41) What is the level of precision needed in Yoga Asanas ?

When it comes to yoga asanas the word "precision" or more specifically "antaomical precision" is mostly associated with the Iyengar System of Yoga . I have never been trained in the BKS Iyengar system of yoga and hence cant really vouch for the quality / effectiveness of such a high degree of anatomical precision needed during a yoga asana practice . Even if it is needed the question comes whether it is the job of the teacher to give such a long complex list of commands to the students to help him find such a high degree of anatomical precision or should the student discover for himself what is the best anatomical right position for himself ? Many such question exists .
The Iyengar System of Yoga has some of the world's best yoga teachers like John Schumacher(http://www.unitywoods.com/), Judith Lasater(http://www.judithlasater.com/), Dr.Krishna Raman ( http://www.krishnaraman.com/)and many others who appreciate BKS Iyengar System of Yoga and vouch for the effectiveness of its highly anatomical approach to yoga . But there are again some famous Yoga teachers like Vanda Scravelli ,Esther Myer , Victor Van Kooten who were once serious students of BKS Iyengar but later became critical of his highly anatomical approach to the asana practice and quit BKS Iyengar System to start their own yoga styles that encourages people to find what is the best way to do a posture with the teacher giving only the main pointers and not all the detailed anatomical instructions that happens in an Iyengar Yoga Class .Why even the great philosopher J.Krishnamurti started practicing yoga first with BKS Iyengar and later went for the more gentler Vinayasa based approach of Krishnamacharya as taught by his son Sri.Desikachar .

So now comes the question , who is right and who is wrong ?
There is no right or wrong approach here and it all boils to discover what is true for you . That is the beauty of yoga . The various styles and system offers us an excellent opportunity to choose what is best for us and what is the best style that we resonate with . Maharshi Patanjali in his Yoga Sutra gives the definition of Asana as "Sthira ( Steady) and Sukham ( Comfortable ) " .He does not elaborate further but these 2 things are to be met in a yoga practice i.e the posture should be steady as well as comfortable . How do you go building both these things and up to what extent you go about building both these things depends upon the competency of the teacher as well as the dedication of the student .

Coming to the Sivananda System of Yoga - Swami Vishnu devananda did not focus on elaborate instructions with regard to Asana practice nor he gives too much space for the student to discover what is true for himself as he felt both these approaches are quite complicated for a student who is just a common man i.e who has many things to do apart from yoga practice and who cant dedicate full time in to this . He wanted to keep things simple and except for some basic instructions with regard to Asana practice he did not not focus on detailed descriptions . Since the Sivananda System of Yoga is more ideal for a group practice for common people it is more ideal to keep the instructions simple and less and hence it is the way it is and many people are happy with the system .
But in case a student is fully in to yoga and willing to dedicate his time and energy in to this practice full time then he needs to go beyond the Sivananda System of simplicity and discover what is true for him i.e the highly anatomical precision approach of BKS Iyengar or the more holistic approach of Vanda Scravelli .

Conclusion : Do what is best and true for your situation and no need to get fanatical with a particular approach .

40) Order of Sequence of Yoga Asanas

There is always a confusion among students as to why the order of sequence in yoga asanas is different each yoga system .In some yoga systems like the Sivananda it starts with the Head Stand and then comes shoulderstand and the standing poses comes in the end while in some systems the sequence starts with the Standing postures while head stand and shoulder stand comes in the end .Some systems have the Soorya Namaskar as the main warming up sequence while in some systems there is no Soorya Namaskar at all . Even among those that have soorya namaskar there is a difference in the way the Soorya Namaskar is done like some have 12 steps , some 14 and 10 etc .So why these differences ? Kindly note that each and every system is equally right in its own approach and there is no rigid rule as to how the postures are to be sequenced . Problem comes only when you mix sequences from each system blindly . Each yoga system has its own uniqueness and it is better those uniqueness are respected and left as it is . Beyond a point it does not matter which system you follow as the journey becomes more inward and you need to bring more awareness in to your practice .That is one reason why Swami Vishnu devananda made the Sivananda Asana System a simple one with just the standard soorya namaskar and 12 basic postures . This sequence is easy to remember and it has the essence of all the major postures and gives a complete yoga workout and this system is uniformly practiced around all the Sivananda Centres and Ashrams world wide and it does not matter whether u are in Chennai , New York or London , the same sequence applies to all .
So better to practice one system regularly and go deeper in to it instead of just switching one system to another frequently . All that matters is that at the end of the practice you must feel refreshed and energized . For this you must learn from a proper teacher who teaches the system well respecting your body condition and giving you alternative variations in case you are unable to do a particular posture in the standard way .

39)Silence as a Teaching Tool
http://www.yogajournal.com/for_teachers/2433
Moments of quiet in class are doorways to learning, not empty spaces to be feared.

By Brenda K. Plakans

As a teacher, you want to share everything you know about yoga with your students. But when you talk too much during class, you run the risk of ruining your students' opportunity for stillness and introspection.

Sometimes the best way to help deepen your students' practice is to hold your tongue, and let your students learn from the quiet.

"I use silence as a way to let the students go in and experience," says Yoga Alliance president Rama Berch. "If I keep talking, they'll think the pose is about the anatomical details. But if I give them that choreographed moment of silence, they have an opportunity to experience what yoga is really about."

Cyndi Lee, who founded the OM Yoga Center in New York City, agrees. "When people come to [do] yoga, they come to empty," she says. "If the teacher is filling up too much space with talking, too much music, or too many stimuli, it makes it difficult for people to empty."

But using silence to enhance your students' practice can be harder than it appears—especially for the inexperienced teacher who isn't totally at ease in front of a class yet. How can you avoid the trap of nervous chatter?

