Yoga, träning och hälsoinspiration för dig

Poweryoga är en dynamisk yogaform som fokuserar på styrka, uthållighet, balans och flexibilitet. Den togs fram i USA på 80-talet med inspiration från ashtanga- och vinyasa yoga. Ett svettig yogaform som ger kroppen en riktig genomkörare och skärper ditt fokus. 

Power yoga – historien bakom yogastilen

Det var i slutet av 1980-talet som Beryl Bender Birch och Bryan Kest utvecklade poweryogan. Den spred sig sedan snabbt över USA, blev trendig med flera kända namn som visade sig med yogamattan under armen och yogaformen tog sig sedan vidare runt om i Västsverige under 90- och 00-talet. De båda grundarna utvecklade sina likartade yogaformer ungefär samtidigt men oberoende av varandra, den ena på östkusten i USA och den andra på västkusten. De hade både samma men också något olika ingång till syftet:

Beryl Bender Birch  tränade själv ashtangayoga, som är en atletisk yogaform som kräver så väl styrka som flexibilitet och uthållighet. Ashtanga vinyasa yoga kallas också yogaformen, som utförs i strikta serier där man utför samma positioner i samma ordning varje gång och först när man klarar serie 1 kan man gå vidare till 2.

Vill du testa poweryoga? I videobiblioteket här på Yogobe hittar du klasser med olika längd och fokus.

Beryl insåg att många positionerna var för svåra för majoriteten av deltagarna. Hon utformade därför ett upplägg med syfte att bättre passa stelare kroppar, framför allt atleter och löpare valde hon att rikta in sig på. Till en början tänkte hon att formen just skulle heta yoga för atleter, men landade sedan i Power yoga just för att visa att formen är fysiskt krävande ”a true work out” och inte endast meditation.

Bryan Kest ville snarare skapa en yogaform som passade alla och lekte ett tag med namnet ”Grandma yoga” för att alla farmödrar och mormödrar skulle kunna känna sig välkomna in i salen.

Fitnessyoga som "möter deltagaren där den är"

Med tiden blev poweryoga ett allmänt namn för flera olika former av mer fysiskt krävande vinyasa yogaklasser, med eller utan uppvärmd sal, oftast med musik. Upplägget är vanligtvis att man börjar med andningsövningar, solhälsning A och B och därefter följer stående positioner för styrka och balans och avslutningen består av stretchande positioner och avslappning. Andningen, ofta ujjayi-andningen, är grundläggande genom klassen och det mentala fokuset likaså.

Yogafilosofin nämns inte i klasserna utan poweryoga ses mer som en fitnessvariant av yoga. De båda grundarna har med sig filosofin men trycker på att ”möta deltagaren där den är” och om det är av fitnessorsaker, så är det där man börjar, menar dem. Via de fysiska positionerna övas samtidigt uppmärksamhet, kroppsnärvaro, att lyssna in sina gränser. Att utöva yogan som det känns bra för en själv och inte hur man tror att det ska behöva se ut eller vara. På så sätt ville de tillgängliggöra yogan till en bredare massa.

Baron Baptiste var en av dem som populariserade yogaformen och Ulrica Norberg var en av tidigaste att sprida poweryogan i Sverige. 2002 gav hon ut boken Poweryoga där du med yogaformen beskrivs kunna bli ”lika vältränad och stark som en atlet, smidig och graciös som en dansare. Du uppnår en mental styrka, högre kroppskännedom samt ett inre lugn. Här gäller det att lyssna inåt, följa känslan och att arbeta med kroppen inte mot den!”

Fördelar med poweryoga

• Ökar fysisk styrka, uthållighet och stabilitet
• Rörlighet och smidighet tränas upp
• Höjer pulsen och ökar blodcirkulationen
• Främjar kroppsnärvaro
• Fokus på andning och mentalt fokus ger meditation i rörelse
• För den som har svårt att slappna av kan de fysiska utmaningarna under klassen hjälpa till att släppa spänningar i kroppen och lättare slappna av i savasana på slutet och då få sin välgörande återhämtning

Att tänka på när du vill börja med power yoga:

• Så väl att andas i takt med rörelserna (vinyasa) och positionerna i sig kan vara kluriga när man är helt ny – ge det några gånger och lägg märke till vad som händer när du känner igen rörelserna och märker vad som händer i din kropp snarare än hur det ”borde” se ut

• Alla kroppar är byggda olika – anpassa positionen efter din kropp, det ska inte göra ont, men det kan stretcha ”sköntont”

• En del positioner kräver en del stabilitet för att inte hänga i leder och belasta kroppen så att du kan få ont i längden. För att t.ex. inte få ont i framför allt axlar kan vi tipsa om nedanstående instruktionsvideo för chaturanga som det ofta blir många utav i poweryogan!

