Controlling your breathing is an important part of yoga. In yoga, breath signifies your vital energy. Yoga teaches that controlling your breathing can help you control your body and gain control of your mind. Ensuring an overall feeling of well being. At Yoga Wellbeing we have seen significant changes being made in our clients lives because of yoga. So if you have had a stressful day and are low on energy book a private session or pop down to one of our classes for more information click here.

Yoga is an excellent for stress relief.Research has also shown that Hatha Yoga if practiced regularly, has a significant impact on muscular strength, flexibility, balance and endurance. Studies done on a group of people practicing yoga revealed that after eight weeks the flexibility of this group improved by 14% to 35%.

The physical and mental benefits of yoga provide a natural counter-balance to stress, and strengthens the relaxation response in your daily life. The Yoga that is practiced all over the world is actually called ‘Hatha Yoga’ a component of the wholesome Yogic practices.

You can counter the effects of stress to your body through yoga’s breathing exercises and other relaxation exercises. These exercises try to achieve deep quietness in the mental and physical state to alter your emotional and physical responses. After performing such exercises, you will soon notice that your heart rate decreases, as well as your muscle tension and blood pressure.

Stressed out individuals carry a great deal of physical tension in their bodies. In these cases the natural unblocking effected by yoga postures are helpful. When one rests between postures, abdominal tension is released from the body promoting deep breathing. The benefits of yoga postures (asana), breathing (pranayama), and meditation (dhyana) include increased body awareness, release of muscular tension and increased coordination between mind-and body.

Breathing – Controlling your breathing is an important part of yoga. In yoga, breath signifies your vital energy. Yoga teaches that controlling your breathing can help you control your body and gain control of your mind.

When we are totally relaxed by using the techniques Yoga has to offer, our system slows down the body’s processes and actual changes occur. These include slowed metabolism and respiration, pupil constriction in the eyes, and the central nervous system is calmed or taken off “alert status”.

New York went yoga crazy for a second day running as thousands of practitioners gathered on Central Park’s Great Lawn.

Under the guidance of acclaimed yogi Elena Brower, the masses assembled for a calming session under the open skies.

Jennifer Lobo, from organisers Times Square Alliance, said it was an amazing sight as peace descended on one of the busiest places on the planet.

She said: ‘If you could create tranquility in the most crazy, high energy place in the world that is a really great oxymoron, or a great opposite.

‘New York City is known for being a city that never sleeps. With all the city noise other imaginable source of noise, it is often hard to find a quiet corner anywhere outdoors.

‘New York yogis are some of the best in the world because they can bring that eternal peace to their practice and disregard anything going on outside, noise or whatever it is.’ commented Jennifer.

It’s great to see that Yoga outdoors is spreading across the globe. Yoga Wellbeing Yoga in the Park classes are only going to keep on growing. If you would like to know more about Yoga in the Park classes then just click here.

Here’s a low-maintenance routine for the weekend

We are starting with a relaxing position and move on to exercises to strengthen shoulders and aid posture.

Start in the Child position and feel yourself relax, then go to the Down Dog, which will strengthen your shoulders, arms and wrists. Repeat the Down Dog exercise, then go into the gentle Cobra, which helps align your body. Only stretch as far as you are comfortable. Then finish back in the restorative Child position.

Balasana/ Child pose

Sit on your heels, toes together and pointing back, knees together or apart. Exhale, bend forward, resting torso on thighs, your arms alongside the body and your forehead on the floor. Breathe slowly.

Adho Mukha Svanasana/ Downward-Facing Dog pose

From Child, put hands out alongside head, palms down. Come up on to all fours, then raise knees off the floor, suck the tummy in and as you inhale lift buttocks to the sky. As you exhale, press into heels. Breathe and hold for four breaths. Rise on to your toes, return to Child pose.

Bhujangasana/ Cobra pose (gentle)

Lie on tummy, legs extended, feet together. Place hands next to shoulders, palms down. Rest your forehead on the floor. Inhale, extend, then lift the head, squeezing thighs together. Keep your hands on the floor. On exhaling, release down slowly.

Hope you enjoy every breath of your practice, let us know how the practice went and get in touch.

