Want to feel great? You can enhance your yoga practice with healing foods from the traditional Indian Ayurveda system of medicine. Ayurveda encourages balance: you’ll feel lighter, more energetic, and minor health problems will tend to fade away.

One point before we discuss Ayurvedic foods: if you have a health condition, see your doctor.

Let’s look at some traditional foods recommended for anyone who’s started a yoga practice.

1. Eat Seasonally, So That Your Food Is Filled With Pranic Energy

Eating fresh food, and fruits and vegetables which are in season is a basic tenet of eating the yogic way. Look for green, leafy vegetables such as spinach, arugula, and kale, they enhance the functioning of your liver, and help to eliminate toxins.

2. Turmeric: Attracting Attention As a Weight Loss Aid

The spice turmeric is being studied for its weight loss benefits, as well as for its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects.

3. Mung Beans: Healthy and Healing

You may be familiar with tiny green mung beans, they’re often used for sprouting. However, they’re also delicious when cooked: packed with protein, they’re said to prevent cancer and heart disease. Add some mung beans to stews and soups.

You can also cook a delicious hot and spicy mung bean soup in just half an hour — look online for recipes.

4. Lemons Boost Your Metabolism and Eliminate Toxins

Not only are lemons packed with vitamin C, they’re also a tonic and cleanser — they remove toxins from your system. Try starting the day with the juice of half a lemon in hot water, with an added teaspoon of honey.

5. Ginger: for Healthy Digestion, and to Reduce Inflammation

If you have a condition which causes inflammation, such as arthritis, make friends with fresh ginger. Not only does ginger taste delicious when cooked in soups and stews (you can’t taste the ginger, it just enhances the flavor), you can also make a fresh ginger tea.

To make ginger tea: slice up fresh ginger in sufficient quantity to make a teaspoon per cup. Pour boiling water over the ginger, and allow to steep for five minutes. Add a teaspoon of honey before serving.

Enrich your life with yoga today

Read Yoga for the New You and discover everything you need to create a yoga practice right in your own home. Transform your life with yoga.

[tags]yoga, foods, healing, heath, fitness, Ayurveda[/tags]

Are you expecting a baby? Prenatal yoga can help your baby’s health as well as your own. Start your yoga practice today, or add specific exercises which will help you throughout your pregnancy and help you with the birth as well.

1. Look for Prenatal Yoga Classes in Your Area

Your first step should be to look for prenatal yoga classes in a location that’s close to you.

Perhaps your own yoga studio offers classes, if not ask your yoga instructor whether she knows of any classes in your area. Some yoga practitioners who offer prenatal classes don’t promote themselves as effectively as they might do, so you might be surprised how many classes there are in your area.

2. Practice Alone With a Book or DVD

If you live in a rural area or in a small town, there may be no classes available to you.

You can certainly practice yoga or with the aid of a book or a DVD. In the early stages of your pregnancy, any beginners yoga class on DVD will be fine. As your pregnancy progresses, look for a DVD which focuses specifically on prenatal yoga.

If you’re practicing alone, tell your doctor what you’re doing. Make sure that he’s okay with you practicing yoga during your pregnancy. If you’ve had health issues like spotting, you shouldn’t be practicing yoga alone, you need a qualified prenatal yoga practitioner.

3. Do a Complete Workout Once a Week

Everyone’s busy, so you may find that you can’t fit in a complete workout more than once or twice a week. That’s fine. Do a little yoga every day — even if it’s only a single pose. You can do a complete workout once a week, perhaps on the weekend when you have more time to devote to yourself.

4. Do Yoga Exercises to Help the Baby’s Birth

Yoga shines because it makes you aware of your body, so that you’re not frightened by it. It’s natural to be a little scared of the birth. This is fine, everyone is. With yoga you have a powerful tool which will help you during the birth because you’ll be comfortable with your body.

Your prenatal yoga classes will offer you specific exercises which will help you to prepare for the baby’s birth. When you’re practicing at home, focus on those particular exercises as the birth draws near. They really do help.

Want to get pregnant? Yoga can help.

Enrich your life with yoga today

Read Yoga for the New You and discover everything you need to create a yoga practice right in your own home. Transform your life with yoga.

[tags]yoga, prenatal yoga, yoga, yoga classes, beginners yoga [/tags]

If you’re very busy with work and your family, you won’t have time to go to yoga classes several times a week. Can you really learn yoga from a DVD? Yes you certainly can. Provided you take it slowly, learning yoga from a DVD provides you with many benefits.

Here’s how to get started.

1. Start Slowly, Focus on Learning the Basic Yoga Poses

Depending on which DVD you choose, you can be motivated, or completely overwhelmed. Most DVDs come with instructions on the basic yoga poses. Focus on learning the poses first, before you follow any of the workouts.

Only when you’re strong enough to manage the poses should you start on a workout. Learn one new pose each time you practice. There’s no rush.

If you start on the workouts first, you’ll give up.

2. Schedule Your Yoga: Four Times a Week (15 Minute Sessions)

Here’s a tip: when you’re practicing yoga at home, design your own personal yoga classes. When you schedule your classes, you’ll be more likely to practice your yoga several times a week. Aim to practice at least four times a week, starting for just 15 minutes at a time, and progressing to half an hour per session after four weeks.

Although you may be very keen to learn yoga, real life always gets in the way. Therefore treat your yoga practice as you treat any other must do activity. Schedule it.

3. Enjoy the Benefits: More Time, Better Health

When you’ve been practicing yoga for a week, you’ll be amazed that you seem to have more time in your day.

This is because yoga benefits you both mentally and physically. You’ll find that mentally, your concentration and motivation improves. You get more done in less time, so it will seem as though you have more time to spend.

No time you spend in yoga is ever wasted — it multiplies the rest of the time you have available.

You’ll also find that you’re sleeping better. Yoga acts as a perfect sleeping pill, no matter what time of day you do your yoga, you’ll find that you get a restful night sleep that evening.

Your overall health will also improve. No matter what kind of health problem you have, whether it’s chronic or current, yoga will improve it. This is because yoga harmonizes all the different systems of your body and gets them working well together.

You’ll find that minor health issues like hay fever, headaches, and insomnia just go away.

Should you create your own yoga classes at home? Please do. You’ll find it’s the best 15 minutes a day investment in your health you’ve ever made. Enjoy your yoga.

[tags]yoga, yoga classes, yoga DVD, yoga poses, yoga for beginners[/tags]