Be Your Own Editor
Once you've noticed your own tendency to talk, observe when your words begin to be distracting.

Some inexperienced teachers find that they talk unnecessarily because they are uncomfortable with silence.

"As a teacher, you have to look at why you are talking," says Senior Advanced Iyengar teacher Joan White. "Do you really have something to say? Or are you just talking to hear yourself talk?"

Another common mistake teachers make is babbling when they can't find the words to describe an action or principle. To avoid this, it's helpful to have a detailed lesson plan and follow it. Knowing exactly what you want your students to feel at any given point in the class makes it easier to plan your language so it's as concise and understandable as possible.

When you notice you've gone off on a tangent, stop, take a deep breath, and refocus, says Berch.

A Time for Quiet and a Time for Talk
One way to avoid unnecessary chatter is to structure your classes so that silence comes naturally. When it's introduced in the appropriate spot, it won't feel strange or intimidating.

There are obvious places in a class to incorporate silence. "Sometimes after a very vigorous sequence, students get overstimulated," Lee says. "It's nice to just sit quietly and let them feel the effects of that practice."

However, using silence in your classes does not mean you should be completely quiet.

"When you teach a new pose, such as an inversion or backbend, you should keep up a steady stream of instruction," warns White. "You should not bombard them, but at the same time don't leave them hanging. Talking to people gives them the sense that you are present and ready to help them if they need help."
Strategies for Silence

It takes practice to learn to be comfortable with silence. The following strategies may be useful.

1. Give yourself assignments. "Tell yourself, 'I'm only going to give two or fewer instructions per pose,'" Lee suggests.
2. Leave room for self-exploration. Ask your students to contemplate what they've learned. After you've described the pose, let them explore it a second time on their own. "Once you've built the pose and the students are getting it, leave them there," says Berch. "Let them breathe and settle into it."
3. Don't keep talking. When you find yourself giving too many instructions or digressing, you can always stop. "I bring the whole class to a halt," acknowledges Berch. "As a teacher, you're better at pulling yourself together than they are."
4. Cultivate silence in your own practice. "Do meditation practice before you teach, so you have a sense of your own habit and a discipline of staying quiet and grounded," says Lee. "If you want to be a really good yoga teacher, you need to be connected to yourself through your own practice, and that gives you something to bring back to your students."
5. Choreograph quiet. As your confidence level grows, you will find it easier to include moments of quiet. "The silent points are like rests in music, punctuation points that help you hear the composition," says Berch. "The purpose of a yoga class is to get you to silence—and not merely external silence, but inner silence and stillness."

Brenda K. Plakans lives and teaches yoga in Beloit, Wisconsin. She also quietly maintains the blog Grounding thru the Sit Bones.

38)Is Yoga Enough to Keep You Fit?

http://www.yogajournal.com/practice/739
By Alisa Bauman

Alisa Bauman stays fit through yoga, running, and fitness ball workouts. She lives and writes in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, where she is studying for yoga teacher certification under Mary Rosenberger at Accent on Yoga and Health.

We sent three yogis to the lab to test the theory that yoga is all you need for optimal fitness.

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 and founder of the Unity Woods studios in the Washington, D.C. area, 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:

Cardiorespiratory fitness. This refers to the fitness of your heart, lungs, and blood vessels. The better your cardiorespiratory fitness, the better your stamina, the lower your risk for a host of diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.

Your ability to move without feeling winded or fatigued is measured by your VO2max (maximal oxygen uptake), a technical term that indicates how efficiently oxygen enters your lungs, moves into your bloodstream, and is used by your muscles. The more fit you become, the more efficiently your body transports and uses oxygen, improving your overall VO2max.

To test VO2max, physiologists ask you to cycle or walk or run on a treadmill with a tube-like mask over your mouth. The mask gathers the carbon dioxide and oxygen you exhale, and the ratio between the two gasses helps to indicate how efficiently your muscles use oxygen.

There are other tests that measure additional aspects of cardiorespiratory fitness, including a lung function test, in which you take a deep breath and then blow into a tube to measure your lung capacity, and heart rate tests, taken both at rest and during exercise. Since equally fit people can vary as much as 20 percent in heart rate,this measure best indicates your own progress: If you become more fit, your heart rate generally drops.

Muscular fitness. This refers both to muscle strength (how heavy an object you can lift) and muscle endurance (how long you can lift it). Without exercise, all of us lose muscle mass as we age, which can eventually result in weakness and loss of balance and coordination. Because muscle is such active tissue, it also plays an important role in regulating your metabolism, with every pound of muscle burning about 35 to 50 calories a day.

In a lab, researchers test your muscle strength and endurance on specialized equipment that looks like an exercise machine at a gym but contains sensors that read how much force your muscles generate as they contract.

Flexibility. As most people age, their muscles shorten and their tendons, the tissue that connects muscles to bones, become stiffer. This reduces the range of motion, preventing optimum movement of your knees, shoulders, elbows, spine, and other joints. Loss of flexibility may also be associated with an increased risk of pain and injury. Tight hamstrings, for example, pull down on your pelvis, putting pressure on your lower back. In general, tight muscles increase the likelihood you'll suddenly move past your safe range of motion and damage ligaments, tendons, and the muscles themselves.

Body composition. Your body composition refers to the percentage of your body made up of fat instead of muscles, bones, organs, and other nonfat tissues. Though the use of body composition as a fitness and health indicator has come under fire in recent years by those who argue that it's possible to be both fat and fit, the ACSM and many physiologists continue to assert that too much fat and too little muscle raises your risk for disease and makes movement less efficient.

