Yoga In Fayetteville

Yoga, in Fayetteville, began at Breathing Space in January 2005. Lisa Lofthouse partnered with Charlotte Sessoms, a massage therapist, to provide a unique healing environment for the Fayetteville, North Carolina community. What began as a dream of providing yoga classes and massage therapy to a small number of clients, has grown into a healing arts center where a person can enjoy not only the unique abilities of three talented massage therapists, meditation instruction, stress management classes, and beginning this year, nutritional counseling.

All the healing modalities of Breathing Space meld together into a wonderful gift to the community. A person may come seeking yaga and end up taking a cooking class, getting a massage, or enjoying a workshop on breathing techniques. The staff at Breathing Space feel that once you walk in the door your needs will be met and if they are not, we will find a way to meet those needs.

The Fayetteville community has embraced yoga at Breathing Space. The classroom holds up to 10 students, and they may range in age from teenagers to seniors. Most students come seeking development and enrichment of body, mind, and spirit. Lisa Lofthouse and Evangelin Brodksy are both 500-hour Kripalu yoga professional level instructors. Lisa came to yoga from a business and fitness background and Evangelin found yoga through dance. Therefore, even though they were trained at Kripalu, their classes are unique and each brings her own life experiences into the yoga classroom.

Kripalu yoga teaches that all you seek and all you need are within you. Through various life experiences and the continued bombardment of external stimulation, most people seek peace outside of themselves, through walks in nature, going to the movies, reading books, etc. Through yoga, you learn to bring your awareness inward, to notice how the body moves when it breathes, how moving one arm or one wrist can be felt in the shoulder or back. When you learn to dive into inner awareness, even if it is simply noticing one breath, you learn to live in the present moment.

Kripalu yoga is a path of awareness, a path of inquiry into whom and what you really are and all that you have to offer to life. When you begin to bring your awareness to breath and movement, you begin to learn how thoughts and emotions are held in the body. This holding of thoughts and emotions creates tension and through the practice of postures and breath, tension is released and a sense of ease comes into the body. When the body is relaxed and at ease, the mind slows down creating a calmer, quieter lifestyle. So what you learn in a yaga class can be taken off the mat and into your everyday life.

When the body is put into various non-habitual movements and postures and the mind is taught to breathe through these types of tensions and to stay soft and centered, a habit of letting go and simply being develops and this can be carried into every aspect of life.

Lisa and Evangelin believe that the more people come to yaga the closer we will come to creating a more peaceful community right here in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Each person who comes to Breathing Space and is touched by the peace they find and has the ability to add peace and harmony to our community. One posture at a time, one massage at a time, one breath at a time can change the world.

By: Lisa Lofthouse

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Relaxing Yoga Music - Whether Performing Yoga Or Meditating, the Right Music Creates the Right Mood!

The effects of music to a person's mind and emotion has been under research for a long time. Listening to music is quite relaxing, especially before going to bed. It will allow stress-free environment, for you and let you relax and sleep peacefully.

Relax, calm yourself, focus and balance your life with a lot of diverse collection of great relaxing yoga music. They vary from serene instrumental relaxation music to many chants and kirtan and electronica.

Yoga Planet is the graceful yet modern form of yoga music and is the best for exercising and relaxing too. It provides great stress free experience to your body and soul. Gordon brothers (Buddha-Lounge, Earth Drum), along with Bobby Cochran, Alex Newman and Noah Alexander have successfully combined the multi-cultural beats, electronica, guitar, piano and vocals of Buddha-Lounge series with the peaceful environment of meditation music, creating new music ideal for Yoga.

Some of the great relaxing yaga music and nature sounds have been carefully selected to aid sleep, and provide a relaxing atmosphere for activities such as yoga, tai-chi, and meditation.

Just like rhythmic drumming can cause hypnotic effect, the sound of the vibraphone can be really soothing. The sound of ocean waves gives a great sense of relaxation and calmness. Sounds of birds and wind chimes provide a relaxing atmosphere too.