Källa: One flow yoga och Power Yoga av Ulrica Norberg.

Lästips – yoga och power

• Läs mer om poweryoga
• Power för inre och yttre styrka, av Kitty Strand
• Vinyasa – vad betyder det egentligen?

Videotips för starka, flödande yogastilar

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Power yoga is a dynamic form of yoga that focuses on strength, endurance, balance and flexibility. It was developed in the USA in the 80's with inspiration from ashtanga and vinyasa yoga. A sweaty yoga form that gives the body a real workout and sharpens your focus.

Power yoga – the story behind the yoga style

It was in the late 1980s that Beryl Bender Birch and Bryan Kest developed power yoga. It then spread rapidly across the United States, became trendy with several famous names that appeared with a yoga mat under the arm and the yoga form continued around western Sweden during the 90s and 00s. The two founders developed their similar yoga forms at about the same time but independently of each other, one on the east coast of the United States and the other on the west coast. They had both the same but also a slightly different entrance to the purpose:

Beryl Bender Birch trained ashtanga yoga herself, which is an athletic yoga form that requires strength as well as flexibility and endurance. Ashtanga vinyasa yoga is also the yoga form, which is performed in strict series where you perform the same positions in the same order every time and only when you pass series 1 can you move on to 2.

Beryl realized that many positions were too difficult for the majority of participants. She therefore designed a scheme with the aim of better fitting stiffer bodies, especially athletes and runners she chose to focus on. At first she thought that the form would be called yoga for athletes, but then landed in Power yoga just to show that the form is physically demanding "a true work out" and not just meditation.

Bryan Kest rather wanted to create a form of yoga that suited everyone and played for a while with the name "Grandma yoga" so that all grandmothers and grandmothers could feel welcome in the hall.

Fitness yoga that "meets the participant where it is"

Over time, power yoga became a common name for several different forms of more physically demanding vinyasa yoga classes, with or without a heated hall, usually with music. The plan is usually to start with breathing exercises, sun salutation A and B and then follow standing positions for strength and balance, and ending with stretching positions and relaxation. Breathing, often ujjayi breathing, is basic through the class and the mental focus as well.

The yoga philosophy is not mentioned in the classes, as power yoga is seen more as a fitness variant of yoga. The two founders have the philosophy with them but push to "meet the participant where it is" and if it is for fitness reasons, then that is where you start, they say. Through the physical positions, attention, body presence, and listening to one's limits are practiced at the same time. To practice yoga as it feels good for oneself and not how one thinks it should look or be. In this way, they wanted to make yoga available to a wider mass.

Baron Baptiste was one of those who popularized the yoga form and Ulrica Norberg was one of the earliest to spread power yoga in Sweden. In 2002, she published the book Poweryoga, which describes the yoga form as being able to become “as fit and strong as an athlete, agile and graceful as a dancer. You achieve a mental strength, higher body awareness and an inner peace. Here it is important to listen inwards, follow the feeling and work with the body, not against it! ”

Benefits of power yoga

• Increases physical strength, endurance and stability
• Mobility and agility are trained
• Increases heart rate and increases blood circulation
• Promotes body presence
• Focus on breathing and mental focus provide meditation in motion
• For those who find it difficult to relax, the physical challenges during the class can help to release tension in the body and more easily relax in savasana at the end and then get their beneficial recovery.

Source: One flow yoga and Power Yoga by Ulrica Norberg.

Read more about yoga, power and breathing

• What is ashtanga yoga?
• Find your inner motivation, by Satu Tuomela.
• Breathe life into your life – part 1, by Ulrica Norberg.

Videos with strong and powerful excercises

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OBS! Denna tävling är avslutad.

Vår temamånad med andning i fokus är slut och vi går in i mars med nytt spännande fokus. MEN eftersom vi gärna vill uppmuntra dig till att fortsätta att utforska potentialen i din andning anordnar vi här en tävling där du har chansen att kamma hem BÅDE onlinekursen The Art of Breathing med Ulrica Norberg SAMT ett signerat exemplar av hennes bok ANDAS. Läs mer om hur du är med och tävlar här nedan.

