By Santosh Dhanaji Patil Yoga and India aren't strangers, yet we find Yoga's popularity suddenly spiking after it's embraced by the west. It has become the thing to do to be fit with celebrities swearing by it. It is as if Yoga is a 'novel' concept or is reinvented by the west. After it has become the 'in' thing, there are two sets of people- the ones who do it and others who don't. Most of people who do it, adopt yoga for life while the others don't want to do it because of the myths around it or don't know how.

By Jenny Park How many of your students participate in yoga training in order to age gracefully? The first I became aware of this was during yoga instructor training, when students older than my mom looked about 10 years older than me. In the public eye, anyone can pick a celebrity that they admire who seems as if they must have found the Fountain of Youth. I can guarantee that nine times out of ten, that celebrity practices yoga or pays huge bills for cosmetic surgery.

By Jenny Park After finishing your yoga teacher training, everybody comes out of the woodwork to ask you about pain relief. Sometimes, visiting the doctor, getting a prescription, or an over the counter pain killer is the best solution, but Yogic practices offer us many more solutions to pains and aches that have plagued humans since the beginning.

While you may never run a marathon or achieve a perfect dance pose, you can greatly increase your health and well being by regularly practicing yoga. Yoga helps to focus your mind and a focused mind can help shape your body! The mind is powerful and what we think we can become.

By Helena Lucas My greatest sources of joy are spending time with my cats, living in the ever watching jungle, belly-dancing, ballet and rock-climbing. I studied Psychology at … What qualities do you long to perceive in yourself? Do you feel that you can only change 'that' much of you? If this is so, you are not yet familiar with the fundamental truth of Yoga: "The body is the temple of the spirit, conceived in the image of its maker". Through consistent yoga practice, students soon become aware of the infinite power and beauty of their own individual body. Indeed others around will be quick to perceive "something different" in you- be sure to share your secret with them. Yoga's breathing, stretching and meditation exercises promote optimal physical and mental health that shows.

By Kimaya Singh Those of us who teach yoga classes on a regular basis know the wonderful side effects it has on our lives. Those who have never practiced before may have heard of the benefits, but they may not necessarily put a lot of stock into them because they haven't seen firsthand results. If you're a beginner, follow a few practical tips to get the most out of your beginning yoga experience.

Yoga practice aims for internal balance. Fundamentally this involves optimisation of your endocrine system. Yoga postures and breathing techniques, in conjunction with meditation practices and chanting, stimulate your endocrine glands to enhance their functioning. This is achieved by internal massage on muscles and spine, by internal massage through sounds, by improving circulation, by stimulation of body areas which have connections to specific organs as demonstrated through reflexology techniques, focusing on chakras, and exercising the triple warmer muscles of your thorax.

Pregnant students require a specialist who has completed prenatal yoga teacher training to keep a keen eye not only on the student herself but the child she is carrying. While most students require variations or adjustments to typical poses, pregnancy carries with it a unique challenge in ensuring the health and safety of both mother and child.

By Sangeetha Saran Can Yoga teacher training prepare you for the temptations in life? Especially during the busy holiday season, it's easy to pick up a cookie or grab a glass of eggnog without even thinking about it. Amidst the hustle and bustle, we forget to practice the habits we use during the rest of the year. When it's all over, or before, we can restore a little balance and eliminate stress with a regular Yoga training session. Asanas, deep breathing and meditation all contribute to clean mind and body.

As the simple gift of ease and spaciousness increases with each inhalation and exhalation during their practice of this flowing version of Extend Child's Pose, you can gently invite your students to release any negative emotions, thinking patterns or beliefs that may be holding them back in their lives. In this way, their Yoga practice will begin to mirror the release of the brilliantly colored fall leaves as they drift to the soft earth below. When you offer your students Yoga classes that are informed by the rich wisdom of the seasons, they will quite naturally align and be supported by the rhythms of the natural world around them.

