Yoga Love: Learn to Add Balance to Your Life…

Developing a Love for Yoga: Learning to Add Balance to Your Life…

“If I’m losing balance in a pose, I stretch higher and God reaches down to steady me. It works every time, and not just in yoga.” ~Terri Guillemets

Yoga Love: Add a Yoga Practise to Your Activities by Adria Richards via Flickr

How would you like to start the fall season with an exercise practice that balances body, mind and spirit? Recently, I shared on one of my Positive Kismet blog posts “The Serenity Prayer,” that yoga has been an important part of my life since the 1980s. Even though I’d heard of yoga and meditation for years, I didn’t pay close attention to it until I moved to the US from London. I started practicing it in college as a way to handle both the stress of living in New York City and the demands of a challenging academic program.

The results were profound and I soon found that it helped me make beneficial changes to my diet, my work/study habits and my relationships. Over a period of time, I incorporated the philosophical teachings into my yoga life, found a yoga master/teacher, and studied the traditional Sanskrit texts with thousands of devoted students in an ashram/gurukula/yoga center. It has been a blessing because the exercises or postures/poses/asanas, as they are called, can be learned by people of all ages.

There are many Yoga traditions, from the classic B.K.S. Iyengar style to the more modern Yoga styles to choose from. Because of the widespread growth of this physical and spiritual practice since the 1970s, it is quite easy to find a yoga studio in any major city worldwide.

Yoga instructors typically go through rigorous training and licensing and most incorporate good nutritional tips and meditation to help body and mind. It would be wise to find out what style/type of yoga a studio offers and, ask questions, to determine if it matches your needs. Despite the information shared incorrectly in some circles, it is not a religion but a healthy, spiritual lifestyle; incorporating a form of exercise that enhances our body, mind and spirit.

September is National Yoga Awareness Month and the Yoga Health Foundation (YHF) is offering a week of free classes for new students. You get to choose a convenient location and yoga studio in your area. They are also celebrating the release of the TITANS OF YOGA movie with a world premiere. Between the free classes and the upcoming movie, there should be plenty of good ways to help sharpen our positive mental attitude. **I have added more information from the YHF below to help you read up and request your free pass. Take advantage of this offer and you’ll surprise yourself with how rejuvenated you’ll feel afterward.

Would you like to take a class? As always, I encourage people new to yoga to take a gentle stretch, beginners level class and work your way up…. Let me know what you learn. Do you have a yoga practice? Have you tried a yoga class before? Do Share.

“Yoga means union – the union of body with consciousness and consciousness with the soul. Yoga cultivates the ways of maintaining a balanced attitude in day to day life and endows skill in the performance of one’s actions.” ~ B.K.S. Iyengar
“Yoga: Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape.”~Anon

Yoga Love: Sun Salutations for Body & Mind by Mike Baird via Flickr

CALL TO ACTION!
ONE WEEK FREE YOGA and TITANS OF YOGA movie world premiere to kick-off National Yoga Month September
When was the last time you felt drained by your stressful day, struggled with weight control or had trouble concentrating? Bring a little downward dog into your life and you could see drastic improvement. The ultimate goal of yoga is to develop mind and body free of chronic strain. Whether you’re looking for a change in lifestyle or simply looking for better stress management, yoga can help. Yoga is one of the oldest known sciences in the world and is widely acknowledged as a highly effective complementary alternative medicine. So, as we all explore ways to take better care of ourselves and even reduce health care costs, it gives us a proven way to do so.

September is official National Yoga Month. Cards worth ONE WEEK FREE YOGA and FREE YOGA CLASSES are available to all who visit http://www.yogamonth.org. Get off the couch and onto the yoga mat in the name of better health.

For the first time ever, TITANS OF YOGA – an empowering and inspirational movie and the Official National Yoga Month movie – brings together twenty-five of the most prominent figures in the worlds of yoga, meditation, and mindfulness, from Dr. Dean Ornish, a physician consultant to President Clinton, to Lilias Folan, the “First Lady of Yoga.” As they share their own life experiences from the tragic to the ecstatic, the Titans embark on a journey of self-discovery that touches and inspires.

Their tales of addiction and heartache, depression, an HIV positive diagnosis and a penchant for sex, drugs and rock-and-roll will move you as they share how they overcame these challenges and transformed them into their greatest life victories. Proceeds benefit Yoga-Recess in School to bring yoga-based health education into classrooms. To watch the trailer visit: http://www.yogamonth.org.

National Yoga Month is a grassroots campaign administered by the Yoga Health Foundation, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization. All funds benefit the national awareness campaign and Yoga-Recess in School to bring yoga-based health and fitness education into classrooms.

Again, don’t hesitate to share your yoga experience here. Have you tried a yoga class before? Do you have a yoga practice? Do Share.

PHOTO CREDITS:
Yoga Woman in Pose via Adria Richards on Flickr
Yoga Sun Salutations via Mike Baird on Flickr
Search for Photos ~ courtesy of Google Images

Until Next Time… Ask. Believe. Receive. © Elizabeth Obih-Frank