Sunday, January 25, 2009

Yoga Exercises For Pregnant Women


Pregnant women can definitely benefit from doing yoga. The experience is one in which you can focus on what is happening within your body, relieve the stresses from worry and anxiety as well as keep your body in shape during this time. Pregnancy is a time of great risk though, so any and all exercises performed during this time need to be done with great care. At any time that you feel that you have overdone it, stop and rest. Make sure to ask your doctor if yoga is safe for you during pregnancy especially if you have any complications during it.

Exercises You Can Enjoy And Reap Benefits From

Yoga breathing: Probably the most important aspect to the pregnant women is relaxing and relieving stress. Although it is not an exercise, it is a way of taking control of the body once again to encourage positive-ness and to increase health. The right breathing techniques can provide many benefits. Take the time to practice the most basic of techniques that yoga teaches in breathing.

Standing Yoga poses: In your first trimester, the best exercises to do are the standing yoga poses. These are basic and taught in most yoga sessions. This will help strengthen your legs and muscles and help with circulation while reducing leg cramps too.

Asanas: In the next couple of months, you can do what feels right to you. But, never push too hard. You may want to reduce the time that you spend practicing the Asanas as you do not want to overwork or tire your body.

Moderate twisting: You can do supine poses, backbends as well as some twisting as long as you are comfortable. Just ensure that you are doing these in moderation.

Word Of Caution

It is important to note that many yoga practitioners warn against practicing yoga from the tenth through the fourteenth week of pregnancy since these are crucial times in development. Also, it is important to never overstretch the abdomen during any time of the pregnancy. When twisting, do so with your shoulders and the upper back only. As for inversion poses, only do them through the seventh month is you are completely comfortable doing them. Never push too hard and yoga will be very enjoyable during pregnancy.

Monday, January 19, 2009

What is Kid and Teens Yoga?


Kids yoga is challenging, energetic, and fun. Kids yoga when done well is truly a fun and creative approach to yoga. Using animal poses and basic stretching exercises, the classes promotes strength, flexibility, coordination and body awareness in children. It can be very helpful for children whose bodies are still developing. The poses help to instill confidence and concentration and a sense of calm.
Kids Yoga is for ages 5 and up, and it's a great way to get kids off the couch and get them involved in a regular exercise program. The yoga club should provide facilities which are well maintained, clean, and have a warm, friendly atmosphere.
Teen and older children's yoga is a blend of traditional yoga postures, and this tends to be delivered with a blend of popular music and philosophy. These types of classes are geared towards teenagers, and are open to both males and females ages 13 to 18. One teen yoga class is offered at YogaAylum as an ongoing, drop-in class, designed for any student with or without previous experience. Students will practice physical postures (asanas) that can be a great support for the maturation of the inner organs as well as the long bones of the teen-aged body. There are an increasing number of courses like this being offered.
Practiced dynamically and regularly in combination with your other daily activities, a school of yoga such as vinyasas will keep you lean and toned, and your resulting high metabolic rate will burn excess calories.
The pursuit of yoga is good for all ages, but recently it has also been used for those in pregnancy.
Practicing Yoga in pregnancy helps to strengthen and stretch muscles, release tension and maintain good posture.
Any article answering the question of what is kids yoga, would be unfinished though if it did not explain a little about the origins and nature of the art. Yoga is more than just a form of exercise; it is part of a well-rounded philosophy that dates back over 5,000 years.
Balancing of the five basic Elements and Chakras are the main keys to remove disorders through various yogic ways. There are many different schools of yoga which exist in India. For example, Patanjali's Yoga has essentially to do with the mind and its modifications. It deals with the training of the mind to achieve oneness with the universe. Patanjali students follow the tradition of Upanishads.
Hatha yoga is probably the best known around the world. Students will be oriented to meaning and practices of hatha yoga through short readings/explanations and yoga poses. Surrounded by a supportive environment focused on fitness, teen girls will be able to relax, have fun, be physically active and make new friends. Students are encouraged to respect the studio, the props, the decorations, and each other.
Some yoga courses include music making. At these courses you can feel the joy of making music in a community setting that allows you to express yourself. Remember, there is no medicine more therapeutic than self-expression. Feeling relaxed in Savasana, the power of Virabhadrasana, the exhilaration of standing upside down in Sirsasana, and even the subtlety of Kapalabhati breath work their own magic. The magic is in the direct experience.