You’re having a challenging day and your shoulders are up around ears. Something that can help is self massage. When you don’t have time or money for a massage , you can pick up a few props and follow these handy tips. Take a peek below.

Healing Headaches

If pounding headaches visit you all too often, it’s time to learn how to tap into your craniosacral still point—a momentary cessation of the pulse of your cerebrospinal fluid that dissipates tension and pain. “It’s great for headaches,” says Ann Honigman, a chiropractor and craniosacral therapist in Berkeley, California. “It really helps you quiet the nervous system.” The pros do this for clients with their hands, but you can do it for yourself by lying on an easy-to-make still point inducer.

What you need

Two tennis balls and a sock (stuff the balls in the sock and tie a knot at one end to hold them in place side by side)

How to do it

Lie on your back on a comfortable surface with a pillow under your knees. Place the tennis balls under your head, at the base of your skull (in line with the bottom of your ears, as viewed from the side). Rest your head on the inducer, close your eyes, and lie quietly for 10 to 20 minutes. When you’re done, lift your head with one hand and slide the prop away with the other.

Ease your back pain

Massage your own back? It’s much simpler than you’d think. A couple of easy-to-find props can help you open your chest, release tension in your spine, and even work those tight back muscles exactly where they ache.

How to do it

A massage roller or one of those swimming pool foam “noodles” (can be found on Amazon) rolled in a towel or folded sheet. For a deeper massage, you’ll also need two tennis balls or racquetballs tied in a sock.

Lie on the roller with your knees bent and your feet on the floor, so the roller extends along your spine from your sitting bones to the top of your head. You can either relax on the roller without moving (which opens your chest laterally) or roll gently from side to side to massage the muscles along your spine. Try it for at least 20 seconds or until your chest begins to relax and open.

We’ve all been there at the weekend, too tired to do anything. Feeling tired and wired happens more often than many of us would like, and it can be hard to know what kind of practice is best to do when you feel this way.

The beauty of a yoga practice is that it’s specifically designed to bring the body and mind into balance. The first step is to rest the body. Even if your job is not physical work your body is tired at the end of the day because the mind uses a lot of glucose, which leaves you feeling depleted.

A short restorative session of different postures that combines forward folds to calm the nervous system and simple twists to revitalize the body and move stagnant blood, rebalancing your energy. Once your body starts to relax, Boccio says, you can bring your mind into balance with it by doing a simple breath-awareness practice. Start by exhaling completely, with long and steady breaths, as if the receding waves are drawing with them the accumulated detritus of the day; then take deep inhalations that feel like waves coming in with great force. Finally, be aware of how much you reactivate the mind with television or computer before going to bed.

To unwind just before going to sleep, try a foot massage: Coat the sole of your foot with raw sesame oil (you can add a few drops of a calming essential 
oil like lavender), and massage for a few minutes. This brings the energy down in the body.

Savasana (Corpse Pose)

Begin by feeling the support of the earth 
beneath you. Mentally scan your body and 
notice your level of fatigue or overstimulation. As you move through the following sequence, hold each pose as long as feels right to you.

Apanasana (Knees-to-Chest Pose)

Bring one knee into your chest, keeping the other leg straight on 
the ground. Switch knees, and then bring both knees into your chest. This pose helps release the kidney area, where fatigue is often felt.

Jathara Parivartanasana (Revolved Abdomen Pose)

Extend your arms. Bring your knees over to your right side and hold; switch sides. 
Twists like these lift your 
energy and bring new 
blood to your 
internal organs 
and kidney area.

Viparita Karani (Legs-up-the-Wall Pose)

This calming inversion takes pressure off the lower part of your body.

Janu Sirasana (Head-of-the-Knee Pose)

Come into the pose and hold; 
then switch sides. This forward bend helps calm the nervous system.

Try making restorative poses the core of your practice if you are feeling run down or in need of a lift before Spring. Why not try the first two poses for 10 minutes or longer, and the third for 5 minutes or longer. If you want to wind down before bedtime or just feel like lifting your spirits then try this sequence and feel the benefits when you wake up with a beaming smile on your face the next morning.

