Tag Archives: Yoga

Yoga and Travel : A Guest Post by Wesley Vonn

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Wesley – Blogger and Health Aficionado

Yoga and Travel – The Connection is Deeper than you Think.

Yoga is more popular than ever before, and many people rely on yoga as a means of staying in shape and of maintaining top mental health. However, the benefits of yoga often go beyond what even its practitioners realize. Here are some of the ways that yoga affects travel and some techniques for those who wish to travel while maintaining their yoga study and practice.

Yoga Eases Travel Burdens

Vacations are fun; traveling may not be. Fortunately, regular yoga practice can make traveling more pleasant. Those who are taking long trips by car or by airplane will benefit from the better circulation that yoga provides. In fact, some doctors even recommend yoga as a means of avoiding potentially dangerous blood clots that may develop while sitting still for lengthy periods of time. In addition, yoga being largely meditative in nature, learning to meditate can ease the boredom of especially long trips.

Yoga is Portable

Compared to other forms of exercise, yoga is easy to do while away from home. Even without a mat, it is possible to create a great space for yoga even in a small hotel room, and many hotels now offer yoga classes for travelers who wish to practice yoga with others.

Make sure to perform some due diligence before booking a room in order to find the right hotel that does offer these classes complimentary.

On my most recent trip to Las Vegas I used a hotel review site to find the best hotel in the area that suited my needs for fitness coupled with the right price. Doing this search helped me find the right Las Vegas hotel for my particular personality.

Travelers may also wish to take a trip to local yoga facilities when visiting a new area; working with different instructors can lead to new insights. Some airports even offer rooms designed to allow yoga students to practice while waiting for their flights.

Yoga Relieves Travel Stress

Often, travelers visit areas for business purposes, and business meetings can lead to considerable amounts of anxiety. By regularly practicing yoga and continuing to do so while preparing for a meeting, students will be able to enter the meeting in a relaxed, focused state. Doing so may lead to better outcomes. It is little surprise that so many businesses encourage their employees to practice yoga, and those who focus on the meditative aspects of yoga will reap rewards for their practice.

Although yoga has evolved for thousands of years, yoga’s popularity today has made it far more accessible to travelers. On your next vacation or business trip, see for yourself, those who practice before and while traveling will likely enjoy their vacations and business trips more than those who do not.

Teaching Your Kids Yoga Early: A Guest Post by Dana Vicktor

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Dana Vicktor is the senior researcher and writer for duedatecalculator.org. Her most recent accomplishments include graduating from Ohio State University with a degree in communications and sociology. Her current focus for the site involves ovulation pain and the menstruation cycle.

Teaching Your Kids Yoga Early

Yoga has many benefits for everyone. It can help to relieve stress, improve circulation, and tone muscles. It can promote greater heart health, improve digestion, and provide greater energy.

Yoga has many excellent benefits for children, as well. Yoga can help:

  • Promote balance and flexibility
  • Build confidence and self-esteem
  • Improve concentration
  • Promote calmness
  • Build strength

You don’t have to wait until your children are grown to start teaching them how to practice yoga. Here are a few tips for how to teach your kids yoga early:

Get Started Right Away
You can start teaching your kids about yoga from the moment they are born. “Mommy and Me” classes lead you through yoga exercises with your baby — though baby’s main role is to lie there and look cute. Later, toddler classes start showing your kids how to do modified versions of some of the moves with you.

By practicing yoga with your kids early, you help them to develop a love of the practice so that they can make it a part of their own routines later.

Start Small
You don’t have to introduce your kids to yoga by showing them how to do shoulder stands or other complicated moves. You can start with the basics: chanting and breathing.

When you are waiting at the doctor’s office, or you are driving in the car, or you are getting ready for your day in the morning, take advantage of that time to practice together. Get your children to mimic you, and talk to them about the benefits of these practices.

Keep It Age-Appropriate
Young children have short attention spans. Don’t try to fight that, but rather, work with it. Limit the time for each exercise to no more than a minute. Take frequent breaks during your yoga practice with your children so that they don’t become too bored or restless. Speed up the pace of the routine, as well.

The key is not to overwhelm kids or to push the limits of their patience. Yoga should be enjoyable, not feel like a chore.

Make It Fun
Yoga shouldn’t feel like exercise or something that kids are forced to do. It should be fun! Help make it fun for them by including silly songs, fun challenges, or even props. Use a silly voice when you call out the moves, invite their favorite doll to “practice” with you, or use fun names for some of the poses (some of them are already pretty funny…).

Do whatever you can to make yoga a fun practice for your children, and they will learn to love it and will be more likely to practice it for years to come.

Be a Role Model
Children learn best by watching you. Show them how fun and rewarding a yoga practice can be by enjoying your own practice in front of them. Don’t treat your practice like exercise or like a chore, or your children will learn to view it in the same way.

Make yoga  a regular part of your life so that you may show your children how regular practice can benefit them.

