Considering doing yoga but scared by all the weird yoga postures? Some of them look painful.

Don’t worry: while there are thousands of yoga postures, as a beginning yoga student, you’ll only learn a few, and these postures will improve your health, as well as relieving stress.

For example, Sukhasana, or Easy Pose, is just sitting cross legged. It helps you to focus on awareness of your breathing and your body and strengthens your  back muscles and opens your groin and hips.

Sit cross-legged with your hands on your knees, and focus on your breath. Make sure that you keep your spine straight and push the sitting bones down into the floor. Allow the knees to gently lower, and remember that if the knees rise above your hips, you need to sit on a cushion or a block.

Dog and Cat Pose is another posture you’ll be able to handle as a beginner; it increases the flexibility of the spine. It’s really two poses, one flowing into the other. You begin on your hands and knees, keeping your hands just in front of your shoulders, with your legs about hip width apart.

Then, as you inhale, tilt the tailbone and pelvis up, and let the spine curve downward, dropping the stomach low, and lift your head up. Stretch gently, and as you exhale, move into the cat position by reversing the spinal bend, tilting the pelvis downward, and drawing the spine up and the stomach in.

[tags]yoga postures, poses, asanas, Easy Pose, Dog and Cat Pose[/tags]

Kriya yoga has been called the yoga of action. It helps  the practitioner’s spiritual development and as well to help bring about a profound state of tranquility and God-communion.

From Wikipedia:

Kriya Yoga is a very specific system of Yoga that was revived in modern times by Lahiri Mahasaya, c 1861. Paramahansa Yogananda brought it into widespread public awareness through his book Autobiography of a Yogi. The system consists of a number of yogic techniques that hasten the practitioner’s spiritual development and help to bring about a profound state of tranquility and God-communion.
Yogananda writes that, “The Kriya Yogi mentally directs his life energy to revolve, upward and downward, around the six spinal centers (medullary, cervical, dorsal, lumbar, sacral, and coccygeal plexuses) which correspond to the twelve astral signs of the zodiac, the symbolic Cosmic Man. One-half minute of revolution of energy around the sensitive spinal cord of man effects subtle progress in his evolution; that half-minute of Kriya equals one year of natural spiritual unfoldment.”

If you’re interested in Kriya yoga, it’s taught in many areas around the world, so you should be able to find a teacher in your locality.

You can also learn it from the above book.

[tags]yoga, kriya yoga, action[/tags]

Basically yoga symbols are simply yoga postures, and it is the practice of these postures – or symbols – which represents the most popular part of yoga practice of all. Some people in fact attempt to regard the study of these postures sometimes independently without actually correlating it with other essential parts of yoga practice, such as mental activity, concentration and breathing while the yoga symbols are being performed.

There are also many other yoga symbols and that includes the following: sun, rebirth, creation, beauty, prosperity, purity, divinity, and eternity. This list of associations is endless, and it is an incredibly important part of mythology, culture, religion and art in India and some other Asian countries, which are the areas in which yoga first actually originated.

Therefore we can see how important the symbols really are to yoga, and how powerful they are considered to be. Some people who practice yoga will wear a piece of jewelry of some other type of design showing one of the yoga symbols, not only to show that they are proud to be participating with this exercise but also because by showing the symbol on the outside it is thought that you will be able to more strongly feel it on the inside.

There are stores and outlets which offer jewelry and clothing with various yoga symbols.

[tags]yoga, yoga symbols[/tags]