Artist like William Ackerman and Michael Hedges provide quite a soothing and relaxing yoga music as one of the yoga routine.

French duo Uman's relaxing yaga music, "The White Spirit", really take listener to an exotic, rhythmic place great for concentrating and stretching the body. There are many others including "Bridges" from Celtic-folk artists Nightnoise. The best feature about this music is the sound of acoustic guitar and violin, then there is Philip Aaberg's realling touching "Crying Smile"; and Patrick O'Hearn's "87 Dreams of a Lifetime," are great you're your body moving. Yoga Zone is a solid collection for the various physical movement.

Relaxing Yaga Music is great way of keeping ourselves relaxed and enjoy the workout even more. Many researchers like Mr. Masaru Emoto studied how sound effect water, thus showing that the water molecules do change with different sounds of music. Many botanists have also studied in great detail, about music effecting plants. It was quite amazing to find out that plants gave a good response to the relaxing music, as compared to plants with rock music (as some of them died). This shows that listening to wrong kind of music can be so harmful.

Nowadays, we can get peace with meditation, yoga, relaxing music and they have become a part of our everyday lives. This relaxing yoga music let the tensions go away from your life and regenerate the soul.

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Yoga Bag - Quality Matters!

When buying any product you have to think hard about the quality of the item. The same applies even for a yoga bag. While these bags are rather simple bags, and have very few frills attached to them, you would still be impressed with the kind of due diligence you need to exercise before you buy them. Of course, with the yoga bag's accommodating yoga mats, you might have to think really hard on the lines of the bag's quality.

Critically, all the talks of quality could go haywire when you think of the varying sizes of yoga mats. On average, yaga mats have a size of about 24", so buying a 27" yoga bag should be good enough. That said, the material in which the bag is made, also matters a lot. A yoga mat is a precious commodity, so you wouldn't want to play around with anything that compromises the peace and ambiance of it. Thus, the yoga bag should be designed and made in such a way that, it helps protect the yoga mat from all conditions.

Good quality yaga bags also consider the ease with which users can carry these bags. Often, these bags can turn out to be rather bulky units, especially when you decide to stuff them with a whole lot of other things other than a yoga mat. In such a scenario, good quality bags made for this purpose will allow you to accommodate as many things as you want in them, without really making it difficult for you to carry them.

There is one thing you may want to know about yoga bags. You normally don't have any reputed brand of yaga bags, as there are many such products. It could thus be fair in saying that the yoga bags domain, is by and large, irregularized. Whatever is the case, quality is important for these bags at all times.

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Yoga and Asthma - The Benefits of Yoga

The many benefits of yoga have long been stated by yoga gurus and teachers, but there have not been many scientific studies to prove this. Lots of yoga practitioners rave about how great they feel and how many illnesses and symptoms have improved or disappeared after months and years of yoga practice.

A recent study has shown clear benefits from regular yaga practice on asthma symptoms. The study completed this year in New York followed two groups of people with asthma and no other significant types of difference. There was a control group consisting of 20 people who did not follow the yoga practice. After a ten week period the group of 20 doing regular yoga showed an improvement of 43 percent in heart rate variability, oxygen consumption and ventilation whilst performing two tasks compared to the control group who did no yoga.

This is great news for both people who do yaga and those with asthma, to improve your medical condition after ten weeks is quite amazing and to do so without any change in medication or procedures is wonderful. This is an improvement assessable to everyone although any exercise program should obviously be discussed with your doctor first.

Yoga can be adapted to consider any disability with a good yaga teacher; it is advisable to take some classes before using any home DVDs. The study group practiced three times a week, two classes and one home session equaling 165 minutes a week. I really want this information out there to help others, as a yoga practitioner and someone with asthma, I consider yoga to be essential to my general well being and health.

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Yoga and Natural Beauty - A Match Made In Heaven

For those wanting to live a holistic lifestyle, practicing yoga and using organic beauty products are almost no-brainers, after all, both are good for your body and the planet. But yoga and organic beauty have more in common than you might think. So if your daily mat habit is leaving your skin ultra sensitive, adding gentle but effective organic products into your daily routine can help perfect your complexion while helping you maintain your holistic lifestyle. Here's how.

