There are the many well-known health benefits of yoga. These include improving flexibility and balance, building strength and endurance, developing focus and concentration, de-stressing and helping with sleep. Yoga can also help you maintain a strong, healthy spine through a better posture.
Many women are hesitant to join pregnancy yoga classes, mainly because their energy levels are already depleted just from being pregnant. Trying to commit to an exercise routine can therefore be difficult.
It could be said that children these days can benefit from yoga more than ever before. With stimulation and distractions from the moment they wake until the moment they close their eyes at night, children are becoming more stressed and pressured by the environment we live in. In many cases, little is being done to…
Bikram yoga has received a lot of interest in the last few decades as yogis take their practice to the sauna-style yoga studio. Bikram Choudhury first experimented using heaters in his studios whilst teaching in Japan in the 1970’s but it was a decade later that hot yoga really boomed, starting in Hollywood. What is…
International Yoga Day is today – Tuesday 21st June. This event was initiated and formalised in 2015, so whilst it is a new idea it is now set to be an annual celebration. The idea of this celebration is to promote the practice of yoga and meditation, spreading awareness about the many benefits of adopting yoga into…
Patanjali is one of the most recognised names in yoga history. Whilst there isn’t a huge amount of available information about Patanjali himself, he is known to have been responsible for compiling The Yoga Sutras – a collection of Indian traditions, presented in 195 short verses. This text holds significant value in the history of yoga, as the first structured record of yoga practice as a way of life, which Patanjali took from many different past practices at the time.
It is a common health goal to consider doing yoga for weight loss. Whilst yoga on the whole isn’t as well-known for burning calories as other exercises, some types of yoga can certainly help you lose weight. If coupled with a yoga-mindset, yoga can definitely help with also reducing calorie intake through a holistic heathy…
Whilst hot yoga has become somewhat of a craze in London and the rest of the western world in recent years, with hot yoga classes popping up everywhere, the practice of yoga in hot conditions is not modern. Bikram Choudhury, the founder of Bikram yoga, created this “heated” style of practice, in efforts to meet the climate in India, where yoga originated around 5,000 years ago.
Ashtanga yoga practice, also referred to as Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga, is considered one of the traditional yogas as it’s roots can be traced back to Indian tradition. It was founded by K. Pattabhi Jois, and his students have since infiltrated the corners of the globe teaching his yoga philosophy and methodology. Ashtanga literally means “eight-limb…
The full history of yoga is fairly unclear still, despite many curious researchers digging deep to further piece together the jigsaw.
Part of the reason for this uncertainty, is that in the early days of yoga, knowledge was passed on by word-of-mouth only. Later, this word-of-mouth knowledge was written onto palm leaves, however with their fragility these were often damaged, lost or destroyed, leaving few clues as to the early origins of yoga practice.