Were you considering starting the New Year in a healthy way? We all have such good intentions in the New Year and then life seems to get in the way, there may be a solution for all the time starved people out there. One to one yoga sessions or private yoga sessions, the yoga teacher comes  to you mats and incense at the ready. Let’s face braving the cold dark nights is a mini challenge in itself before you have even got on the mat.

Private yoga sessons are an excellent way to achieve the benefits of yoga, track your individual progress, and save time by never having to leave home.  Each hatha yoga class is designed specifically for you, and will focus on exercises for your body type, taking into consideration your fitness level, stress level, and your personal health and goals.

You’ll get more hands on attention than you would ever get at a public class. Each sesson will be adapted to meet your individual needs.  A complimentary wellness consultation is included in your first session.

Dipping into the world of one-on-one yoga classes can be an exciting challenge. Such settings have a different intensity from group sessions, and they offer a chance to really get to know your teacher.

Often private classes move at a mellower pace, as teachers focus on alignment challenges specific to each student. To do this well requires a flexible sense of what a yoga practice entails.

Some teachers, including Kevin Perry who teaches a wide selection of classes, prefers to teach private sessions, Perry adds, “Private sessions give me the opportunity to do a whole-body evaluation of a person, and to test their full range of motion. Then I have more to offer them in a public class because I know them so well.”

Some would say your offering more than the typical workout guidance given by a personal trainer. We look at yoga as a tool for transformation. So whether I’m talking to somebody about posture or something else, in the back of my head I’m really thinking about how yoga can help transform that person’s life in a positive way.

Yoga has become a very popular exercise among people all across the world. Celebrities are also adopting this practice in order to strengthen their bodies.

More and more people are beginning to at least try yoga because their favorite celebrities are trying it. The yoga industry has grown considerably since many celebrities have admitted to practicing yoga on a regular basis.

Jennifer Aniston has recently been shouting from the rooftops about yoga and appears in the introduction to the workout video featuring her pal and yoga instructor, Mandy Ingber. “She brought yoga into my life,” says Aniston. “It completely changed my life.”

“It’s one of the most fun workouts I’ve ever had,” Aniston says in the video. “So have fun and work hard because it will totally pay off.” Would you be more likely to try a certain yoga style if it had a celebrity endorsement?

Do tight shoulders limit your backbends? When you reach your arms high overhead, do your lower ribs stick out in front? Do you feel a pinching sensation on top of your shoulders when you practice Downward Facing Dog  Pose (Adho Mukha Svanasana)? If you answered yes to any of those questions, the problem might be tight latissimus dorsi muscles.

These muscles connect your upper arms to your lower back. When you raise your arms overhead, the “lats” stretch, so tight lats make it difficult to reach up. Stretching them is not hard, but the best way to do it effectively is not always obvious. Learning how to loosen your lats is worthwhile, though, because it will improve your range of motion in every yoga pose that requires you to lift one or both arms above your head. What’s more, looser lats can make it easier to do everyday activities such as changing a light bulb or getting things off a high shelf, and can even help protect you from rotator cuff injuries.

To find out how tight or loose your latissimus dorsi muscles are, try this test (if you have a shoulder injury, do not do the exercises in this article unless you are under qualified supervision). Lie on your back on the floor with your arms by your sides. Feel where the back of your rib cage touches the floor, taking special note of the point of contact that lies closest to your waist. Turn your palms up, then lift your arms up and overhead to the floor, or as close to the floor as they will go without you bending your elbows or separating your arms wider than your shoulders. For most people, this movement will make the lower ribs lift off the floor in back and jut out in front. Now return your arms to your sides and repeat the same actions, but this time, as you reach overhead, press the lower rib cage—the point closest to your waist—firmly into the floor to prevent it from lifting up at all. This will probably create a sensation of stretch on the outer sides of your armpits and make it harder to reach the floor. The stronger the stretch and the greater the restriction of movement, the tighter your lats are (although other tight muscles may increase the limitation).

In your yoga journey, there will probably come a time when you wonder just how some Sanskrit term applies to daily life or how the physical practice of asana relates to yoga’s. Fortunately, people have been writing books about yoga for thousands of years.

Arriving at a coherent understanding of this rich and varied tradition takes time. Books can become great friends and guides along the path. Here, we’ve gathered a small library of titles we think provide a broader understanding of the practice and a deeper awareness of how yoga can transform your life.

Because there are literally hundreds of books to choose from, we have decided to limit ourselves to titles that were published within the past 10 years—a limitation we thought might aid in our quest to answer that eternal question: How is the ancient practice of yoga relevant to my life right now? This article is meant to be a sampler of yoga literature, a little something to whet your appetite.

Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda The classic spiritual memoir, first published in 1946, still resonates with practitioners today who are looking for self-realization.

The Heart of Meditation: Pathways to a Deeper Experience, by Sally Kempton (aka Swami Durgananda) How to transform—rather than transcend—your emotions with a wide range of meditation techniques. Out of print, but well worth tracking down.

Yoga Anatomy, by Leslie Kaminoff Ever wanted to look inside a yoga pose? This book’s excellent illustrations show exactly what’s happening in the body in 75 asanas.

If your are still recovering from the Christmas celebrations and are finding it a mini challenge to get back into your full yoga practice. Then why not start off the New Year with a positive outlook and practice a couple of sun salutations.

Sun Salutations, or Surya Namaskar, can be a complete practice in and of itself. These 12 or so poses linked in a series can lengthen and strengthen, flex and extend many of the main muscles of the body while distributing the prana flow throughout the system. There are many sun salutation variations, but I prefer the lunge salute the most because it lengthens and contracts the psoas muscle, our major hip flexor. The psoas connects in the groin at the lesser trochanter to all the lumbar vertebrae and up to T12, giving important flexion and length to the lower back. The lunge also stretches the musculature of the upper and inner thighs while also stimulating the stomach, spleen, and liver meridians.

When I was asked to try out the new SB eco yoga mat I wondered if it was going to be as good as my beloved Agoy yoga mat. This mat has been like a best friend to me throughout the years, so it’s a strong bond. Also, I love the fact that whenever I get on my mat I know that it’s environmentally friendly.

This morning I did a couple of Sun Salutations on the eco mat and what an amazing mat it is. Firstly just like the Agoy mat it’s environmentally friendly (the title gives it away) It features a deeper embossed texture design to reduce slipping, this really helps out when your mid down dog. However one of the main things I loved about the mat is that it’s really strong and durable. Being made from 2 layers of TPE & reinforced with an inner mesh layer in between the layers, you definitely don’t feel like your going to stretch or wear it out after a couple of months. I also loved the fact that I could use the yoga carry strap as a strap for my practice.

If you’re interested in the Eco Yoga Mat or anything else from the SB brilliant new yoga range then just pop along to one of your nearest SB shop. Furthermore if you say you’re a Yoga Wellbeing follower then you get a healthy discount. Good karma all round.

Judging from the comments from my clients, chronic neck tension is something most people suffer from. Even the more benign consequences—the painful crick in your neck, the dull headache radiating from the back of your skull—can be mighty annoying. The more serious ones, like pinched nerves, arthritis, and damaged discs, can be debilitating. Fortunately, yoga can do wonders for neck problems while simultaneously teaching safer, healthier posture habits. But some of the poses that can help you, like Headstand and Shoulderstand but they can also do harm if performed incorrectly. It’s important to approach them with knowledge of proper alignment.

The stress of a busy lifestyle and lack of sleep certainly tightens neck and jaw muscles. A forward head posture is also a factor for many people. An average head weighs 12 to 15 pounds; when that weight sits forward of the central line of the spine, the muscles on the back of the neck have to work very hard to hold the head up against the pull of gravity. Whether due to stress or poor head-neck alignment, chronic tightness can lead to significant neck pain. Tightness and compression can lead to arthritis, cause nerve pressure that makes pain radiate down the arm, and increase the likelihood of neck muscle injuries.

Just as in medicine, a key rule in hatha yoga is "First, do no harm." It’s crucial to avoid common yoga mistakes that can result in neck injury. If you come to yoga after years of neck tension, the muscles at the back of your neck will probably be quite short and tight, limiting your ability to bring your head toward your chest. Since you need a great deal of this neck flexion to do Shoulderstand, forcing a tight neck into the pose can strain the muscles and ligaments.

Many people habitually tighten their neck and shoulder muscles when they concentrate, and it’s easy to carry that habit over into yoga. This can be especially true in backbends. People tend to over contract the neck, sticking the chin out and up and compressing the back of the neck. One backbend actually lengthens the back of the neck, doing Bridge Pose supported on bolsters for a few minutes three or four times a week can help prepare you for Shoulderstand and lead to healthier happier neck.

I don’t go to the gym anymore but when I did there was definitely a feeling of competition coming from fellow members. What happens when we let ourselves become consumed by competition with others, thereby sinking more on the side of comparing ourselves with people around us? Competition and comparison can eventually become synonymous. Strangely, yoga which doesn’t give you a medal of any kind, or have anything resembling a team which can play against another, can end up being an internal competition for ourselves.