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Yoga For Children - Antidote to Stressed Families

Yoga for Children is a wonderful antidote to the hectic lives that our children lead. Yoga can be relaxing, stimulating, and promotes well being. It provides closely controlled exercise and is enormous fun for children at the same time.
A number of Yoga for Children programmes have been created by Yoga teachers to introduce the benefits of yoga and relaxation at an early age in a playful, simple and fun way. The combination of special yoga moves, breathing exercises and relaxations will energize, strengthen, loosen and balance little bodies, while helping to calm and control and relax little minds.
Kids yoga is a wonderful opportunity for the child to learn life skills that can be implemented into their daily routine. Whether it's breathing and relaxation techniques that will help them, focus, concentrate or be calm; or postures that will help their endurance, flexibility, balance and coordination these are all very naturally a strong part of yoga.
Yoga for children is most successful if the children are encouraged to use their imagination. A dynamic, creative and stimulating approach grabs the children's attention.
Yoga for children is practiced in the United Kingdom. It is not new to Britain, with after-school clubs and classes gaining popularity in recent years as parents realize its wide-ranging benefits. What is new to the UK, however, is the method of Research on Yoga in Education (RYE), an international non-profit making organization which blends the standard school curriculum with exercises on concentration, attention and relaxation, drawn mainly from traditional yoga.
What is also claimed is that Yoga for children gives the benefit that the children may be protected from injuries and at the same time they get all the benefits of exercising the system. This is not to suggest that the other exercise including outdoor forms of exercises and sports and games are not beneficial.
Parents have expressed appreciation for the presentation of yoga in a playful manner with its presentation of actively moving exercises balanced with those that require stillness and inner concentration, all in a child-friendly way. Parents may be practicing yoga themselves, and kids are always interested in what their parents are up to.
When assessing yoga trainers for children, parents should also inquire as to the spiritual nature of the classes; some instructors take a strong religious stance, while others offer no particular religious slant, instead focusing simply on the movements and breathing.
In the best classes the kids learn balance with dozens of yoga poses, develop strength, improve coordination and enhance their flexibility all with these children's yoga exercises. Furthermore, kids develop an overall sense of strength, flexibility and well-being, while they get hold of their active lives and sometimes overactive minds. Kids get to prowl, growl and wiggle through yoga animal poses from Alligator to Zebra! Certified children's yoga instructors will introduce stretching, breathing, standing poses and simple meditation.
Kids yoga provides an answer to children who we might described as being are little bit harder to reach, although we stand firm with our belief that every child has an angel deep down inside them.
We have said that children's Yoga allows a child to deal with daily stress. What do we mean by that?
The answer is that each time a child enters a Yoga class for kids, he or she can "close the door" on negative feelings that stress overload brings. They can simply put that behind them throughout the lesson and afterward doing that tend to take a more mature perspective. Kids need a way to manage all of their stress and anxiety. It is not healthy for a child to feel so much anxiety over any given situation.
There you have it! Kids and yoga seem like a natural match. It can be immensely therapeutic for those who need it.
However, yoga can be presented well and insensitively. The best trainers recognize that kids need a practice that suits their physical and emotional needs. Luckily, many yoga schools across the nation are responding to the growing interest in yoga for the younger set in a very well managed and sensitive way.
It is a fact that to provide kids yoga a specialized training might be needed, and is in some places being made available, but patience is a key quality needed for Yoga instructors who want to embark on this path. I teach children myself, and a Kids Yoga class has to be well devised, be fun, and include games.
So, we hope that we have shown you how yoga is such a great way to relax and de-stress equally for the child and the adult.
However, did you know that there are even now some yoga practitioners who are providing training to parents in yoga from soon after birth?
By using yoga with babies, parents confidence grows in handling, playing and having fun with their babies. The classes are fun class in a system which also offers gentle post-natal yoga and tummy toning exercises for mummy!

Yoga Guide For Pregnant Women: Efficacy of Prenatal Yoga


Pregnancy is an all together different physiological as well as psychological experience for women and for particularly those who happen to be on the family way for the first time. If you are pregnant, you are very likely to suffer from occasional depression. You will be in a state of subtle excitement almost all the time. It is really difficult for you to keep yourself normal physically as well as mentally. That's when Prenatal Yoga comes handy to you.

It adds to your physical as well psychological strength for a rather comfortable delivery. In addition to that if you keep practicing yoga through out your pregnancy period, post delivery you are very likely to resume your normal activities at the earliest.

Prenatal Yoga is particularly helpful in later stage of pregnancy. I would suggest all pregnant women to do yoga exercises that would be of immense help in excess inflammation and pain in leg. This particular genre of yoga is aimed at strengthening legs, back muscles, limbs and pelvis. Once these body parts get strengthened the level of pain that you experience while giving birth would be far less than the pain you would have experienced without yoga.

