Health & Wellbeing
Flexible and strong, hamstrings are key to a healthy, happy yoga practice. Here’s what you need to know in order to lengthen and strengthen these muscles.
https://www.yogajournal.com/teach/get-to-know-your-hamstrings-why-both-strength-length-are-essential
Flexible and strong, hamstrings are key to a healthy, happy yoga practice. Here’s what you need to know in order to lengthen and strengthen these muscles.
Get to Know Your Hamstrings: Why Both Strength & Length Are Essential
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Yoga Journal@Yoga_JournalToday is World Sleep Day—a great time to focus on the quality of your z’s. Great sleep impacts your overall quality of life, your health and happiness. These yoga practices will help you get your best sleep ever—try one tonight.
AUGUST 13, 2021
It’s been said—and memed—that “Movement without awareness is exercise. Movement with awareness is yoga.”
It’s easy to aspire to the latter. (Don’t we all?) It’s not always easy to achieve it, though. Especially when you’re taking yourself through your practice without a teacher cueing a sequence. Or when you’re desperately trying to cram 10 minutes of your practice in as your weekday meeting marathon looms.
There’s actually an ancient yogic antidote specifically designed for those mornings. It’s a series of yoga postures known as Surya Namaskar A, more commonly known as Sun Salutations. This set sequence of postures dates back more than 2,500 years to a time when ancient cultures revered the sun. Salutations are believed to have been regarded as a literal salute to sunrise and were perceived to ready the body for all that would happen during daylight. (Had they only known about Zoom…)
This sequence of postures is essentially a series of prescribed motions that begins and ends with Tadasana (Mountain Pose). The poses take you through all manner of stretches, forward folds, and backbends that build heat and happen in a rhythmic cadence that’s aligned with your breath. The start of an inhale initiates your transition from one pose to the next, followed by a lull in both the breath and body as you come into the pose, with the beginning of an exhale acting as a cue for your next transition. Breath, movement, and stillness fall into a rhythm. The trajectory of the sequence, like that of its namesake star, has a predictable arc and is cyclical, making it easy to become quietly absorbed in the looping repeated motions. A moving meditation.
Photo: Baleika Tamara
You may already be vaguely or intimately familiar with Surya Namaskar A but haven’t committed the poses and their order to memory. That’s OK! We lay it all out for you here. Less thinking. More flowing.
Flexible and strong, hamstrings are key to a healthy, happy yoga practice. Here’s what you need to know in order to lengthen and strengthen these muscles.
https://www.yogajournal.com/teach/get-to-know-your-hamstrings-why-both-strength-length-are-essential
Flexible and strong, hamstrings are key to a healthy, happy yoga practice. Here’s what you need to know in order to lengthen and strengthen these muscles.
Get to Know Your Hamstrings: Why Both Strength & Length Are Essential
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https://www.yogajournal.com/lifestyle/yoga-for-better-sex-life
“I’ve learned that having sex and feeling sexy can and should come from the purest space.” — Rina Jakubowicz
Nir Livni
Feel like you’ve lost your sense of Self in the noise of social media or societal expectations? It’s time to get on the mat and reclaim who you are. Join author and yoga teacher Rina Jakubowicz for Empowered Vinyasa: Journey to Your Highest Self, a series of 10 yoga classes and companion dharma talks that zero in on principles of yoga philosophy—from The Bhagavad Gita and the Hindu spiritual tradition Vedanta—that are essential to self-exploration. Sign up today!
When I was going through a divorce 10 years ago, I used affirmation practices to try to shift my mindset during the healing process. One phrase I repeated often was “I am beautiful.”
As silly and simple as this may sound, it really helped me. Failing at a marriage is very painful and I carried a lot of judgments about myself, especially since I had been the first in the family to get a divorce. Walking around each day with this affirming thought, even if I didn’t believe it in the beginning, was life-changing. It helped me realize that my words and thoughts are powerful and that I’m in control of how I feel about myself. I began walking with confidence and maintaining a sense of calm in my communication and interactions. In addition to the affirmation practices, I started studying in the Bhagavad Gita and began to apply some of the teachings to my relationships, including in the bedroom. It took several years, but I began to develop a healthier relationship with myself and my sexuality. I learned how to break down my sexual walls and release judgment and fear to become my gorgeous, badass self from within.
I’ve learned that having sex and feeling sexy can and should come from the purest space. That will create the most euphoric and pleasurable experience for both you and your partner. I now teach “Sattvic and Sexy” workshops and courses because I want to help more women tap into this empowering space where they can stop harshly judging themselves or suppressing their sexuality.
See also “Three Things Divorce Taught Me About Love”
Sattva is the highest of the three gunas (mental qualities) in Ayurveda. It means pure, poised, or objective. The lower two gunas are tamas and rajas. Tamas is a mental state of inertia, dullness, or laziness. Rajas is associated with mental agitation and hectic activity. We need rajas to move us away from tamas, but our ultimate goal is to move into sattva. If you’re passionate about something or someone but you’re overthinking, emotional, or getting caught in your head, then there’s an attachment and you’re in rajas. If you have passion from a pure place and it doesn’t control you, then you’re sattvic.
See also How a Sattvic (Pure) Diet Brings You Into Balance + 2 Ayurvedic Recipes
To start feeling more empowered, sexy, and content in your life and relationships, try this 8-pose sequence. Each posture is paired with an affirmation to inspire you to become the best version of yourself, both as a lady and a lover, so you can create the sex life and the spiritual life you deserve.
Then, join me for a free “Sattvic and Sexy” webinar on April 10 at 2:30 EST. I’ll share more tips for developing a healthier relationship with yourself, your sexuality, and your partner. Register today!
https://www.yogajournal.com/lifestyle/yoga-for-better-sex-life
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Fitnessaware 