Yoga Health and Fitness Notes

Stress is the curse of living in modern times. Everyone suffers from stress. And the stress we suffer takes a heavy toll on our bodies, emotions and minds.

Feeling stressed out, worn out by fatigue or just simply having a miserable day, the best thing to do is relax.

Watching television may be a form of relaxation for some, but is not a recommended method by experts. When we watch TV we are bombarded with commercials, ads, sounds and images. So how do we achieve relaxation? If there are thousands of ways we can get stressed, one of them is not meeting deadlines, there are also many ways we can relax.

In recent studies, experts have determined that heart disease is linked to anger and irritability is linked to mental stress. Too much stress brings about ischemia that can lead to or cause a heart attack. Relaxation takes on added importance in light of this matter. Managing your anger and attitude is significant to heart health, and relaxation can help you manage stress.

One way of relaxation is transcendental meditation. Recent studies have also shown that this method might reduce artery blockage, which is a major cause for heart attack and stroke. People practice transcendental meditation by repeating uttering soothing sounds while meditating, this is to achieve total relaxation. The researchers found that practitioners of transcendental meditation significantly reduced the thickness of their arterial wall compared with those who didn’t practice transcendental meditation.

Another study on another method of relaxation, acupuncture, seems to reduce high blood pressure by initiating several body functions for the brain to release chemical compounds known as endorphins. Endorphin helps to relax muscles, ease panic, decrease pain, and reduce anxiety.

Yoga is also another method for relaxation and may also have similar effects like acupuncture. In another study, participants were subjected to several minutes of mental stress. Then they were subjected to various relaxation techniques, such as listening to nature sounds or classical music. Only those who did Yoga significantly reduced the time it took for their blood pressures to go back to normal. Yoga is a form of progressive relaxation.

Breathing is one of the easiest methods to relax. Breathing influences alamost all aspects of us, it affects our mind, our moods and our body. Simply focus on your breathing, after some time you can feel its effects right away.

There are several breathing techniques that can help you reduce stress.

Another easy way to achieve relaxation is exercise. If you feel irritated a simple half-hour of exercise will often settle things down. Although exercise is a great way to lose weight, it does not show you how to manage stress appropriately. Exercise should also be used in conjunction with other exercise method.

One great way of relaxation is getting a massage. To gain full relaxation, you need to totally surrender to the handling and touch of a professional therapist.

There are several types of massages that also give different levels of relaxation.

Another method of relaxation is Biofeedback. The usual biofeedback-training program includes a 10-hour sessions that is often spaced one week apart.

Hypnosis is one controversial relaxation technique. It is a good alternative for people who think that they have no idea what it feels like to be relaxed. It is also a good alternative for people with stress related health problems.

Drugs are extreme alternatives to relaxation. They are sometimes not safe and are not effective like the other relaxation methods. This method is only used by trained medical professionals on their patients.

These relaxation techniques are just some of the ways you can achieve relaxation. Another reason why we need to relax, aside from lowering blood pressure in people and decreasing the chances of a stroke or a heart attack, is because stress produces hormones that suppress the immune system, relaxation gives the immune system time to recover and in doing so function more efficiently.

Relaxation lowers the activities within the brains’ limbic system; this is the emotional center of our brain.

Furthermore, the brain has a periodic need for a more pronounced activity on the right-hemisphere. Relaxation is one way of achieving this.

Relaxation can really be of good use once a relaxation technique is regularly built into your lifestyle. Choose a technique that you believe you can do regularly.

Tags: health, pilates

Hot Yoga

By making yoga accessible to EVERYONE, regardless of age or fitness level, through extensive practice offerings and classes to meet any schedule, Hot Yoga strives to increase awareness and widespread adoption of yoga. Hot Yoga is not about wrapping your ankle behind your head. Hot Yoga encourages each individual’s personal growth while fostering a sense of community and friendship. We believe Hot Yoga can benefit everyone when adopted as a lifestyle practice, and as such improves the quality of one’s life.

Yoga

Yoga means union of body, mind and spirit. Yoga is that state of Absolute Peace wherein there is neither imagination nor thought. Yoga teaches us how to control the modifications of the mind and attain liberation. The yoga discipline’s image has transcended the stereotype of a skinny, long-haired guy twisted into a pretzel on some mountainside.

Karma Yoga

Karma Yoga is consecration of all actions and their fruits unto the Lord. Karma is the sum total of our acts, both in the present life and in the preceding births. Karma Yoga is the Yoga of action which purifies the heart and prepares the Antahkarana (the heart and the mind) for the reception of Divine Light or attainment if Knowledge of the Self. A man who is easily irritable and who can easily be offended for trifling things is absolutely unfit for the path of Karma Yoga.

Tantra Yoga

Tantra Yoga is a holistic approach to the study of the universal from the point of view of the individual: the study of the macrocosm through the study of the microcosm. Tantra Yoga believes that as long as the phenomenal world exists, it is the Universal Mother who is the creator, preserver and destroyer. By refining our thoughts and feelings by means of these Tantra Yoga practices, we learn to create peace, harmony, and order within ourselves.

Bhakti Yoga

Bhakti Yoga is pure spiritual devotion, of love for God which is Love. Bhakti Yoga is the most direct method, the shortest way to experience the divine. Bhakti Yoga lets one see the absolute manifested in all experience. There is nothing higher than love and Bhakti Yoga is the religion of love.

Hatha Yoga

Hatha Yoga is a development of - but also differs substantially from - the Raja Yoga of Patanjali, in that it focuses on shatkarma, the purification of the physical as leading to the purification of the mind (ha), and prana, or vital energy (tha). Hatha Yoga is the study and practice of physical alignments and breath. Hindu texts discussing different aspects of yoga include the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the Shiva Samhita, and many others. That which comes to mind first is Hatha Yoga an element of Raja yoga, yoga that deals mainly with physical postures and breathing.

Tags: fitness, poses

If you asked most people in the street, the one body part they would most like to change would be their stomach area. In fact almost everyone would like to rid him or herself of the belly fat and replace it with solid six-pack abs.

Most people spend time online looking for secrets to developing a killer six pack. You have to go through tons of information to find solid advice and proven techniques that actually work.

There are some important facts everyone should know when losing weight and developing a six pack ab. A good knowledge of nutrition and the having a balanced diet is key to your training. Also knowing the right exercises to perform is crucial in developing the muscles to obtain your six pack.

Developing the six-pack abdominals you are longing to get takes more than just performing long, slow distance running or doing hundreds of crunches. A book called the truth about six-pack abs explains how some of these misunderstandings and misconceptions can be easily accepted by people who think that is the way to get six pack abs.

For example, lots of repetitive cardio is not considered the best way to lose body fat. In fact, short explosive exercises that raise your heart rate quickly are shown to be far more results oriented and take less time to perform also.

You may have notice that there is a lot of talk about “fat burners” and their effectives over exercise. In the truth about six pack abs book, they explain how these products have been found to offer no long lasting results and only wastes your money in the long run.

Another misconception people buy into are the gadgets seen on infomercials and magazine stands. These gimmicks do not offer any long term solution for your abdominal training.

If you want to know the real facts about building and keeping six pack abdominal muscles, then you should read “The truth about six pack abs” program. A fitness professional has complied the program from his own research. On top of that he has personally used these techniques and methods with a lot of his own clients. This is something I recommend you look into if you are serious about losing weight around your stomach area and seek to get six pack abs.

Tags: pilates,