BENEFITS OF YOGA

Practicing yoga has many benefits to the human body and mind, including improved flexibility, balance, and strength.  Your posture will improve therefore reducing issues like back pain, you may even find yourself looking a bit taller by the way you are standing after practicing for a while. 

Through this practice, one can see further benefits such as increased metabolism through twisting poses and poses like the Downward Dog.

Expect: lowered stress levels, lowered cortisol levels, and lowered heart rate.

Through the undertaking of practicing poses, including inversions and techniques including breathing exercises, we can expect improved circulation. 

Overall, when you practice regularly you will see an improved quality of sleep and eating habits will likely improve as well.  You’ll be relaxed because yoga calms the brain, fights depression, improves our stress response to pain, and most importantly yoga improves your overall quality of life.

Don’t you think it’s time to relax and get started on your journey into yoga?

There are several styles of yoga, and here at Live Rich Fitness, we practice a blend of Iyengar, Vinyasa, Ashtanga, and Hatha.

Iyengar Yoga is based on a guy named B.K.S Iyengar who wrote a book called Light on Yoga.  It has a great focus on alignment and precision, and poses are held for a longer time, and props are used sometimes.

Ashtanga bears similarities to Vinyasa.  It consists of six sequences of increasing difficulty, and classes are often a little bit longer than others.

Vinyasa flow is a style of yoga where the poses are synchronized with the breath.  It is more of an energetic type of yoga that was born from Ashtanga.

Hatha is a well-known term that is used for almost all American-style yoga, that is a well-rounded practice that flows very nicely including the Sun Salutations, core work, inversions, and a meditative finale.

A video demonstrating the Sun Salutation sequence.

CHAKRAS

There are 7 main chakras in the human body, which are energy centers that are wheels that spin.  Sometimes these wheels can stop spinning and become stagnant when we run into different or sometimes difficult situations in life, and they can be restored to their smooth spinning status when we do yoga.  Different poses can trigger different chakras.

The chakras start at the base of the spine and work their way to the crown of the head as follows, from bottom to top, and are associated with a specific colour:

Root- red

Sensual- orange

Power- yellow

Heart- green

Communication- light blue

Perception- indigo blue

Universal connection- white or purple