A six minute forty second presentation on what hot yoga is can leave you breathless — but if you do yoga…well, it helps! And hey, if it isn’t perfect, then remember three things: Practice, practice, practice. It’s all about the breath.
http://www.pechakucha.org/cities/maastricht/presentations/healing-with-heat
Healing with heat
(I gave Together magazine permission to reprint this blog post: http://www.togethermag.eu/articles/eco-friendly-living)
“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.” (Michelangelo)
Ecofriendly is the current buzz word. Green, ecofriendly, sustainable, biological are all ‘good’ words and living an authentic lifestyle is shifting from marginal to mainstream. Certainly, keeping your footprint softer on planet Earth is harder to fake than showing you have money. But where does an ecofriendly lifestyle begin and end?
Respect for life
First of all let’s look at yoga and how this is connected to ecofriendly living. As violinist Yehudi Menuhin wrote in his introduction to B. K. S. Iyengar’s book, Light on yoga, yoga is “by its very nature inextricably associated with universal laws: respect for life, truth, and patience are all indispensable factors in the drawing of a quiet breath, in calmness of mind and firmness of will.”
English version of Westerpost interview, 18 May 2011
When I first came to the Netherlands from France 11 years ago, it was to improve my career prospects. I couldn’t have imagined at the time that I’d find the beginning of my passion for yoga in Amsterdam.
My life was busy and work and personal life seemed to drain my energy as well as sap my creativity. Searching for a way to relax, I discovered an excellent yoga school in the centre of Amsterdam (Sai Mithra) and became hooked. Yoga helped me focus inwards and listen to my body as a whole.
However, after practising yoga for a year, with two young children to care for and a relationship on the rocks, I found I was ‘too busy’ to go to classes. I had ‘no free time.’ I stopped doing yoga. A year later, things hadn’t improved, so I decided to start with yoga again—just one and a half hours a week, and found space for myself again.
I wasn’t a natural for doing yoga, I was stiff, and I felt that my progression on the road to suppleness was painfully slow. But after two years I noticed a difference, not only to my body but to my way of being. I was calmer and more able to deal with the daily rollercoaster that was my life.
Yoga for the Community 