Yoga For Beginners Guide

By Kimaya Singh As a yoga teacher, you are going to accept many students, who are all going to be of different weights, heights, body frames, levels of flexibility, and more. Typically, you don't have to worry too much about the average student you teach because most can practice the techniques, but when dealing with pregnant women, you should consider changing up your class.

By: Virginia Iversen, M.Ed. Can Yoga be used as an adjunct therapy for addiction recovery? According to the National Sleep Foundation, roughly 60 million Americans have difficulty with some form of insomnia on a regular basis. Insomnia can take the form of problems falling asleep, staying asleep throughout the night and waking up too early. Some health conditions can exacerbate ongoing difficulty with insomnia, including sleep apnea and restless leg syndrome. Your family doctor or a local sleep clinic can often successfully address these physical health issues.

By Faye Martins Yoga is good for you, and we all know that. As a yoga teacher, you have the ability to help people deal with a lot of health problems, and heart problems are no different. According to Dr. Suzie Bertisch, a medical instructor at Harvard, the benefits of yoga for the heart are quite immense. In addition to making the body healthy, it helps to improve the symptoms of heart failure, ease palpitations, enhance the rehabilitation of the heart and reduce blood pressure.

By Azahar Aguilar As a yoga instructor, you are there to challenge your students into new spaces mentally and physically from what they may never thought possible for themselves before. However, you are also there to keep your students safe and injury free. How to establish this balance between challenge and safety?

Actually it's simple and easy to stop smoking. Many people find it difficult and are unable to quit because they don't know how to invoke cooperation from their subconscious mind, how to harness that power in their everyday lives and so become the individual they want to be. By practicing yoga and self-hypnosis, we can find joy and pleasure that within days to weeks will empower an individual to quit smoking and remain a nonsmoker for the rest of his or her life.

By Azahar Aguilar Responsibility rests on yoga instructors to look out for the student's safety before, during and after class. A safe teaching track record leaves you and your students confident and better able to focus on the practice. Established studio tracking methods as well as constant communication between teachers and students will create this type of caring environment.

By: Virginia Iversen, M.Ed Deeply restorative and refreshing sleep can be quite elusive for many Yoga practitioners. With the frenetic pace of many Yoga teachers and students' lives, winding down for a good night's sleep is frequently challenging, if not impossible. As we all rush to squeeze in one appointment after another during our already fully scheduled days, the fight or flight response is often locked on overdrive and anxiety and stress levels can stay high well into the night. When this happens, the body and mind are physiologically unable to unwind and ease into a peaceful state of being, rather than constantly doing.

By Avalon Hicks Addictions in one form or another can help to slowly destroy anything and everything. From destroying relationships to destroying health and wealth, addictions have been notoriously found, to be at the center of all kinds of negativity. Most addictions start off as simply being part of a social experiment or a teenage dare, and for some, it stops at just this, but for the vast majority, the simple experiment eventually evolves into something more sinister and nasty. There are addictions that could have started out as medications necessary to treat certain health or mental conditions. There are also addictions that could have been a means or an immediate solution to a dedicate problem or a stressful work situation. Either way, any addiction usually spirals out of control and in more severe cases could result in death.

By Avalon Hicks The practice of yoga is essential for many aspects of physical, mental and spiritual health. Yoga is known as a Hindu spiritual practice that includes controlled breathing, meditation, mantras and holding many different body postures in order to aid in relaxation and promote health benefits. Many benefits of yoga can include self-awareness, mental calmness and even strength and flexibility. If you have been practicing yoga for some time and want to teach others there are some points that you need to keep in mind while you begin the road to teaching others about your practice.

By Azahar Aguilar Unrealistic yoga claims. As teachers, you've all been there before. Either to overhear others or to hear the words come out of your own mouth, "Yoga is like a natural sleeping pill, an anti-anxiety medication, a weight-loss goldmine, prevents heart attacks, and will make you live past 100 years-old with the face of a 20 year-old. It's true! My sister's best friend's brother's neighbor is 101 and swears by it."