Vad kan jag vinna?

Första pris i tävligen ger vinnaren ett års access till onlinekursen The Art of Breathing (värde 1499 SEK) med Ulrica Norberg här på Yogobe SAMT ett signerat exemplar av Ulricas bok ANDAS (värde 229 SEK). Andra samt tredje pris ger varje vinnare ett signerat exemplar vardera av boken ANDAS av Ulrica Norberg (värde 229 SEK/st).

Hur går tävlingen till?
Posta ditt bästa tips på temat andning under tävlingsinformationen på vår Facebooksida BEYOGA365. Ge ditt bästa andningstips samt ge en kort motivering till varför just du bör vinna. 

Hur utses vinnarna?
Vi tävlar ut vinsterna utifrån bästa tips samt härligaste motivering, enligt juryn hos Yogobe som består av Camilla Bengtsson, Miriam Sundholm, Linda Åslev samt Emmi Omhav. Eventuell vinstskatt betalas av vinnarna.

Och vinnarna är...

• Första pris går till Helena Augustsson. Stort grattis!
• Andra och tredje pris går till Anna Björkdala samt Sara Wickenberg. Grattis till er båda!

Tack till alla er som var med i tävlingen, tack för era tips och era tankar kring andning<3

Vi återkommer till alla vinnarna separat :) 

All kärlek, Yogobe Crew

Har du frågor om tävlingen, Yogobe eller BEYOGA365 tveka inte att skriva en rad till oss: [email protected]

Fotograf: Gabriel Liljevall

Det nya året är här. Med det många nyårslöften. Att komma igång med träning, med yoga, med goda matvanor och mer därtill. Men de där löftena, är de rimliga? Är de vad vi behöver? Egentligen? Vi vill uppmuntra dig till att börja året med en mjukstart. Här delar jag med mig av mina tankar samt inspiration kring just detta. 

Vad innebär det att komma igång?

När nyårslöftet är satt är det lätt att huvudstupa kasta sig in i hårdträning eller en strikt diet och diciplinera sig till max. För att sedan inte orka hålla det... Antingen kanske målen är för högt satta, orimliga för ditt vardagsliv. Kanske är stenhård träning inte det du behöver just nu.

Att komma igång är så mycket mer.

Att komma igång med något som får dig att må bra. Är din kropp redan uppe i varv och stressad kanske inte hård träning är svaret. Eller snarare är det kanske så att enbart det och ingen återhämtning, träning för sinnet och hjärnan, inte är svaret.

Kanske är det en mjukstart du behöver. Komma igång med att bara andas medvetet. Eller att köra färre träningspass och istället peta in sisådär 15 minuter med rörlighet, djupa andetag, meditation och/eller avslappning.

Så kom igång - men på dina villkor. Ingen annans. Strunta blankt i löpsedlar, instagramutmaningar, andras hets. Såvida de inte gynnar dig och det du behöver.

Sätt en intention, sätt dina mål
Jag vill uppmuntra dig till att sätta en intention med året som kommer. Och långsiktigt lägga en plan för hur denna intention ska få utrymme. Vad är rimligt? Vad ger mig kraft och energi? Vad mår jag bra av? Vad BEHÖVER jag, snarare än vad VILL jag. För många gånger är det där vi "vill" inte alltid så sunt då det ofta är tankarna som får styra dessa och inte vårt inre.

Det handlar helt enkelt om att klättra i vår utveckling, mentalt, fysiskt såväl som själsligt. Att öppna upp och sikta mot nya mål, nya höjder, nya perspektiv. Sluta aldrig utmana dig själv, det är där vi växer! Men gör det på en nivå som du mår bra av.

Hjälp på vägen 

En mjukstart – det är just det vi på Yogobe vill vägleda dig till denna årets första månad. Att i lugn och ro känna in, testa vad som funkar för kroppen, och själen just nu, och se vad vi kan behöva mer av under året. Här kommer lite tips på hur vi kan vägleda dig genom din mjukstart, eller rivstart, om det är det du behöver:

• Kom igång med yogan
  Vill du komma igång med att just komma ner i varv? Att börja yoga eller meditera? Då kanske något av Anna och Josefines härliga kom-igång-program är precis vad du behöver för att ge yogan en ärlig chans:
  • Kom igång med yoga – för dig som är ny till yoga
  • Kickstart för din yogapraktik – för alla som vill ge sig själv en yogaboost, ovanare yogis såväl som mer vana.