Physiologists can measure body composition in several ways. The simplest method uses a pair of calipers to pinch the skin and underlying fat at various spots on the body. This method works best for athletes and others with little visible body fat. For those with more body fat, a more accurate method is hydrostatic weighing—being weighed while submerged in water and comparing the result to your out-of-water weight. Because fat floats, the greater the difference between your submerged and dry weights, the higher your body fat percentage.

Experts have long recommended that we do at least three different types of activity to achieve optimum cardiorespiratory and muscular fitness, flexibility, and body composition. For example, the ACSM recommends building cardiorespiratory fitness by exercising at an intensity that raises your heart rate to at least 55 percent of your maximum heart rate (the highest rate you can maintain during all-out effort, generally estimated as 220 minus your age); muscular fitness by targeting each major muscle group with eight to 12 repetitions of weight-bearing exercise; and flexibility by stretching.

No one argues against yoga's ability to satisfy the flexibility requirement. But until recently, few scientists had considered whether yoga could improve other aspects of fitness. Now that's starting to change.

Putting Yoga to the Test
In one of the first studies done in the United States that examines the relationship between yoga and fitness, researchers at the University of California at Davis recently tested the muscular strength and endurance, flexibility, cardiorespiratory fitness, body composition, and lung function of 10 college students before and after eight weeks of yoga training. Each week, the students attended four sessions that included 10 minutes of pranayama, 15 minutes of warm-up exercises, 50 minutes of asanas, and 10 minutes of meditation.

After eight weeks, the students' muscular strength had increased by as much as 31 percent, muscular endurance by 57 percent, flexibility by as much as 188 percent, and VO2max by 7 percent—a very respectable increase, given the brevity of the experiment. Study coauthor Ezra A. Amsterdam, M.D., suspects that VO2max might have increased more had the study lasted longer than eight weeks. In fact, the ACSM recommends that exercise research last a minimum of 15 to 20 weeks, because it usually takes that long to see VO2max improvements.

"It was very surprising that we saw these changes in VO2max in such a short time," says Amsterdam, professor of internal medicine (cardiology) and director of the coronary care unit at the U. C. Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. He is now considering a longer, larger study to authenticate these results.

A related study done at Ball State University offers further evidence for yoga's fitness benefits. This research looked at how 15 weeks of twice-weekly yoga classes affected the lung capacity of 287 college students. All of the students involved, including athletes, asthmatics, and smokers, significantly improved lung capacity by the end of the semester.

"The athletes were the ones who were the most surprised, because they thought their athletic training in swimming or football or basketball had already boosted their lung capacity to the maximum," says study author Dee Ann Birkel, an emeritus professor at Ball State's School of Physical Education.

From the perspective of a Western scientist, the few additional studies that have looked at yoga and fitness all contain flaws in their research design—either too few subjects or inadequate control groups. One study, conducted in Secunderabad, India, compared a group of athletes taught pranayama to another group who were not. After two years, those who practiced pranayama showed a larger reduction of blood lactate (an indicator of fatigue) in response to exercise; in addition, they were more able than the control group to increase their exercise intensity as well as the efficiency of their oxygen consumption during exercise. Other smaller studies also done in India have found that yoga can increase exercise performance and raise anaerobic threshold. (Anaerobic threshold is the point at which your muscles cannot extract enough oxygen from your blood and therefore must switch from burning oxygen to burning sugar and creatine. Unlike oxygen, sugar and creatine are dirty fuel sources, creating lactic acid and other by-products that build up in the blood and make you hyperventilate, "feel the burn," and lose muscle coordination.)

Although the research on yoga is only starting to build, a convincingly large amount of research has been done on tai chi, an Eastern martial art that involves a series of slow, graceful movements. Many studies have found that tai chi helps to improve balance, cardiorespiratory and cardiovascular fitness, ability to concentrate, immunity, flexibility, strength, and endurance of the knee extensor muscles.

Dina Amsterdam, a yoga instructor in San Francisco and graduate student at Stanford University, is one of many researchers conducting a three-year study that compares the psychological and physiological benefits of tai chi as to those of traditional forms of Western exercise such as aerobics. (The daughter of Ezra Amsterdam, Dina Amsterdam was the inspiration behind her father's U. C. Davis study on yoga and fitness.)

"Though there haven't been a lot of studies done on yoga that are considered valid, there are numerous studies done on tai chi, with the current Stanford study the largest to date," she says. Because yoga shares many elements with tai chi but can also provide a more vigorous physical workout, Amsterdam expects future yoga studies to produce at least similarly encouraging results. But Amsterdam says she doesn't need additional research to prove to her that yoga builds fitness. "I haven't done anything but yoga and some hiking for 10 years," she says. "When I came to yoga, I was 25 pounds overweight and suffering from a compulsive eating disorder. Yoga completely brought me back to physical and emotional health."

Many yoga practitioners echo such thoughts. Jack England, an 81-year-old yoga and stretching instructor at the Club Med in Port Saint Lucie, Florida, says more than 30 years of yoga have kept him flexible, healthy, and strong. He's the same weight and height as he was in high school, and his stellar health continues to amaze his doctor. He delights audiences at Club Med by practicing Shoulderstand and other poses while balancing on a float board in a water ski show. "I'm an inspiration to people of all ages," he says. "I do things that 14-year-old girls can't do."

Stephanie Griffin, a 33-year-old director of business development for a pharmaceutical research company in San Francisco, discovered yoga after years of running marathons, spinning, and weight lifting. Before discovering yoga, she thought her intense exercise habits had turned her into a poster child for health and fitness. During the last four years, however, Griffin began doing more and more yoga and less and less running, weight lifting, and aerobicizing. As she dropped back on her hardcore fitness pursuits, she worried she might gain weight or lose her muscle tone or exercise capacity.