Teaching kids how to practice yoga will have a number of benefits for them, such as promoting their self-esteem and confidence while also improving their strength and flexibility. Teaching kids this wonderful practice early will make it more likely that they will continue to practice it later in life, when it will also help them to relieve stress and protect against disease.

Do you practice yoga with your children? How old were they when you started?

The Role of Yoga in your Child’s Wellbeing: A Guest Post by Danny Mitchell

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Danny Mitchell writes about yoga, fitness, parenting at www.travelinsurance.org

Yoga has been practiced for thousands of years both as exercise and for spiritual meditation. It is highly controlled athleticism that allows the body and the mind to connect. It is great for adults and it can do wonders for children too, in both mind and body. In fact, yoga will help children learn to control themselves in every facet of their being.

Also, they will become more athletic, thanks to difficult poses that need strength and endurance. They will become mental warriors, because they will have to learn to reach a mental state that will allow them to both push themselves and stay calm at the same time.

Childhood is the best time to teach children skills, so here’s why you should get started NOW!

Flexibility and Stamina
For many, the main reason for children to practice yoga is to improve their flexibility. Being limber helps a child improve their ability to play sports and games. In addition to this, it is great exercise for a child who does not like to run around too much. It will increase their stamina.

Patience
Children will learn patience with the slow rhythm of yoga. They are not dancing or moving around. Instead, as they learn, their muscles will become stronger, thanks to determination. Yoga is a great way to make sure that your kid is patient and determined at a very young age.

Self Awareness
Becoming aware of their mental and physical spirit at a young age is a fabulous thing for any child. Through yoga, they will develop skills such as thinking before acting and recognition of limitations. Furthermore, a child will become aware of how much more powerful the mind is over the body. If they believe they can do a difficult position, then it will happen.

Mental Serenity
Yoga is renowned for its calming capacity. It is a form of meditation. Your child does not need to reach their limit each session, but a good workout followed by a quiet rest can teach a child about both the value of hard work and moderation. In this rest (known as Savasana), kids also can learn how to push stressors out of their mind for the time being, which is perfect for kids who have tests and adolescent troubles to worry about.

In conclusion, yoga is one of the best ways to improve your child’s well-being, both mentally and physically. They will become stronger and more limber after each session. They will learn that being calm and quiet is not a chore. In fact, it is rather relaxing and it can help calm a child’s apprehension over school, dating, family, etc.

Yoga is a way of being. If your children learn how to control their mind and body at such a young age, then there is no telling what they can carry out down the road!

Giraffe Pose

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Giraffe photos by Maher Kassar

We spent at least half an hour watching these two giraffes fighting one evening at Mfuwe in South Luangwa National Park. The wrestling match could go on for days, until one of them walks away. And then still the other might follow for more.

Parenting and Practicing Yoga: From Pregnancy to a Year Old by Marisa Findlay

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Marisa is a photographer specializing in baby and maternity photography. You can see some of her work on her Facebook page or her website.

From Pregnancy to a Year Old

You are reading this post three days after my daughter, Yara, turned a year old.

My journey with yoga began about 11 years ago and has been an on and off love affair that has gently carried me to where I am now.  Along this journey I trained as a Sivananda yoga teacher in Kerala, India and dabbled in a bit of teaching both in Zambia, a place that will always be home to me, and Brighton, where I currently live and have subsequently discovered Scaravelli yoga which I absolutely adore.

If I could play a sound track to you as you read this post, it would be Monsoon Point by Al Gromer Khan & Amelia Cuni, so perhaps you could play it in another window as you read.

I discovered this music while I was pregnant with Yara and preparing for my planned ideal home water birth.  Some of you after reading the previous sentence already have an inkling that this story isn’t going to reveal the ideal birth, but instead the birth that was meant to be.

I loved being pregnant and marveled at my ever-changing body giving space to this little being growing inside of me.  My yoga practice took on a new dimension, which I loved and my body really understood on a deeper level what it needed to do in order to release the spine.

I practiced under Marc Woolford, my first Scaravelli yoga teacher in Brighton, during the first few months of my pregnancy.

Despite me practicing yoga, learning tai chi from my partner Edward, and all the mental preparation I did during my absolutely idyllic pregnancy (most of which was spent in the sunny Turks & Caicos islands) it all changed at 35 weeks when I was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia.  After a 5 day stay in hospital I was put on a heavy concoction of medication to bring my blood pressure down and then at 37 weeks I had to have an emergency c-section.  I am so grateful to the knowledge that yoga has given me to handle this extremely stressful time and remain somewhat centred.  During this time I had a fantastic doula, Lucy Skelton, who is also a yoga teacher and was able to gently guide me through the process.

On the day of Yara’s birth, all within the space of an hour I had to transform my mindset from having a routine check at the hospital, after which I had planned a leisurely lunch in town, to deciding to be operated on immediately for the safety of my baby. Focusing on the breath and being present to what was, helped me regain my centre after the initial shock and panic of the unexpected news. After delivery it was my breath that got me through three hospital-bound days sharing a room with three screaming babies.

Lucy came to my house when Yara was about one week old to help me do some gentle stretching and mainly work on encouraging my shoulders away from up around my ears where they had found a new home after the terror of the experience.