• Kom igång med träningen
  Vill du komma igång med träningen med inte riktigt hittar tiden? Även här kan jag varmt rekommendera träningsprogrammet Kom igång med din träning som håller dig i handen och guidar. Eller varför inte programmet Aktiv40Plus, ett svettigt, tufft och härligt program med pass som är speciellt anpassade för vad kroppen  behöver efter 40, men som alla kan göra.

• Kom igång med fördjupning
  Kanske är det något särskilt du vill komma igång och utvecklas i. Under träningsprogram finns vägledning som hjälper dig att exempelvis stärka upp din core från grunden, att lära dig eller fördjupa bakåtböjningar. Massor av härlig inspiration helt enkelt. Och vill du ta kunskaperna till ytterligare en nivå så finns våra fördjupningskurser online.

Videotips för att komma igång

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Yogic philosophy claims that we have all we need inside. All the resources are there for us to lead a great life. We have capacity and potential. It is just our stressed and imbalanced minds that tell us we don't have enough and can’t do enough. What we need is balance. But how do we find it? 

This is the third part of four in our yin and restorative December focus. Read part one here to get the introduction. You'll find part two here and part three here if you want more.

How we lay the bricks to a more sustainable life 

Our imbalanced minds limits how we see life, and we never go up on our inner mountain to have a look out, to see our surroundings, to see our scenery, to learn about ourselves through reflection and looking at things from a distance. Stress is just a thought. If we tell ourselves we are stressed, we become stressed. Stress is not something that happens to us but something that happens within us.

That is why yoga emphasizes reflection and meditation, since that gives us the tools we need in order to elevate ourselves so we can see the bigger picture. And so we can, over time, start to figure out how we can yoke our potential with our capabilities. We can only do that by trying things out, doing it again differently, and then trying yet again. We need to understand our potential and train our capacity, since life will always involve challenges and will always be a dance of opposites, or highs and lows. If we are better equipped in dealing with the dance of life (in yoga this is called lila) we will have a richer, fuller, stress-limited life.

The more we start to look into each polarity of being and try to find a balancing point, the better-equipped we’ll be, since we can gather forces from two spheres of being: the right and the left, the upper and the lower, the inner and the outer, the being and the doing, life and death, etc. Then we become humans par excellence. Then we can balance life and reach happiness since we have all we need and we live in harmony with nature and evolve accordingly.

So, yogic philosophy teaches us that if we are too much over on one side, we need to add the opposite in small dosages, little by little, until both polarities in us are more in equal balance.

Rest as an antidote to stress and tension 
We are taught to work hard to attain goals in life, and sometimes in pursuit of those goals we can fail to experience each passing day as full and complete. We only see the lack of the goal achieved. Life is living life, not putting living off for a while until you achieve a goal.

Many people think that relaxation is very simple. Just recline and close your eyes. Few people understand what relaxation really means. You are tired so you go to bed and sleep and think that is relaxation. Unless you are free from muscular, emotional, and mental tension, you are never relaxed. In order to relax completely, the inner tensions of the body, emotions, and mind must be released.

The antidote to stress is relaxation. To relax is to rest. Deeply. This rest is different from sleep. Deep states of sleep involve periods of dreaming that increase muscular tension. Deep relaxation is a state in which there is no movement, no effort, and the brain is quiet.

Find delight in the ordinary
Often you’ll find yourself using quiet moments as a springboard for the pursuit of some new, more exciting event. But if you can shed your intensity addiction long enough to experience the ordinary moments in your life, you will find that they are all doorways to the richness and vitality that live within your own heart. Instead of relying on a rush of external events to delight you, you will quickly find the delights of connecting to life just as it is, in this very moment. When you celebrate the ordinary moments in life, you begin to connect with all that has gone unnoticed in both your inner and outer life. Awareness begins to permeate not just the juicy moments but the plain ones, too. And you begin to question the human inclination to externalize both happiness and unhappiness. You start to examine the long-held belief that your sense of wakefulness depends upon intensity.

Restorative yoga provides the perfect antidote to stress because it creates a supported pause. By completely supporting the body and being still for extended periods the breath, the mind and the nervous system begin to calm. Different restorative poses can be used for different purposes though they all help to quiet the nervous system.

There are poses that open the breath and lift the spirits when we're feeling depressed, poses that are supportive and nurturing when we're feeling anxious, and poses that target specific parts of the body where tension accumulates. Another thing worth mentioning is that after one comes out of a period of exhaustion, the body carries more excess tension and excess toxins that need to come out. Therefor combining restorative yoga with some gentle weight training, maybe jogging and flowing yoga, is a great way of detoxifying and de-stressing.