Supta Baddha Konasana
(Reclining Bound Angle Pose) Supported

Sit on your mat in front of a bolster placed lengthwise behind you, Loop a strap behind your back at your sacrum. Bring it forward around your hips and over your shins, and secure it under your feet so that it encircles the lower part of your body, Place the soles of your feet together and put a folded blanket or block beneath each of your outer thighs. Lie back with your spine centered on the bolster and with your arms out to the sides, palms up.

Setu Bandha Sarvangasana (Bridge Pose) Supported

Place a bolster or two folded blankets on your mat, and lie back over them so that they support your back rib cage but allow your upper back and shoulders to reach toward the floor. Place the soles of your feet together, cross your shins, or bend the knees and keep feet flat on the floor. More-experienced yogis can practice with the legs straight and the feet on a block. Let your arms rest out to the sides or stretch them overhead with elbows bent and palms facing up.

Viparita Karani (Legs-upthe-wall Pose) Supported

Inches away from the wall (the exact distance depends on your leg flexibility and comfort). Sit sideways on the bolster, with the side of your hip touching the wall. With the bolster under your bottom, lower yourself back and swivel around so that your torso is perpendicular to the wall and your legs are extended up it. Let your arms rest out to the sides, palms up. In the beginning, stayabout 5 minutes, and gradually increase the time to 10 minutes or longer

Just about everyone I come into contact with in London, it seems, share a similar sense of time deprivation. Of course, most of us, most of the time, have goals; having a job, going to school, raising children, all require us to get things to be done. There’s nothing wrong with drive but we live in a culture that prizes productivity and speed. Before we know it, we’re embroiled in a perpetual battle with time, missing out on our connections.

Is there a way to live that frees us from the cycle of longing for more time, misusing the time we do have, and then blaming a lack of time for our discontent? The answer is yes. I’ve worked with people on improving their relationship with time. Happily, doing so doesn’t require withdrawing from the world. Nor do you need to focus on timesaving tips for scheduling yourself with ever-greater efficiency. Instead, you bring greater awareness to the way you experience time by building small steps into your daily routine that help you savor your life.

To experience time differently, you need to cultivate and practice a new relationship with it, just as you’d nurture a yoga or meditation practice. At first, you may feel as though you’re swimming against the current of cultural cues that push you to do more and move faster. It may not be easy to change, but the rewards are great. This approach can bring you into a deeper harmony with time, allowing you to engage more fully with every moment.

Your first step is  self-study, one of the ethical principles of yoga. This asks you to look inward and get to know yourself better. It teaches you to feel the difference between your own natural rhythms and the world around you. It can teach you what’s practical and healthy to focus on, and what you may need to delegate or drop.

In much the same way that those who struggle with food issues may be unaware of what and how they’re eating, you may not have examined the behaviors and assumptions that shape your relationship with time. Taking a time inventory gives you a window into the values that underlie your time-spending habits. Begin your self-study by asking yourself questions like these: Besides eating and sleeping, how do I allocate my time in 24-hours? Do the activities on which I spend most of my time nourish me, or do they feel obligatory? When I long for more time, what do I imagine doing with it?

Do you feel time starved? Has your yoga or meditation practice helped you deal with any time issues?

When you try and meditate does it often feel like there is never enough space in London? We often think of going inside closing our eyes and focusing our attention on some internal process occuring spontaneously, like our breathing. The logical assumption is that the object of our meditation is to find inner peace. The outside world, the hustle and bustle of the city is an obstacle to overcome when meditating. According to some schools of yoga , if we exclude the outside world from our meditation we are only going to gain half of the experience of meditation.

Meditation can help your brain work more efficiently. You might feel anxious to get
back to your busy day or may even feel like dropping off if your tired. But consider this, a regular meditation practice can make your brain work better. Over the past few years, scientists have discovered that meditation helps the brain to process information more efficiently. Just as repeated practice of Sun Salutations builds strength and stamina, so regular meditation enhances the brain’s capacity for perception and awareness. It has been claimed that longtime meditators have a thicker insula, the part of the brain that links the emotional center with the thinking center. Some researchers say that the amygdala, the part of the brain tied to the fight-or-flight impulse, is more active than in people that don’t meditate. But meditators also seem to be better able to calm that response than others. Why not try our simple meditation intro. session. Find yourself a quiet space and give it a go.