She didn't. "I have maintained my fitness and even enhanced it through yoga," says Griffin, who no longer has a gym membership. "And I like the way my body looks and feels now better than the way it did before."

Why Yoga Works
Exactly how does yoga build fitness? The answer you get depends on whom you ask. Robert Holly, Ph.D., a senior lecturer in the Department of Exercise Biology at U. C. Davis and one of the researchers on the U. C. Davis study, says that muscles respond to stretching by becoming larger and capable of extracting and using more oxygen more quickly. In other words, side benefits of flexibility include increased muscle strength and endurance.

"My own belief is that the small but significant increase in maximal oxygen capacity was due to an increase in muscle endurance, which allowed the subjects to exercise longer, extract more oxygen, and reach an increased maximal oxygen uptake," says Holly.

Then there's the pranayama theory. Birkel suspects that yoga poses help increase lung capacity by improving the flexibility of the rib area, shoulders, and back, allowing the lungs to expand more fully. Breathwork further boosts lung capacity—and possibly also VO2max—by conditioning the diaphragm and helping to more fully oxygenate the blood.

Birkel, Dina Amsterdam, and others are also quick to point out that Suryanamaskar (Sun Salutations) and other continuously linked poses increase the heart rate, making yoga aerobically challenging. And many yoga poses—particularly standing poses, balancing poses, and inversions—build quite a bit of strength because they require sustained isometric contractions of many large and small muscles. Of course, holding the poses longer increases this training effect.

Finally, yoga tunes you into your body and helps you to better coordinate your actions. "When you bring your breath, your awareness, and your physical body into harmony, you allow your body to work at its maximum fitness capacity," says Dina Amsterdam. "Yoga class is merely a laboratory for how to be in harmony with the body in every activity outside of yoga. This improved physical wellness and fluidity enhance not just the physical well-being but also permeate all levels of our being."

Are You Fit?
Given all this evidence, can you now confidently tell your nonyogi friends they're wrong when they insist that you should add other forms of exercise to your practice?

Maybe, maybe not. The answer depends largely on how much you dedicate yourself to yoga. Studies done on yoga have included more than an hour of practice two to four days a week. The yoga sessions included breathwork and meditation in addition to typical yoga poses. Finally, the asanas used in these studies included not just aerobically challenging sequences, like Sun Salutations, but also many strengthening poses, like Virabhadrasana (Warrior Pose), Vrksasana (Tree Pose), Trikonasana (Triangle Pose), Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward-Facing Dog Pose), Navasana (Boat Pose), Sarvangasana (Shoulderstand), Setu Bandha Sarvangasana (Bridge Pose), and Plank.

So if you want to become and stay physically and mentally fit, make sure your yoga practice includes a balance of poses that build strength, stamina, and flexibility, along with breathwork and meditation to help develop body awareness. In particular, include a series of standing poses in your practice. As your practice expands, Schumacher suggests adding more challenging asanas such as balancing poses and inversions. "If you are just doing 15 minutes of gentle yoga stretches three to four times a week, you will also need to do some other form of exercise to stay fit," Schumacher readily admits. "I often tell my beginning students that they will need to do something in addition to yoga for a while until they can practice more vigorously."

Holly agrees. If you practice yoga for less than an hour twice a week, he suggests you either pair your practice with moderate intensity exercise like walking, or increase your yoga time or frequency. "But the best form of exercise is whatever you enjoy most and will continue to do on a regular, almost daily, basis," he says. "Should you do more than yoga if you don't enjoy other activities? No. Yoga has a lot of benefits, so do yoga regularly and enjoy it." Beyond fitness, yoga also offers many other gifts. It improves your health, reduces stress, improves sleep, and often acts like a powerful therapy to help heal relationships, improve your career, and boost your overall outlook on life.

All these positives are enough to keep former exercise junkie Stephanie Griffin hooked on yoga for life. Griffin had worried that, unlike her other fitness pursuits, yoga wouldn't give her the emotional satisfaction of aiming for and meeting goals. Soon, however, she realized that yoga offered her a path to constant improvement. "One day it hit me: I realized that my goal was to be practicing yoga well into my 90s," says Griffin. "For me, that is the new finish line. Practicing with that goal satisfies me more than any marathon."

37) Being BKS Iyengar: The enlightened yogi of yoga(part2-2)

In the last post we saw the Part-1 of the interview of BKS Iyengar with CNN-IBN's Anuradha SenGupta , here we will see Part-2 of the interview .

35) Being BKS Iyengar: The enlightened yogi of yoga Part-1

CNN-IBN's Anuradha SenGupta meets BKS Iyengar at his Pune residence.

34) Shiva Rea's flow Yoga - Yoga Shakti

Shiva Rea, M.A., is a leading teacher of transformational Prana Flow Yoga and Yoga Trance Dance™. She began exploring yoga at the age of fourteen as a way to understand her name, given to her by her father, a surfer and artist. Her studies in the Krishnamacharya lineage, Tantra, Ayurveda, Bhakti, Kalaripayattu, world dance, yogic art and somatic movement infuse her approach to living yoga and embodying the flow. She is known for bringing the roots of yoga alive for modern practitioners in creative, dynamic and life-transforming ways and for offering the synthesis form of vinyasa flow out in the world.

Here is a video sample from her DVD - Yoga Shakti and this workout is only for advanced practitioners of yoga as it is an intense workout .