Also, I cannot stress enough spending time in nature as much as one can. Being in its silence and natural sounds, walking, hiking or just sitting and watch its splendor. Letting natures arms catch and hold you and help you shred layers of stress and tension. Hit the brakes in your life, break out from the urban living for a while.

Do this and it will save your life, your holiday season with your loved one as well as building a stronger foundation for your upcoming 2019.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Parts of this text comes from my book RESTORATIVE YOGA (available here in swedish, for english go to Amazon.com) if you wish to explore this topic further.

This week's yoga & contemplation

Keep practicing your favourite sequences from this month. Which ones did you feel you needed the most? Do them! 

Contemplation of the week
I invite you to ask yourself and inquire around the following questions during the week when you have a moment before, during or after your practice

• Can I add more play into my life?
• Go outside at least 45 minutes everyday this week.
• Have I told people I love that I love them?
• Do I need to apologize to someone?
• What are the best memories from this year?
• What would I like to cultivate 2019? In myself and in my life?

Yin, restorative & mediation videos for this week

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Flow classes for the days in between

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För femton år sedan, när hon började med yoga, visade hennes kropp och hennes sinne upp i stort sett vartenda stressymptom som fanns. Ma Steinsvik levde så pass mycket i sitt huvud att hon  inte längre kände vanliga kroppsfunktioner som hunger och törst ordentligt. Långsamt hjälpte yogan henne att hitta in i kroppen, lösa upp knutar och få igång flöden. 

Yogan hjälpte mig att få kontakt med min kropp

Yogan gjorde mig mjuk och stark på en gång. Det tog mig ett halvår av daglig yoga bara att nå golvet med händerna, men jag gav inte upp. För yogan fick mig att må bra. Inte bara i kroppen. På köpet kom ett balanserat sinne och ett bättre fokus. Det hjälpte mig både i mitt yrke och som förälder. Men framförallt blev jag lycklig. Inifrån. Oberoende av vad som hände omkring mig.

Kropp och sinne i balans
Yogan är så mycket mer än bara en träningsform. Den är ett filosofiskt system med en 6000-årig historia. Jag brukar tänka på yogan som en skattkarta till att bli en bättre människa. För det är något magiskt med dess enkla kombinationen av andning, fokus och rörelse. Verktyg vi alla har inom oss och kan använda utan utrustning. Var och när som helst. Jag ser det om och om igen i yogasalen. Hur yoga-ljuset lyser upp människor, hjälper dem att läka och få ro. Det är som om yogan hjälper dem att hitta sig själva.

Ordet yoga ger några ledtrådar. Yoga är Sanskrit och betyder att förenas, att samla ihop sinnets trådar, att uppnå det som tidigare var ouppnåeligt. Yogamästare brukar berätta historien om sjön där botten aldrig syns för att vinden hela tiden blåser upp vågor på ytan. Men när solen stillar vinden, blir sjöns yta alldeles klar och vi ser skatten längst ner på sjöns botten. På samma sätt hjälper yogan oss att stilla våra sinnen och se in i oss själva. Då kan vi se vad våra känslor gör med oss, lära oss skilja på en situation och vår reaktion på den. Plötsligt kan vi välja hur vi vill agera i kaos och konflikt – istället för att bara reagera kan vi lösa dem.

Yogan gör oss smidiga, starka och friska – på samma för den in oss i nuet och skänker oss medvetenhet. Inte konstigt att man talar om yoga som vår födslorätt, som en värdefull visdom vi alla behöver. Den ger oss fokus att se vad som behöver göras i varje situation. Problem och konflikter blir inte längre oöverstigliga. Vi får gåvan att utvecklas till människor vi ännu inte visste fanns inom oss. Vi kan nå vår fulla potential. Blir hela, börja göra gott och bidra till världen. Och där möts yogans och julens budskap. För ur detta, att göra gott mot alla i vår omgivning föds den lycka och värme vi kallar jul.

Videor som balanserar

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Ytterligare läsning

• Balansera dina sju chakran, av  Eva Forsberg Schinkler
• Yin & Restorative: The art of pausing – part 1, av Ulrica Norberg
• Energipåfyllning och återhämtning, av Rebecca Carlowitz

Om Ma Steinsvik

Ma Steinsvik driver tillsammans med Anna Trane Mannayoga. Vid sidan om detta är de båda ledare i näringslivet samt flitigt anlitade föredragshållare och entreprenörer. De använder yogan i sin vardag för återhämtning, fokus och utveckling. I sina kurser och Workshops hjälper de andra ledare att uppnå ett medvetet och värdestyrt ledarskap via yogan.

