Tag Archives: sustainable

Hotpod yoga for Yoga Nieuw-west community

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“Life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.”
(Jim Rohn)

As classes are limited for December at Yoga Nieuw-west, I have arranged a special deal with Hotpod yoga Amsterdam and anyone registered with Yoga Nieuw-west Amsterdam to enable you to keep up your yoga practice. You will get the opportunity to try out yoga in a hotter room (actually a specially designed Hotpod) with a wonderful yoga teacher, Mercedes Parellada.

Hot pod yoga

Yoga in the Hotpod

Amsterdam Yoga Nieuw-west members are entitled to a 5-class pass for EUR 25 (normal price is EUR 45) which has no expiry date. I will send the details on how to book with the discount to those of you registered with a Yoga Nieuw-west. If you do not receive the information by email  by end of 1 December, then please get in touch.

 

Hotpod yoga is not far from Yoga Nieuw-west

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How yoga changed my life in six minutes forty seconds

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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: PechaKucha Presentation Maastricht 2014

Healing with heat

 

Why practicing yoga postures is different from other forms of exercise

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Breathing through imperfect lines: Natasha Gunn

Breathing through imperfect lines: Sketch by Natasha Gunn

When used as a tool for self-transformation and awakening to clearer awareness, yoga starts the moment a student first pays attention to what he or she is doing in the practice.

If a student is unsteady, falling, in pain, or distracted by discomfort, the tendency will be to go back into his or her analytical or agitated mind. Sthira and sukham— steadiness and ease— give the asanas their transformative potential.

Being steady does not mean being perfectly still in a pose that you hold for a very long time. Asanas, by contrast, are alive, in each moment a unique expression of the human being doing them.

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Yoga breathing

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The main type of breathing we do in yoga is called ujjayi (ooh-JAI-yee). Ujjayi breathing, known as the victory Breath is characterised by an audibly hollow, deep, soft sound coming from your throat.

Ujjayi breathing is not difficult to learn. It involves narrowing the aperture in your throat by gently tightening the epiglottis, which is done like this:

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Living by universal laws

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(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.”

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