to the United States.