33) Simplicity of the Sivananda System of Yoga

The Sivananda System of Yoga as systematized by Swami Vishnu devananda through his "Five Points of Yoga " and "12 Basic Postures" is a simple and straightforward method of living a Yogic life in practical terms . The "Five Points of Yoga" give a Macro view of what is needed to live a Yogic life and the "12 Basic postures" give a very practical tool for starting the Yogic Journey . Being a Sivananda Yoga Teacher myself I found this system of Yoga to be very useful not only for my own daily Sadhana but also for teaching beginners and helping them develop a healthy yogic life . Of course Yoga is a vast subject and the Sivananda System of Yoga does not address all those aspects but yet it is quite complete and comprehensive in its content to satisfy the needs of many common people who want a simple and straightforward approach to yoga without bothering them with deep technical details , mysticism , or dry theory . It is quite practical and the best way to experience the "5 Points of Yoga " is to take a short break and try the "Yoga Vacation" programs at the various Sivananda Ashrams the world over .The "Yoga Vacation" programs will give u the much needed detoxification of the body and mind and give you a taste of what is needed to live a Yogic life .

For more details refer the site www.sivananda.org

32) Did my Sadhana Intensive for the second time

I was away for nearly 3 weeks and returned back to Chennai only on Jan 20,2010 and had gone to the Sivananda Ashram in Madurai for doing the Sadhana Intensive Course for the second time . I did this course last year itself i.e in Jan 2009 and was thrilled to repeat it again the second time .I thoroughly enjoyed the course .We had 32 people from various parts of the world and many were repeating this course for the second time and some for the third time . Last year for me doing this course was a new experience but this time I could manage it better and could do the practices with more maturity . In end it was a terrific experience for me and I thoroughly enjoyed the course and felt this was the best way to start year 2010 .I am back to my usual schedule and will be updating this blog regularly .

31)Health & Serenity

Needless to say, health and serenity are not separate and distinct. Our physical health unmistakably affects our mental health. And this being a two way street, our state of mind plays a huge role in the quality of our physical health. Unity Woods teacher, Alyson Ross, recently presented a program at the Bethesda studio on Yoga and the Physiology of Stress in which she described the current state of research regarding the effect stress has on physical health. The data is powerful and unequivocal in connecting the importance of our reactions to stress to our physical well-being.

But serenity has meaning and importance beyond physical health. The word derives from the Latin word serenus, which means clear as well as calm. Clarity and calmness are important benefits of yoga. Indeed, one of the common portrayals of the yoga practitioner is that she is calm and serene. How many ads have you seen on TV and in magazines of a woman in a white leotard sitting in half lotus on a beach or in a forest glen, eyes closed, a gentle smile on her face, obviously in a state of quiet bliss? (Of course, it’s not the yoga that’s responsible for this, but the anxiety medication she just took or the new car she bought.) Even in everyday life, however, real examples of this common conception exist. People in the building where I teach have often commented on the calm demeanor of the students leaving from their classes, and unless these students are all secretly popping stress meds in the lavatory, the yoga is clearly having that effect.

There are a number of reasons why yoga has such a calming effect. The physical activity of doing the postures, just as with any exercise, stimulates chemicals in the brain that engender a state of happiness and contentment. And by directing attention to the subtleties of the postures, the mind is drawn from its usually scattered nature to a more focused, one-pointed state. This focused state allows the practitioner to let go, at least for a time, of many of the day-to-day worries that can produce distress and anxiety. Furthermore, the guided relaxation that comes at the end of class (or throughout the class if it’s a restorative class) teaches the student to recognize where she is holding tension in her body and mind and how to let go of that tension.

Breathing is also a powerful contributor to creating serenity. The shift in breathing that occurs when the poses (asanas) are done properly relaxes the mind, and the more direct practice of pranayama (yogic breathing) promotes this calming effect to an even greater degree.

On another level, one of the important things the sincere and persistent student of yoga learns through his practice is that there are things in his body and mind he can change, things he can’t, and that with practice, he can begin to distinguish between the two. This discriminating wisdom helps to foster an attitude of acceptance of the ways things are that brings about contentment. The realization that he also has the power to change the causes of his discomfort energizes him and carries him forward in his efforts toward that end. And finally the conflicts within him that come from uselessly struggling with the things he can’t change begin to fall away.

By John Schumacher ( Senior BKS Iyengar Teacher )

Unity Woods Yoga Center Fall 2009 Newsletter

30)Practised Before Preaching

Today i.e 8th September being the birthday of Swami Sivananda I am sharing the following message by Swami Chidananda . Swami Sivananda’s preachings are all backed by his personal experience of practical Sadhana of the past twenty-five years of ascetic life. His teachings are not based on mere academic knowledge or study of ancient and modern philosophies and religions, but have been carefully devised after personal practice of many years and intimate knowledge. They can easily be comprehended and translated into practice by any sincere aspirant.

Gurudev used to write addressing young aspirants:

You must be very correct, very punctual, very regular. You should discipline yourself rigidly. Otherwise, you cannot attain the highest, the Realisation. It is not an easy task. Happy-go-lucky type easy temperament is no good in spiritual pursuits. Have you noticed how correct, how strict, how disciplined are the soldiers in the army? They have to stand in the parade according to the unit or battalion they belong to. They have to be absolutely spick and span. They do polishing of the shoes and brass by themselves. Even if a single button is dull, the inspecting officer spots the soldier and puts him into quarter-guard, and he will have to do fettling duty. They are always fighting fit, trim and clean, neat and tidy, because they have been drilled into this sort of correctness, precision and training. When an ordinary soldier is required to be so disciplined, so correct, so punctual, so regular, then what to say about you, O aspirant! A spiritual aspirant has to be even ten times more strict, regular, punctual, correct, well-disciplined. A soldier fights to win a battle, whereas an aspirant has to win the kingdom of heaven, win Kaivalya Moksha. Therefore, never give leniency to your mind.