But you must ensure that you learn prenatal yoga asanas from an experienced Yogi. If you have geared up to practice yoga for the first time, you shouldn't do exercises without acquainting yourself with all pros and cons of Yoga.

For pregnant women, basic yoga poses are suggested. Once they learn basic poses they are made to practice certain other asanas. Preferred yoga asanas for women on family way are as follows:

Shavasana
This Yoga posture is also known as corpse pose. In this posturu you are simply made to lie as if you are dead.
You are suggested to lie in a very motionless state. But you should continue breathing normally.


Padmasana
This posture requires you to sit while keeping your back completely erected in the
sitting duration. You are also made to put your right leg on the left thigh and vice versa.
Putting legs on opposite thighs help strengthen your hips.


Sukhasana
The asana demands you to keep a crouching posture while sitting. This asana is of great assistance in preventing pregnancy related disorders.






Vajrasana
This asana makes you fold your knees so that hips could be easily postured on your heels.
This is also a sitting asana. You are also required to position your hands on knees.
Your back should remain erect.

These are a few yoga postures that happen to be of great help for pregnant women. Breathing exercises of yoga may prove helpful in pregnancy. So, do yoga for a safer child birth.

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Yoga For Kids Presents the Key to a Futuristically Brighter Society General

Yoga for kids is generally considered not an educational formula but rather a way of showing children ways to cope with stress. In Eastern countries such as India, children receive yoga classes at very small ages, but in the West, parents make the choice whether to train their kids or not. The very good part about it results from the possibility of the children to develop self-awareness and spirituality more quickly and better than a grown-up. Yoga for kids teaches body and mind control as well as it helps create good behavioral patterns. It can be shown that yoga training does effectively decrease bullying and increase anger management for 4th and 5th grade students with whom I have personally worked. The rationale for this hypothesis was based on the first vow of raja yoga, ahimsa, that one vows to be non-violent to self and others.
Presently, some schools include kids yoga as an additional curricular activities, but most of the time classes are independent. Just like dance and karate courses, kids yoga can be easily squeezed in the child's daily program. Therapeutic studies indicate that yoga has had very good results in the case of hyperactivity or deficit disorder cases. Since with these disorders, kids constantly crave movement, kids yoga helps to the channeling of these impulses in non-destructive ways. Self-confidence, balance and calm are the great benefits to result from yoga-for-kids programs. The children learn yoga philosophy, practice yoga postures, learn breathing and concentration techniques, as well as, traditional conflict resolution strategies and dialogues.
Moreover, since yoga classes involve working in a community, children develop team skills while working to get in the poses. The anatomical flexibility specific to young age makes postures a lot easier to perform; adults on the other hand have to work a lot more to reach the mobility level necessary to practice yoga. Although the physical part is not that challenging, a major obstacle comes from meditation and relaxation, particularly because kids enter such states more difficultly. Therefore, visualization proves the best way of helping young and grown up yoga trainees get into the relaxed state of mind.
The names of the postures in kids yoga classes allow children to learn them more easily. Thus, instead of performing asanas they will make a bridge, a mountain, a cat, a dog or a cobra, to name only a few. Moreover, trainers never push the practice of kids yoga to the limit of pain, as the activity wouldn't be that attractive with an extra pressure.
A comprehensive yoga program can greatly reduce violence and bullying, but, the long term lasting effects are still unclear but should be obvious at this point. The results of this intervention acknowledge yoga as an effective method for increasing anger management skills and decreasing physical outbursts of violence for upper elementary school age children during the time of implementation of a competently applied program.
This article was written to provide you with knowledge about the subject of why Yoga for Kids is so important in today's world. I appreciate you taking your time to read it. Visit my site to see focused kids and proven results.
Dee Marie has been a Master in the field of Yoga therapy for many years. Her focusted direction is to build a stronger world through early education of yoga for children. [http://www.calmingkidsyoga.org/DeeMarieBio.html]Yoga for kids
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Yoga For Kids