Simple Meditation

Sit comfortably in an upright but relaxed position. Close your eyes and bring your attention to your nostrils. As you breathe notice the subtle sensation of cool air passing into, and warm air passing out of, your nose. without manipulating the breath, simply notice the sensation.

Maintain your attention to every breath. Staying relaxed and mentally alert become curious about each passing one as if it were your first.

If your attention wanders, simply notice the distraction and patiently return to the sensation of the breath. Your ability to stay present
deepens by consistently returning to the current moment.

Do this exercise 10 minutes once or twice a day, gradually extending your sessions to 20 or 30 minutes each.

Recently I was asked by a client about whether yoga helps you lose weight, so I thought I would attempt to put the answer down in writing.

Yoga can help you lose some weight, although results do vary, and also depend upon the types of yoga one does.

Hatha yoga, does cause some weight loss, over consistent practice of at least one class a day. It can also cause muscles to become more toned and flexible, a desirable benefit. A study conducted by Alan Kristal in connection with the National Cancer Institute showed that those who practiced yoga one hour a week lost an average of 5 pounds over a four-year period. This data was compared to those who did not practice yoga and gained 14 pounds during the same time period. So practicing yoga, even once a week theoretically helps one shed a small amount of weight, while keeping weight gain at bay.

Some believe that yoga causes some weight loss because it focuses on mind/body awareness. Such awareness may translate to different eating habits, and more care regarding what kind of food one puts into the body. People who have greater body awareness may also notice when they feel full and stop eating. This belief actually suggests that it is not the exercise but the philosophy of regular yoga practice.

“Yoga is a phenomenal way to put you in touch with your body the way nothing else can, and yes, it can help you lose weight,” says instructor Dana Edison, director of Radius Yoga.

Celebrity yoga trainers Ana Brett and Ravi Singh, who have worked with Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow, also believe in yoga’s weight-loss powers.

“We have seen it in ourselves, we have seen it in our clients - yoga can give you a real workout even if you are a beginner,” says Brett.

How Does It Work?

In 2005, medical researcher and practicing yogi Alan Kristal, set out to do a medical study on the weight-loss effects of yoga.

With funding from the National Cancer Institute, he led a trial involving 15,500 healthy, middle-aged men and women. All completed a survey recalling their physical activity (including yoga) and their weight between the ages of 45 and 55. Researchers then analyzed the data, teasing out other factors that could influence weight change - such as diet or other forms of exercise.

The end result: They found yoga could indeed help people shed pounds, or at least keep them from gaining weight.

For the study, he says, practicing yoga was defined as at least one 30-minute session per week for four or more years.

Kristal says it’s not clear just how yoga might help people keep off the pounds, at least from a scientific standpoint. His own opinion is that the effects are subtle, and related to yoga’s mind-body aspects.

Adds Edison: “Yoga makes you more susceptible to influence for change - so if you are thinking you want to change your lifestyle, you want to change the way you think about food, you want to get over destructive eating patterns, yoga will help give you the spiritual connection to your body that can help you make those changes.”

Even if yoga does not offer huge weight loss benefits, it certainly offers fitness benefits, specifically for the muscles. Greater body awareness and honoring the body may also result in changing habits or attitudes toward eating.

It’s a New Year and we have decided to start a little feature devoted to the pets in our lives. This month’s award goes to Che, who enjoys taking part in the cat pose now and again. He’s a yogic cat at heart and likes to spend most of his time getting bendy when he’s not trying to get a few treats from Mariel (his proud owner).

The American craze Yoga with Pets is available throughout London and may eventually be exported to the rest of the world. Animal therapist Dan Thomas is head of grooming at London’s Pet Pavilion Company which introduced the scheme to the UK. He says he is amazed at the effect of the classes on the pets taking part.

“A person who does yoga classes usually ends up becoming more placid. For pets it’s just the same, even if they do occasionally require assistance to contort their bodies into the required yogic positions.”

Latest statistics from the US suggest that 15 million Americans now include some form of yoga in their fitness routine - twice as many as five years ago. Backers of Yoga for Pets hope that it too will quickly catch on and show a similar statistical upsurge. We would love to see photos of your yogic pets, so get them sent in.