When Gurudev said that, there was hundred per cent impact on the hearer. After hearing Gurudev, one could no longer remain what he was till then. Why? Because when Gurudev gave any instruction, one could clearly see he gave it with the firm conviction of his own practice. In fact, whatever Gurudev has said about Sadhana is based on his own experience only. He advised to the Sadhakas and disciples only such Sadhana which he himself had practised for such a long time that it had become his daily routine, his second nature. So it carried conviction, it carried a force behind it. The hearer immediately felt in his heart, ‘Here is someone who is saying what he himself has gone through; he is not giving us some theoretical or bookish knowledge; he is giving a part of his own life, his own self.’

That was the power behind Gurudev’s words. In spite of this fact, he seldom gave such straight, direct talk, rarely, very rarely, once in a while only. Gurudev used to say:

If anyone who is living in Sivananda Ashram complains of lack of guidance, he must be a lazy person, he has no interest in his own welfare. I have given everything necessary for a Sadhaka in my 300 books. If a Sadhaka is seriously interested in his own good, he should go through these books and he will have no more any doubts. He will never have any hesitation in proceeding with his Sadhana. Everything necessary for a spiritual aspirant is given in these books. Study them. If you have got any doubts after a sincere study, do come to me and ask.

He was indeed hundred per cent right. If anyone with real interest takes the pains to go through the hard labour Gurudev has put into his writings, then there will be an absolutely clear path ahead of him. For every question, for every doubt, there is an answer in his books. He was indeed, a man of practical wisdom.

Sri Swami Chidananda

29) Commitment and discipline

Many students say that sometimes they have problems getting themselves to practice at home. Often I hear the statement, "I just don't have any discipline." I would like to redefine the concept of "discipline" by contrasting it with the concept of "commitment".

There is a big difference between discipline and commitment. "Discipline" is something that is externally generated, it is a "should". We have often internalized this "should" as the concept of discipline into our own inner voices; this is the voice we hear inside berating us when we don't practice.

Commitment, on the other hand, is a choice we make of our own volition. The difference between "discipline" and "commitment" is conflict. When we are imposing discipline upon ourselves we are in conflict with ourselves, arguing inside "yes, no, yes, no". But when we are committed there is no conflict, no argument, no problem.

Think about something in your life that you are committed to, for example, brushing your teeth. I doubt that you argue with yourself every morning about brushing your teeth. You just do it, whether it is interesting or boring, it doesn't matter.

When we are committed to practicing yoga, we just get on the mat every day, regardless of our mood, our state of mind, our internal dialogue.

If you have problems sometimes getting your self to practice, spend a little time figuring out what is standing in the way of your commitment to practice. I am guessing that what you learn in the process will not only free you up to practice more often but will enrich your life as well.

Judith Hanson Lasater
Senior Yoga Teacher . She is the author of six books: A Year of Living Your Yoga, Yoga Abs, Yoga for Pregnancy, 30 Essential Yoga Poses, Living Your Yoga and Relax and Renew.

28)Looking for remedies beyond Tamiflu- Yoga , Pranayama and Meditation

DR. R. KRISHNADAS

(The writer is a senior consultant neurosurgeon in Chennai)

http://www.hindu.com/op/2009/08/23/stories/2009082350071200.htm

It is time to wake up to the reality that swine flu is here to stay for good. The evolutionary process has subjected man to many challenges and the fittest have survived. The present challenge is nothing different and will not be the last, but it poses an interesting question as to how we can make ourselves physiologically better to face these challenges. Drugs and vaccines developed in the laboratory may not be the answer as the virus can develop resistance or can mutate .

It is time to move away from conventional scientific views and accept certain out of the box ideas which could be effective. The burden of defining what the best medical practice is has rested on western scientists. There is a lot that is still unknown in this universe and the same applies to human physiology.

A(H1N1)virus appears to be on every one’s lips and mind and the electronic media has been successful in spreading not only awareness but also panic and fear. The latter two were undesirable. Panic and fear produce many chemical reactions in the body and weaken not only the immune mechanisms but also affect the cardiovascular and respiratory system adversely making one more vulnerable to the virus. The host resistance plays an important role in the fight between the bugs and the body. The healthy suffer only a minor form of the disease, but the vulnerable especially the diabetics, the asthmatics, the immune compromised persons and the very old and the very young have to live in constant fear.

Are there mechanisms to increase immunity and to improve the functioning of the heart and the lungs? Psychoneuroimmunology and mind body medicine are the best bets to answer this burning topic. That the mind influences the body and its functioning is an accepted fact. Psychoneuro somatic integration helps the body to function in the best possible manner to combat diseases and this is best achieved through the practice of yoga.

The psyche, the nervous system and all the body organs are hardwired by nerves and regulated by chemicals. The emotional brain lies between the newly developed brain, the neocortex, which is highly developed in the humans and the primitive brain that subserves elementary functions like breathing. The human brain is like three computers wired together. The hypothalamus and the amygdala are the important components of the emotional brain and control the sympathetic nervous system and regulate the secretion of cortisol and adrenalin. Unregulated release of these chemicals can wreak havoc in the body as happens in stress. Cortisol is an immunosuppressant and adrenalin acts on the heart and lungs, making them more vulnerable to attack.