Life can be stressful and as adults we are quite aware of that, but most of us are not aware that our children can also feel quite stressed in their lives. As time progresses, life seems to travel at a much faster speed and as a result of this both adults and children seem to be under a great deal of pressure.
Yoga is a great way to relieve stress and to teach your children how to use yoga for stress relief can help them do deal with the pressures that they will face in life. Teaching your child at a young age will give them the stepping stones to cope with stress throughout their life as they grow and become adults.
Yoga can also help your child to develop high self esteem and also teach them how to relax so that they will not feel so overwhelmed when life throws something stressful their way. These skills will help them throughout their life and they will also learn to develop compassion and cooperation.
Yoga will help your child to improve their strength, coordination and flexibility. This will also help them to improve their concentration levels helping them to perform better at school and in sports. They will improve their sense of calmness which will enable them to deal with any situation in a more effective and efficient way.
As we get older we tend to lose our flexibility that we have as a child, and by teaching your children yoga it will help them to keep that flexibility which will benefit their health as they mature.
There are many benefits that yoga will offer your child and as well as the benefits it is also fun for them to do. Yoga instructors will often teach children the different yoga poses by playing and imitating different animals and plants. This also help to nourish the child's natural talents and it makes yoga classes fun and also very effective.
Many kids find it hard to sit still for long, they love to be on the move and love to chat rather than sit and listen. Instructors that can encourage children to have fun and make yoga exciting by allowing them to move and imitate animals are very successful at teaching children the art of yoga. The children can roar like a tiger and bark like a dog which is great fun for them and also helps to improve their self esteem and at the same time keeps them interesting and excited about attending their yoga class.
Yoga really is one of the most beneficial exercise programs for anyone, both young and old, and by teaching your children yoga from a young age they will enjoy the life long healthy benefits that yoga has to offer them.
Adults and children can both benefit from the amazing effects of Yoga. To learn more about Yoga visit http://yojo-yoga.com
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Yoga and Pregnancy Benefits


Yoga is claimed to be a good exercise for everyone. Yoga is also a good exercise for pregnant women and provides them with many benefits. So whether you are pregnant or know someone who is, read on to learn the many positive benefits of yoga for pregnant women.

Yoga is a wonderful exercise for pregnant women and can be safely performed throughout the entire pregnancy. Some poses may need to be modified during pregnancy and poses where the woman is lying on her back or stomach should be avoided. The pregnant woman should also avoid any position or pose that does not feel right to her.

Yoga provides many benefits to pregnant women. Among those benefits of yoga are increased flexibility, more energy and stress relief. Yoga also helps the woman prepare for childbirth. This is done by the regular use and stretching of the muscles that are used in childbirth. In addition, the relaxation and breathing skills learned in yoga will help a woman throughout the labor and delivery of her child and may also lessen some of the woman's pains and anxieties.

As previously mentioned, yoga can play an important part in a woman having a relaxed, comfortable pregnancy and childbirth experience. However, the benefits of yoga do not end there. Yoga can also help the woman to get back into shape after pregnancy and will help to ease the transition into more physical exercise. And the benefits of yoga do not only encompass the pregnant woman; yoga can assist in the mental and physical development of the growing fetus.

Yoga exercises are not the only elements to focus on when performing a yoga routine. A complete, rounded yoga routine for a pregnant woman should include not only the yoga exercises, but also proper breathing techniques, meditation, deep relaxation techniques and mudras, which are yogic gestures. All of these elements of yoga will provide the pregnant woman with many benefits to aid in childbirth.

For the benefit of the pregnant woman, yoga exercises stretch the pelvis and reproductive organs to ensure a smooth pregnancy and childbirth experience. For the benefit of the fetus, yoga exercises provide the best possible blood and nutrient supply. The proper breathing techniques, or pranayama, will aid in the pregnant woman's overall fitness during pregnancy and will supply a rich amount of oxygen for the pregnant woman and fetus.

The benefits of yogic meditation to a pregnant woman are almost self-explanatory. It helps to calm and soothe the pregnant woman, dissolving away any fears and conflicts, whether pregnancy-related or not. It is also claimed to provide the pregnant woman with an unbelievable sense of awareness that helps her connect with her unborn child.

The benefits of deep relaxation techniques are also pretty much easy to understand. Deep relaxation, or yogic sleep, relaxes the pregnant woman both mentally and physically. It also better prepares her for the childbirth experience. The last element of a yoga routine, mudras and bandhas, is yogic gestures. These gestures are believed to have influential effects on the pregnant woman's reproductive organs, as well as any pains and ailments.

By combining all of the above elements of yoga, a pregnant woman can achieve and reap the benefits of a successful yoga routine. There are many books and websites available that provide acceptable yoga poses and positions for pregnant women. But as is the case with any other exercise, a pregnant woman should consult with her doctor before undertaking a yoga routine.

Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to [http://yoga.tips-and-gear.com/]Yoga

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