Even in a yoga class, which strives to strengthen the person on the inside as well as the outside, you may find yourself watching other students or analysing your instructor. As a student turned teacher, I have caught myself doing both time and time again. Knowing that I have fallen into this pattern while practicing yoga is the signal to making a change. When I catch myself seeking recognition or wishing I could be a little bit bendier, I guide myself back to my mat.

So, why is it important to be non-competitive during our yoga practice? For one thing, we accomplish less when we spend too much time wishing we were something else. The thinking and wishing take away from the process itself. We need to stay in the moment.

Whether we find ourselves wishing we had something more or something less, we can always accomplish more by taking our focus back to our breath and the sensations we are feeling in each moment. We should be inspired by other people’s practice, rather than dejected. Remember that it is natural to compare ourselves to others, but we should try to let those feelings roll off of our backs more often so we can enjoy the moments of our yoga journey more fully.

When it came to the fitness benefits yoga can or can’t provide, yoga teacher John Schumacher had heard it all. A student of B. K. S. Iyengar for 20 years, Schumacher was convinced yoga provides a complete fitness regime. But many people, even some of his own students, disagreed. Yoga might be good for flexibility or relaxation, they’d say, but to be truly fit, you had to combine it with an activity like running or weight lifting.

Schumacher just didn’t buy it.

He knew three decades of yoga practice—and only yoga practice—had kept him fit. He didn’t need to power walk. He didn’t need to lift weights. His fitness formula consisted of daily asanas (poses) and pranayama (breathwork). That’s all he needed.Four years ago at age 52, Schumacher decided to prove his point. He signed up for physiological testing at a lab in Gaithersburg, Maryland. As he expected, Schumacher tested near the top of his age group for a variety of fitness tests, including maximum heart and exercise recovery rates. His doctor told him that he was in excellent physical condition and estimated that Schumacher had less than a one percent chance of suffering a cardiac event. “I’ve always maintained that yoga provides more than adequate cardiovascular benefits,” says Schumacher. “Now I have the evidence that regular yoga practice at a certain level of intensity will provide you with what you need.”

Evidence of yoga’s ability to bolster fitness, however, goes well beyond Schumacher’s personal experience. Yoga Journal’s testing of three yogis also yielded impressive results. Even physiologists who don’t do yoga now agree that the practice provides benefits well beyond flexibility and relaxation. Recent research—though preliminary—shows that yoga may also improve strength, aerobic capacity, and lung function. If you practice yoga, you already knew that. But if, like Schumacher, you’ve been told by friends, family, doctors, or even other yoga students that you need to add some power walking for your heart or strength training for your muscles, here’s evidence that yoga is all you need for a fit mind and body.

What Is Fitness?
Before you can prove yoga keeps you fit, you must first define what “fitness” actually means. This isn’t a simple task. Ask eight different physiologists, and you’ll hear eight different definitions, says Dave Costill, Ph.D., one of the first U. S. researchers to rigorously test the health and fitness benefits of exercise.

Now professor emeritus of exercise science at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, Costill defines fitness simply as the ability to live your life without feeling fatigued. “For normal daily living you don’t need the strength of a football player or the endurance of a marathon runner, but you’ve got to be able to perform your normal activities and still have a reserve,” says Costill. The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), the largest exercise science association in the world, defines fitness as both related to your ability to maintain physical activity and related to your health (for example, people who become more fit reduce their risk for heart disease). According to ACSM, four types of fitness help to bolster health. Cardiovascular fitness, flexibility,muscular fitness and body composition.

Yoga for kids is on the increase. Most you would probably have heard about the Dragon’s Den experience with the Yoga Bugs team, for those of you who haven’t the team turned down £200,000 of invest. Fenella Lindsell is founder and director of Yoga Bugs, which brings yoga into schools, working with children up to the age of 13 – currently about 40,000 of them a week. Lindsell believes that the growing interest is down to teachers and parents looking for ways to help their children handle the constant stimuli of our technology-driven culture. Today’s children are dealing with so many issues including obesity. Yoga is truly holistic. Children get physical, emotional and mental benefits from it. Sporty ones can improve their performance. Not-so-sporty children can find a flexibility they didn’t know they had.

The yoga-for-kids trend is “massive” – perhaps because London is packed with yoga mum’s whose pressurised, overscheduled kids badly need calming down. The characters on BBC children’s programme Waybuloo now practise ”yogo” and yoga teachers are setting up classes in schools across the country.

Yoga teachers are also working with children with special needs. Jo Manuel runs London-based Special Yoga. She sees children with anything from emotional problems to autism, ADHD and cerebral palsy. She prefers not to use imaginative games and focuses solely on the body. Children, she says, find yoga fascinating without all the animal noises.
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