Fear is an emotion that is very effective in the release of these chemicals! Subjecting the emotional brain to the control of the neocortical brain can help regulate these dangerous chemicals. The immune system is of primary importance and can be effectively stimulated by specialised breathing techniques that improve both alveolar ventilation and blood oxygenation making the body more efficient in combating the virus.. The killer cells of the thymus, a component of the immune system, that carry out surveillance in the human body against cancer, is also effective against viruses. The thymus is amenable to stimulation only by endogenous melatonin which can be increased by meditation.

27) Importance of July 14 for me

July 14 is a very important day in my life .Not only is it important because it is the Maha Samadhi day of Swami Sivananda , one of India's greatest spiritual teachers but also due to the fact that this was the day I started my Yoga Journey 12 years back in 1997 . I think it was a divine co-incidence that my Yoga journey started on the Maha Samadhi day of Swami Sivananda on July 14 . People ask me why I choose the Sivananda System and I say to them that I never choose the Sivananda System of Yoga , it choose me and I am ever grateful to the almighty for Yoga entering my life .For me July 14 was not just the day I started practising Yoga but it was also a day that started my assocition with the Sivananda Institution which I consider it to be an extended family of mine .Through this institution only I got certified as a Yoga Teacher by attending the Teachers Training Course in 1998 and then later went on to do the Advanced Yoga Teachers Training Course in 2004 and recently completed the Sadhana Intensive Course in Jan 2009 .It was due to the Sivananda institution that I got the offer of doing a 70 episode morning Yoga TV show for a private channell in 2001 and it was due to this institution that I came into contacts with many wonderful people worldwide . The Sivananda institution is a multi cultural University with people from various parts of the world as its staff and students and guests and the past 12 years have been an amazing experience for me meeting people from world over through the Sivananda Institution and I still continue to meet and make friends with people world over .Many times I had the previlege of Organizing retreats and taking many of these people out in and around Chennai and Thiruvanamalai being the favorite retreat spot . It was due to the Sivananda Institution that I was able to step outside of India first of all when they invited me to their Head Quarters in Quebec Canada in 2006 .The entire visit was sponsored by the Sivananda Organization and I had an excellent visit and enjoyed every bit of the same .Though I started to teach Yoga at the Sivananda Organization as a non paid volunteer slowly I started getting offers to teach outside and have now made it my own full time profession and today whatever success that I have as a Yoga teacher is due to the grace of my Gurus Swami Sivananda and Swami Vihsnu devananda and also due to my association with the Sivanada Institution . These days I am not very much active in the administration and the day to day activities of the Sivananda Centre in Chennai or in fact even teaching there as now my life is more focussed on my own Sadhana and my own private teaching but yet I maintain my association with the Organization through its teachings . Eventhough I read a lot about other Yoga Teachers and other yoga teachings yet at Core I follow the Sivananda System of Yoga both in my own personal practice as well as when I teach others and will continue to do the same . The last 12 years journey through the Sivananda Institution was not always a smooth one and had its own highs and lows but each experience was shaping me and educating me and had enriched me and expanded my vision and outlook and overall I was very much benefitted by my association with the Sivananda Institution and that was due to the grace of Swami Sivananda who brought me in to this institution on July 14 , 1999 and I am very much grateful to him for the same and always thank him for making me as a Yoga teacher .

26) Reasons for not updating this blog for the past 3 months .

I was not updating this blog for the past 3 months as from end of December 2008 I was busy involved in preparing myself for the Sadhana Intensive Course at the Sivananda Ashram in Madurai from Jan 3-18,2009 .After successfully finishing the course I remained mostly in silence ( i.e not much online communication ) and confined myself only to my own Yoga Sadhana and my private teaching .This was a period where I was just nurturing the benefits of the Sadhana Intensive Course ( shortly called SI ) and the best way to do was to be away from net / other talks /chats etc and keep following my own sadhana and teaching . That was the reason why I was not also updating this blog for the past 3 months .Even though I am now busy with my own Yoga Teaching I found that it is high time I start updating my blog and continue to share my insights on yoga and related topics . The SI course was a very excellent one and offered me a wonderful opportunity to re-establish my connection with my teaching lineage i.e Sivananda Lineage and I do not have words to express the joy I experienced both during the course as well as the benefits I received after doing the same .I am very much thankful to my Yoga Guru Swami Vishnu devananda for packaging this wonderful 2 weeks Sadhana Intensive course for the Sivananda Teachers Training Graduates and I believe that the best way to express my thanks to my Guru is to keep intensfying my own Yoga Sadhana and keep sharing the benefits of Yoga with my students and help also uplift them .Swami Vishnu devanada coined the slogan many decaded back : "Health is Wealth , Peace of Mind is Happiness and Yoga Shows the Way" and I have found it practically true in my own life especially in my last 10 years as a Yoga Teacher as well as a Yoga Practitioner .

25) Yoga is the supreme religion- BKS Iyengar

The striking photograph of Yogacharya Bellur Krishnamachar Sundararaja Iyengar doing the shirshasan in the backdrop of the Swiss Alps brings out the perfection of the asana. Guruji, as Iyengar is popularly known, has worked for 70 years in mastering the art and the science of yoga. In his ninth decade today Iyengar is raring to do more. As president of the 15-school Indian Yoga Association, he has many plans ahead - of bringing about uniformity in these different schools; introducing yoga in schools and colleges and popularising yoga to the Generation Y to keep ills at bay. In a free-wheeling talk the yogacharya extols the virtue of yoga teachers to attain the zenith and look at yoga beyond a form of physical exercise.

From Light of Yoga to Light on Life and the journey in between...
It has been one of enlightenment. The body is connected with five elements. Practice of yoga helps connect with all of them and attain atma darshan through asanas. Light on Yoga is a reflection of the maturity I attained through my practice and research. As my practice grew, I inched towards perfection to introduce intelligence in sadhana, where the entire body including the nail attains stability. Light of Life is the journey of more than half a century of my association with yoga, my travel from darkness to light and from sickness to health, from ignorance to the light of knowledge.