A yoga practice is meant to fuse together opposites in order to attain balance, or equanimity. In life as well as in yoga, we want to add what is not there, to find better balance. So if we are stressed, rushed, and on-the-go, we need to add more relaxation, pausing and doing less, in order to get ourselves back into a better flow of life. The most intelligent choice in hectic times is to destress and to restore.

This is the third part of four in our yin and restorative December focus. Read part one here to get the introduction, and part two here if you want more.

What is restorative yoga?

Restorative yoga is a kind of active relaxation, since its techniques help us learn how to unwind, relax, and de-stress in order to reboot and restore our nervous system by taking as much pressure off our bodily functions as possible. The aim is to feel weightless. The way we do that is by using different props to support the body so we can let go of all tension. We stay in the poses for a long time so the nervous system has time to alternate from firing from its active part to its more restorative part. The aim is to communicate with the brain through the supported poses in a way that tells the body there is no tension, no danger anywhere. After a while, the brain gets the message and will lower the stress hormones and increase the life-enhancing hormones that we need in order to heal and feel well.

Restorative yoga is what I call a “lifeline” yoga practice. It helps at times when you feel weak, fatigued, stressed, before or after major life events, change of a job, divorce, through challenges in marriage, parenting, major holidays, and vacation—in any moment in life where you feel unsure, unfocused, challenged, scared or vulnerable. It also works beautifully as a boosting practice for athletic performance, creativity, and mood enhancement.

Restorative yoga is pretty clear: Grab the props you need, set yourself up in a nice space, settle into a pose, stay there, let go, and breathe. Pillows, books, blankets, towels—anything that helps support the body can be used to create a restorative pose.

Unlike other exercises, this practice places minimal metabolic demand on you and increases your energy rather than subtracting from it.

The benefits of restorative yoga
Restorative postures are a powerful way of rebalancing our energy. We can choose from a variety of poses to help achieve this: Backbends lift our energy, forward bends calm our energy, twists calm the nervous system and help with digestion, and inversions quiet the mind. And there are so many more benefits from restorative yoga: 

• All the organ systems of the body benefit from deep relaxation. Just a few of the measurable results are the reduction of blood pressure, serum triglycerides, blood sugar levels as well as an increase of the "good cholesterol" levels.

• Deep relaxation can also provide an improvement in digestion, fertility, elimination or reduction of muscle tension, insomnia and generalized fatigue.

• Restorative yoga helps to release tension on a physical, mental, and emotional level. Since our bodies store all our past experiences, when we let go of the hold on the physical body we often have strong emotional releases as suppressed emotions bubble up. For this reason, it's very important to create a supportive environment.

• Restorative yoga can be practiced by everyone. People who aren't physically able to practice asana, such as the elderly and physically challenged, can practice restorative yoga and reap the benefits of deep relaxation and energy rebalancing.

Yoga can help you self-heal
Our yoga practice should help us to live fuller lives. Our practice should help us climb a little higher every day, and if we climb too high, teach us we have to come down and rest, and next time, learn how to equalize.

We often forget the importance of pausing, calibrating, and equalizing. We often push and go full speed. But in order to get safely up our inner mountain, we need to fail, reflect, try again, push, rest, breathe, stop, go, do, be, and mix them all up in a nice blend.

That is what yoga is here to teach us: To find our own personal way, our own yoga, and our own balance where we see and connect to our fullest potential, becoming who we really are beyond all the reactions, beliefs, and fear. Yoga allows us to integrate what we already have—lots of tools inside our body, brain, and nervous system. The more we yoke all of our systems together, the more they work together.

For the longest time, yoga has claimed that we are self-healing creatures and that we can mend ourselves if broken. All we have to do is yoke the things we already possess: the gifts from our bodily systems. In yoga, we see that the nine systems in our bodies are connected and supposed to work in unison. When this unison is interrupted or distorted, then disease, stress, and imbalances appear. Therefore, yoga says, let’s yoke together the circuits of the systems again. These systems carry so much intelligence on their own; however, when united, we become full-powered beings that can reproduce (reproductive system) ourselves, evolve beyond the imaginary, and create wonderful things.