By Azahar Aguilar "A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." - Henry Adams A yoga student will ideally have many yoga teachers in his or her lifetime. One teacher cannot act as an expert in all styles, modalities and afflictions, especially with the diversity of the human population, the human body and the number of options in yoga styles today.

By Avalon Hicks For years, yoga has been praised as a spiritual and physical practice able to increase flexibility in the body and help reduce stress. However, there are specialized programs that use yoga as a form of mental exercise designed to increase focus and clarity of thought. This type of Yoga has been used in several studies and has been shown to have significant results in both adults and children.

By Bhavan Kumar, CYT 500 Being a yoga teacher is very rewarding. It's a job where you get to help people physically and mentally, you can be active and moving throughout the day, and you have flexibility and choice in your work schedule. However, like any job, there are going to be days when it's hard to get out of bed and enthusiastically greet the day. This doesn't mean your teaching style and approach has to suffer. By practicing what you teach to your yoga students, you can enthusiastically engage your students even if you are having a rough day. These tips can help you bring your best self to all your classes, whether the day seems bright and sunny or bleary and gray.

By Kimya Singh Yoga instructors do far more then simply teach students a variety of poses. In many cases, yoga teachers are a role model for fitness, spirituality, and ethical behavior. Because yoga instructors are so influential in so many different ways, there are several ethical guidelines in place for them to follow. As a yoga teacher, it is important to review these ethical guidelines and make an effort to demonstrate ethical behavior, whether you are in the studio, at home, or just out in the world. This will give you the ability to be more then just an instructor - you can be a role model for peace and change in your students' lives.

By Amruta Kulkarni, CYT 500 How a yoga teacher chooses to guide and adjust a student depends greatly upon individual style, instruction, previous knowledge, and abilities. There are no particular rules about assisting, and it tends to be a gray area when discussing yoga instruction. Knowing when to physically assist a student is crucial to their experience and it should be done with care.

By Kimaya Singh Yoga can be a great way for someone to recover from a variety of painful and debilitating injuries, such as pulled muscles, torn ligaments, and broken bones. The gentle, low-impact movements of yoga can help strengthen muscles, soothe the mind, regain full use of limbs, and reduce overall pain. However the practice, if done incorrectly, can exacerbate current injuries and even lead to new ones. It is all too easy for an inexperienced yoga practitioner to push him or herself too far or get into a pose incorrectly. As a yoga teacher, it's important to stay up-to-date on how to prevent student injuries in the classroom. There are many continuing education options for this topic, and they can help any yoga instructor avoid having student injuries occur in their classes.

By Ishrattasleem Tasleem Research and clinical studies about Yogic therapy seem to indicate that the mind and body are connected with each other in a holistic way. In turn, yoga works to reduce suffering from mental distress, depression and anxiety, with daily practice. Everyone experiences feelings of stress and anxiety at times in his or her life. When the level of stress reaches the highest degree of tolerance, it pushes us into a state we call: "panic attacks."

The human back is a miraculous assembly of bones, ligaments, tendons, muscles and nerves. Backs should be both incredibly strong and supremely flexible at the same time. The back supports the whole body from the neck, through the upper back into the lower and then to the bottom of the spine. We use it for every single movement we make. If your back is hurting nothing seems to go right. Your back is the entire support system for your body and keeping it strong and supple is important for your overall wellbeing.

By: Virginia Iversen, M.Ed With the advent of the warmer weather, many Yogis and Yoginis incorporate a diversity of outdoor athletic activities into their fitness regime. Some of these activities may include rock climbing, mountain biking and hiking. Other popular summertime activities are swimming, jogging and tennis. According to sports physiologists, it is important for an athlete to cross-train because by engaging in a variety of different sporting activities, he or she will strengthens different muscles groups in the body. Additionally, by becoming involved in a competitive sport, an individual will experience a clear sense of purpose and will easily formulate a set of concrete fitness goals to strive towards.

By Junaid Ghouri Yoga is a holistic practice that has been around for thousands of years. There are many of us who have given up of the spiritual side of the yoga exercise program, and have used its methods to embrace many physical, emotional, and mental advantages. You will notice that there are ways in which you'll be able to use the stretches and strength building exercises for you to improve upon your self-image.