Your contribution to yoga has been far-reaching, in fact yoga is known in the West because you started teaching it...
I started to do yoga first to maintain a good health. When I met Yehudi Menuhin in Mumbai in 1954, and my asanas helped him with his arm, he invited me to London. I gave thousands of demonstrations before people took to yoga. I started slowly, but once its benefits were experienced by all, the followers of yoga multiplied quickly. Now there are plenty of yoga teachers.

There is a guru-shishya tradition involved here, can all the teachers live up to it?
The guru-shishya relationship is essential, but each one has to struggle on his own to attain perfection. Just as I started from scratch and became a king, other must also practice. Teachers of yoga have less dedication. Anyone who practices an art must observe and absorb. When there is observation and absorption, it will lead to dedication. When I teach, there is a lecture and then an asana is presented. It connects well with the student. The guru and his pupil are together concerned with the spiritual knowledge (Brahma Vidya). The fruit of first-hand experience matures and the guru and the shishya explore it together.

Why are there no big yoga camps?
I have never wavered from teaching it to the masses. In fact that is why yoga is popular today. In a poor country like ours, people spend too much on medicines. If knowledge of yoga spreads across the nation people can save money on medicines and use it to buy food instead. Further, yoga is an art for me. I have immense respect for it. It requires years of attention to the subtlest form of the self. Stretching of the body is not yoga. The self has to penetrate outside, just as the body has to look within.

You want schools and colleges to make it compulsory for students...
I began teaching yoga to school and college students in Pune in 1937. If only the benefits had been realised then, we would have had yoga teachers all over the country by now and yoga would have spread all over the nation.

Yoga is willing accepted by people of other faiths. Why?
Yoga is the supreme religion. The body and intelligence are the same everywhere. The mind is individual and yoga helps it become universal. It brings about a vibration in the body and this music is due to the practice of the asanas. Its benefits are immeasurable and that is the only reason for its popularity.

Your favourite asanas...
I respect the viparita salabhasan as much as I do the tadasana. Even the simplest of asanas can have deep impact.

Yoga is now a money spinner...
The world is changing. A teacher of yoga has to make a living. In 1954, when violinist Yehudi Menuhin invited me to London, I was paid 100 dollars and toiled for months. In 1960, when I took my first class, I charged 10 shillings per student. It was barely enough to make ends meet. Today, practical philosophy lies in the teacher giving more than what he takes. Just as there is rajadharma, there must be yogadharma. Each and every student should be treated equally. Preferential treatment to those who pay more is not acceptable.

And you have miles to go...
I began with a scratch and became a king. I practice yoga three hours a day and pranayam for one hour. Yoga is the reason I am still going on at 90. I am a tenant here. I will vacate when God asks me to. Till then, I have much to do

There have been awards — Padma Shree, Padma Vibhushan and Time magazine...
I am honoured. In fact I had no idea about Time magazine's choice. I never thought I was one of the 100 most influential people.

Source :

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1213696&pageid=2

24) Yoga Teachers or Spiritual Healers ?

In post No:22 on the Topic "Multiple disciplined Yoga teachers " I dealt with the issue of how a Yoga Teacher must be having the knowledge of multiple disciplines to be an effective yoga teacher .I will be discussing about that topic again because time and again the question comes as to" what is the role of a yoga teacher" ? , is he a person just teaching you some asanas and pranayama ? is he a person giving you some yoga therapy to cure you from backache , diabetes ? is he another form of fitness instructor ? is he a stress reliever etc ? Is he a spiritual guru ?
Most of the current yoga teachers ususally play one of the above goals but only very few play an integrated goal of all of the above and much more and able to switch gears according to the type of student they face and always end up making the student feel much better and more clear in their association with them .Very few yoga teachers are there who are able to do a complete role as not just a yoga teacher but an integrated spiritual healer .Such sort of teachers have a magical effect on the student .Even if they teach you asanas at the external level they silently tune you in to understanding yourself at the deeper level .At the physical level due to asanas you get lot of physical relief , at the mental level due to pranayama and meditation you get a form of mental rest but still the person feels a void and you get full spiritual clarity only when you understand yourself at the deepest core .That is the highest form of healing and all yogas are directed to that end only . Unfortunately not many yoga teachers are equipped to take a student to such a deeper level as most of them stop purely at the physical level and not many are intersted in learning and assimilating the deeper truths contained in Advaita Vedanta .Yoga practice without Vedantic knowledge is like driving a car without knowing the destination and similarly studying Vedanta without the foundation of a yogic discipline will lead to producing just dry arrogant vedantic teachers / students who will be just talking and talking without having any impact on the students to whom they talk .They will be unable to help a student especially a beginner to spirituality in progessing from where they are i.e at the gross physical level and will be just talking about the end .Many students keep listening to these vedantic lectures for many years and with not much transformation .The problem is not in the subject matter of Vedanta but in the lack of preparation of the student who is listening to the same . So an effective Yoga teacher is one who is not only thorough in the Yoga subject but also on the subject of Vedanta and knows how best to apply the same to each student and help them progess step by step till they develop ultimate spiritual clarity .That is one of the reason Swami Sivananda and Swami Vishnu devananda combined the science of Yoga and Vedanta and urged all their students to assimilate both these sciences for their own welfare and also for the world . This is the qualification every Yoga teacher must have to be effective as a true spiritual healer in all respects and this is also the path I am orienting myself also in to .