The power of the breath 
We need to find and clear the pathways for our systems to unite. Historically, the masters of yoga tried different ways and came up with body postures; asanas to connect different parts of the body with other parts of the body; getting the systems (muscular system, nervous system, and skeletal system) to work; and slowly finding each other through doing. The great masters understood that one system was superior in connecting all the other ones:

The breathing system (respiratory system), since it affected the mind and energy of the individual (endocrine system, cellular system), and in adding breathing with asanas they saw that the overall health and balance (homeostasis) improved dramatically. They learned that a person’s balance has a lot to do with how well the body circulates blood (the circulatory system), since the blood carries nutrients and oxygen to all the building blocks and maintenance stations in our bodies and brains.

Update your body and mind through meditation
Meditation in particular allows us to step away from the patterns and challenges in our life and see our greater roles, feel our places in the universe, and return to daily life with new perspectives. The expansion of ease, awareness, and prana (life force) that results from yoga is an expansion of our ability to live and follow your karmic path with ease and grace.

Before I started doing meditation and yoga, I often identified myself with my thoughts and feelings. I became them. Today, I have learned to view them more as patterns and reactions coming from my mind and soul. In looking closely at them in meditation, I learn a lot about myself in the now and how I function; and I begin to see what takes me out of balance and out of reach of myself.

Yin yoga and restorative yoga are two practice methods that both are mindful practices where one can look at and relate to reality and understand one’s relationship to it. Paying attention to something can be done in several ways. These techniques creates understanding, both of our current condition and of the reluctance or avoidance of being in what we perceive as negative or unpleasant experiences.

I often see my practice as updating all my inner programs, like when you are upgrading your computer, so they function better and can communicate more easily with each other, without friction or disturbances.

Parts of this text comes from my book RESTORATIVE YOGA (available here in Swedish, for English go to Amazon.com) if you wish to explore this topic further.

This week's yoga and contemplation

This week the goal is to meditate on a daily basis. Try to find time each day where you move away from social life, sit yourself down somewhere tranquil and breathe deeply for ten minutes. That is your investment. Your lifeline. Your blissfood.

How to sit when meditating
In order to feel comfortable with sitting in meditation, we need to have a practice that works towards good alignment. All seated meditation postures aim for one thing: holding the back upright without slouching or strain so that energy can run up and down the spine more freely.

Contemplation of the week

• Can I try a little yang practice after my yin/restorative practice one day? Like a brisk walk, a jog or some gentle weight lifting?
• Can I maybe treat myself to a massage?
• Can I list four awesome things about life and living here and now?

Yin, restorative & mediation videos for this week

Yogobe Video: ae67 Yogobe Video: 3r4k Yogobe Video: 5z7s Yogobe Video: p53r Yogobe Video: 4s5p Yogobe Video: 67hu

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Since the start of civilization we have emphasized the active life (yang) in some cultures and the contemplative life (yin) in others. Now we have the opportunity to explore both and find the appropriate balance between the two. But how do we find time to figure out what we need when everything around us is spinning so fast?  What does mindful living mean in a modern world? 

Find a balance between yin and yang

For most of us life today doesn’t offer any natural breaks. We eat lunch on the go and we are constantly online or communicating on phones, laptops and iPads. We may even try to do yoga while doing these other things. But to achieve deep relaxation and mental ease, we need a practice where we can turn our senses inward and quiet the mind. We can stately claim that the need for a more inquiry based, contemplative, complementary practice, is well needed in the life of the modern human and yogi.

Yin and yang can be described as two variables; they are either on the opposite ends of a cycle, like the seasons of the year, or opposites on a continuum of energy or matter. The opposition is relative and can only be understood through relationships between the two. For example: Water is yin relative to steam but yang relative to ice. Nothing is totally yin or yang. Just as a state of total yin is reached, yang starts to grow.

This is evident in the yin yoga practice, since after you have gotten deep into relaxation and mental stillness in a yin yoga pose, the blood circulation increases and you can start to feel heat inside. You are ready to mobilize energy into movement and weight bearing.

They constantly transform into each other, just as there can be no energy without matter and no day without light. The classic energy philosophy state that yin creates yang and yang activates yin. This falls true in one's yoga practice when your breath brings stillness to the mind and you start to flow through the poses. You experience inner heat rather than extensive sweat (that cools your body). This way the metabolism and circulation increases, and your body is enable to burn toxins and impurities better.