When Yara was 8 weeks old we started attending a weekly mother and baby yoga class taught by my doula.  It was a challenge to be ready to head out the door across town for the 10:30 start, yet it was so worth the experience.  Meeting other mothers and their babies and feeling the connection through our common experience.  Sharing the delights and concerns as well as creating the space to allow our bodies the chance to ever so slowly stretch and strengthen once more.

The course only ran a month and then with the arrival of family from abroad, Yara’s ever-changing routine, and my efforts to start a photography business while improving my knowledge of the craft…yoga slipped away.  I would have snippets of it as I reminded myself to breathe while nursing Yara or attempted a sleep-deprived practice on the mat.  If I was particularly lucky I managed to escape for a yoga class with my delightful teacher Dot Bowen and came away feeling Marisa again, yet it was not enough to sustain me each day.

This was until about two months ago when I discovered this blog and was deeply inspired by a post about committing to 5 sun salutations for a month.  I went easy on myself and committed to 7 days to see how I would go.  I realized it was the first time I had consistently practiced yoga probably since my teacher training 6 years ago and I felt fantastic for it!  It wasn’t about how long I did or whether I completed the 5 sun salutations – it was about rolling the mat out each day and giving my mind and body the chance to reconnect.  Each week now I recommit another 7 days and marvel each day as I notice the change, the strength developing and most of all the chance to reconnect to myself.

I’ve realized that my yoga practice doesn’t have to involve the candles, relaxing music and solitude that I knew prior to being a mother, but rather takes the form that the day presents. If I have the energy I rise before everyone is up and relish the peace, however if not I grab a moment during the day while Yara plays around me or wait until the day is complete and I have my mat time.  I’m so grateful to have found a way to incorporate my yoga practice back into my life and the irony of it all is that now as I have less time for myself, I’m able to have a more consistent and fulfilling practice.

Parenting and Practicing Yoga: Always get Back by Petra Carmichael

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Petra is a yoga teacher and the owner of Divya Yoga Studio in Zagreb, Croatia.
She is currently based in Boston, travelling and managing the yoga school in Croatia.  She is also studying at Middlesex University of Ayurveda London.

Always get Back

I’ve been practicing yoga for a several  years. Do I really have the right to say that considering it’s a 5000 year old practice? Anyway let’s just say I have some experience.  I can definitely say that it’s something  I’ve been looking for my whole life.

Yoga teaches you to focus and aside from the physical exercise, it takes you away from the everyday activity in to your own space.  A space where you can see the real values helping to step besides your own little world and realize there is more to everything. Now this might be a little confusing. First I said it takes me into my little world and then besides it.

About a year and a half ago I found out that I was pregnant.  As you practice yoga you definitely develop some sensitivity towards the changes in the body.  I remember the time when I felt that something was different.  I took a home test and it was positive. That moment was amazing – I was happy and scared. At the same time I kept the big news to myself for another couple of days.  Straight away I stopped practicing asanas trying to take the best care of myself.  I really loved being pregnant.  It’s a special time in a woman’s life.

When my pregnancy was stable I came back to the physical part of yoga, to the asanas, and I must admit, it felt great.  My back especially, but the whole body and mind were almost screaming for movement.  When you are pregnant people sometimes treat you like you are sick or disabled.  I definitely took precautions and was very careful with what I was doing with my body.  But I was on my mat everyday.

The practice was completely different from what I was used to. It was soft and gentle all the way into the ninth month of my pregnancy carrying a big baby.  My little son (10 pounds 6 ounces – so much for little) was born six and a half months ago.  I felt more love than I have ever felt before.

He was a strong healthy baby, but he didn’t pass the hearing test. That really scared my husband and me.  Further testing showed that our little one is profoundly deaf.  That moment when you find out such news is indescribable. First you start questioning what you have done wrong. Why you. Why your baby.? There is no answer to these questions.  I know I didn’t do anything wrong.  It’s simply how it is.

But to come to that point of understanding it definitely takes some time and energy.  The practice helped. I got back on the mat 10 days after my C-section; only tiny stretches to keep myself sane.  It wasn’t easy not to be able to touch my toes and to go through pain as the body was slowly getting back into shape.  But it definitely kept me out of my mind and of the situation.

I hear a lot of parents complaining about how they can’t keep the practice because of the child.  It’s not easy and I am very lucky to have a calm child who watches me as I practice, with a smile. But it’s not always like that.  There are days when I have to assist him many times, get off the mat and feed him or change a diaper, but the important thing is to GET BACK ON THE MAT.

My Transcendental Meditation (TM) teacher, dearest Narasimhan, told me if there is someone at the door, go get it, do what needs to be done but then return and continue with your meditation.  I think that’s really what it is and it doesn’t only apply to parents.

So I have  one suggestion for every soul fighting with tapas – the daily practice.  Just get on that mat every day no matter what happens, and keep returning.

At the moment we are in the process of getting cochlear implants for our son.  Hopefully he will be able to hear his first Om in late July this year.