By Jenny Park Most yoga teacher training courses don't go into running partner sessions. Many of us learn more about it after yoga certification. If you've never taught partner yoga it is a wonderful way to not only connect and bring people together, but a great way for one who is very much into yoga to share the benefits with a loved one who may be a little timid about starting a routine.

Yoga Heals Back Pain Quickly - Yoga works on stretching and strengthening, and the key to long-term healing is strength, says Liz Owen, who studied with B.K.S. Iyengar, founder of the Iyengar yoga discipline. Since the emotional effects of chronic pain are often devastating, the calming, grounding benefits of yoga can be very therapeutic. Viniyoga is an modified form of yoga that focuses on slow stretches and deep breathing and the use of several yoga accessories such as blocks. It is used in many medical institutions such as UCLA's Pediatric Pain Program which features yoga, and the Seattle Cancer Treatment and Wellness Center which offers yoga classes along with acupuncture and nutritional counseling.

By Kimaya Singh Our children live in challenging times, and teaching them how to build a peaceful world is at least as important as passing tests and being good athletes. We must teach them how to work together, resolve problems, accept differences, and take care of their bodies and their environment. We also need to teach them social skills like compassion, anger-management, and empathy. Yoga teacher training graduates, who work with children, are likely to see many changes in education in the near future.

Since researchers have made a recent discovery that the brain has the capacity to form new neural connections throughout life, however, traditional medicine has become more open to the idea that the mind can be trained to react in positive ways to changes or trauma. There are now many programs that offer "brain training," but Yoga is the oldest and most proven.

Yoga is one of the easiest and best ways for us to look after our physical wellbeing. The reason for this is that yoga exercises are so incredibly simple that they can be performed by even the most out of shape person and the more regularly you exercise the healthier you become. Yoga is also an efficient way of releasing stress and tension. During our normal workdays certain blockages develop around the body and that's results in a number of vital organs not getting enough oxygen and other nutrients they need to function efficiently. Yoga designed to stretch different muscle groups in a particular ways that will remove these blockages from the body and the blood flow will bring all the oxygen and other nutrients to all body organs.

By Faye Martins How much do you really know about the inner workings of your shoulders in yoga training? It's important that anatomy be covered within every teacher training course. If there is so much emphasis on asana in the physical styles, it would be natural for instructors to know exactly how the body works, its limitations and how to modify asanas for people with ailments.

By Faye Martins Yogic methodology is sometimes referred to as a solution to all problems, but with laws as they are, many yoga instructors are careful not to over promise. Yoga teacher training web sites constantly warn instructors about making unrealistic promises that we can't deliver. What we can morally promise is reduced pain and prevention.

By Sangeetha Saran It is important to remember one of the primary purposes of yoga. Yogic practices tend to reduce suffering - Although the goal is to end all suffering. This is the reason why we still see so many therapeutic yoga teacher trainings to this day. Any type of trauma can be treated through yogic practices. Life has many different traumas but it's important to know that through trauma we learn of ourselves and grow as individuals. Tackling traumas with yoga, including injury as well as mental trauma, such as the loss of a loved one can speed us on our way to a healthy and happy life. Yoga does help one become more grounded in all areas of their life. It pushes us to notice and appreciate our strengths and our weakness and gain self-acceptance. The feeling of overcoming a traumatic event in life and conquering it breeds a strength and confidence in ourselves that no one can take away.

Having a yoga instructor can really help to boost your yoga practice. They will demonstrate the asanas (postures) so you can really see what you need to be doing and they will help you by watching what you do and making small corrections to keep your body aligned and safe. However Yoga is a wonderful tool for stress management that you can learn on your own with the help of a DVD or book.

By Faye Martins Sometimes, students have joint problems and Yoga instructors find solutions to work around an injury. The point is to take a whole body viewpoint, because Hatha Yoga works on the entire being. Some of the asanas are for specific injuries, prevention, and different stages of recovery. At the same time, modification and the use of props are extremely important.