Different types of yoga
Yoga means “to yoke” together opposites. That is also what hatha yoga, the platform for all physical yoga practice. To balance the ha (yang) and the tha (yin); the solar (doing) with the lunar (being) aspects of the practice. In this sense, our yoga practice should be a blend of yang/out/action/contraction and yin/in/observation/extension to make the whole balanced and to affect our entire health to move towards homeostatis (the maintenance of equilibrium). Yang yoga is a more vigorous yoga practice that targets the muscular tissue and through movement creates heat. Examples of yang based yoga is ashtanga vinyasa, power yoga and anusara yoga.

Through the practice of yin yoga, one targets the fascia/connective tissue in the body, which makes it a marvellous therapeutic tool for healing bodily, mental, and emotional imbalances. Yin yoga is most effective when more active forms of yoga or exercise are also practiced regularly.

Let go of your own limitations and your preconceptions when it comes to yoga
The demands of Western culture can easily lead to low self-esteem. While there is usually room for improvement, we are all amazing beings just as we are. In a yoga practice we should just get to the mat, work within our limitations, and feel how we detach from all of what inhibits us, rather than get caught up in competitiveness without looking for some specific results.

There is a misperception that an “enlightened yogi” is passively accepting of all circumstances and will not care how she or he is treated or what her circumstances may be. Study and application of your practice will erase many of those misperceptions.

For example, there is no sutra stating that the true yogi never says “no.” Sometimes practicing truthfulness and respect for yourself, others, and a given situation may result in more action as you develop clearer boundaries and integrity. This has been my experience. Before yoga and meditation, I had little awareness of my own boundaries and I had never been showed to move inwards for answers. I searched on the outside instead and I had such a need for affirmation and acceptance that I never said “no.”

For me it took many years of practice and life lived in order to move more into sattva guna; to a more centered positioning in myself where I could speak of my needs. This spiritual maturity gave me the ability to better accept different situations and of letting go of things that doesn´t give themselves automatically.

To be a yogi, you just have to practice yoga regularly. The yoga will do the rest. Becoming a yogi doesn’t mean giving up the old you and becoming someone else. However, things that are not serving you well may fall away. As you practice yoga, you move toward the more intuitive, less fragile you.

The yogi way
On the other hand, being a yogi doesn’t mean you don’t have problems; you just have more tools for dealing with them. Yoga provides kaivalya, or space around your experience that allows you to have perspective regarding your problems and what to do about them.

In yoga, we work with tension and through different techniques we wish to move deeper into it, step by step, day by day, practicing again and again, until we reach its core. Then we stay with it and use releasing techniques like slow poses, visualization, breath, and silence in order for the tension to resolve. We need to slow things down in the core of tension so the bodily systems that have perhaps been drained of energy can take some time to recover new energy, and slowly the stress and tension release their grip.

Take a sponge as an example. We leave it close to water and it will slowly start to move toward the liquid in order to absorb it. That is the code, the programming of that texture. We can look at our own systems in a similar way. The more we use them the wrong way, the more we take away from their binary code intelligence.

This idea is shared in general in medicine and, similar to yoga (though carried out in different ways), its aim is to lower the thresholds so the obstruction of flow can be reduced in order to get the blood pumping and nerves to speak with each other again. Here they use medicines, surgery, and other techniques but with the same aim, in general.

The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.

—Thich Nhat Hanh

So on the question regarding if it is possible to live more mindfully in the society of today I would say yes. And the first step is to start adding more slow style practices into your life. Add the natural breaks that your life is not handing to you. Otherwise life will runa away with you.

If you wish to read more on behalf of this topic, I have written a book on yin yoga called YINYOGA – An Individualized approach to balance, health and Self wellbeing available on www.amazon.com.

This weeks yoga and contemplation

Pick one of the two yin yoga classes below and practice this twice this week. Follow up with the recommended meditation right after. The other days work on balancing this class with some stability, flowing or strengthening classes.

I also invite you to ask yourself and inquire around the following questions during the week when you have a moment before, during or after your practice:

• Is there anything I can remove from my schedule that is not that important?
• Where do I experience stress in my body right now?
• Does my thoughts move around a theme? Are they pulling me towards validation? Negative criticism?

Give yourself this month of recurring stillness. Let go "yinside"! 

This weeks videos

Yogobe Video: fp68 Yogobe Video: fw68

Yogobe Video: z47a Yogobe Video: h6k4 Yogobe Video: 84038433 Yogobe Video: b26d

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