Allergies. Deep yaga breathing can help clear nasal passages, while practicing yoga in a heated room often can clear sinuses and make allergy symptoms more mild. Organic products are often more friendly to sensitive or allergy-prone skin, since they're not packed full of synthetic chemicals and fragrances. Try Dr. Hauschka Eye Solace or Logona Free Body Lotion.

Happiness/mood. By creating a strong mind-body connection (and a healthier, stronger body), yoga practice improves overall well-being and mood. Essential oils used in many organic products also have mood-enhancing properties, and the purer formulas in natural products mean they often have a more powerful effect. Try Farfalla Gemstone Oils or Rain Africa Essential Oil Uplift.

Aging. Yoga's ability to stimulate the body's detoxification process can go a long way to delay aging; there's even some anecdotal evidence that some yoga poses, particularly inversions, can stimulate blood flow to hair follicles and even revert gray hairs back to their natural color! Likewise, organic beauty products incorporate natural anti-aging ingredients like antioxidants and vitamins to give your skin a more youthful appearance. Try Juice Beauty Green Apple Antioxidant Moisturizer or Logona Age Protection Wrinkle Therapy.

Relaxation and stress relief. Practicing any kind of yoga is almost guaranteed to have a near-immediate impact on stress levels, relaxation, and help you sleep. Likewise, using organic products in the bath or shower, particularly those with relaxing scents like lavender and rosemary, can have an added impact. Try Dr. Hauschka Lavender Bath or John Masters Lavender Rosemary Shampoo.

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The Three Categories Of Ashtanga Yoga

Sanskrit by nature, Ashtanga means “eight limbs”. So in yoga practice, Ashtanga refers primarily to the eight limbs of yaga that is detailed in one of the greatest books of India, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. This relaxation technique was first introduced in the public centuries ago in India, and is said to have originated from an ancient text named the Yoga Korunta. The text was interpreted by two of Ashtaga yoga’s masters, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois and Krishnamacharya.

Ashtanga yoga is in the first place a posture practice that deals primarily on the breath initiated movements experts call as Vinyasa. The breathing movements involved here are associated from one another, then speaking much of what yoga is all about – union.

Although unified, the postures of Ashtanga yoga are categorized into a number of series. There is what they call as the Primary, Intermediate, and Advanced postures; each is initiated with Sun Salutations. Standing postures govern all of these series as soon as the starting sun salutation postures are made. What is more interesting to know about each of the posture series that Ashtanga yoga possesses is that they involve certain movements that are unique from the rest. Often, the practice is closed with a finishing sequence, or the so-called back bending, such as the lotus, shoulderstand, and headstand.

For a beginner of Ashtanga yoga, it would take a number of weeks for the person to master the postures included in each series. The movements are initiated in a sequential manner, starting with those that belong to the Primary Series, which yogis refer to as the Yoga Chikitsa. These postures, if done properly, are said to help develop a calmer mind and a healthier body. It is composed of mostly hip openers and forward bends that are pretty simple for a starter to try out.

The Intermediate Series of Ashtanga yoga then involves a lot of back bends, and arm inversions and balances, as well. These poses are referred to as the Nadi Shodhana, which means “cleansing of the Nadies”. The Nadies are an energy channel that is generally subtle, but also the one from which the physical form is based The Intermediate posture series is considered as highly important in Ashtanga yoga as they are the main postures that purify and energize the body and the mind.

The Primary and Intermediate Series of Ashtanga should be performed for a number of months. Once they are mastered, they will be integrated into the body, allowing you to feel stronger than before. They also work to tone your muscles, and strengthen the various bodily organs. The Advanced Series comes in just right after the first two series are mastered. This last posture set is what yogis call as Sthira Bhaga, the ones responsible for promoting radiance.

Ashtanga yoga is valued today by many people for its athletic movements and style. Because of that, people who love order and an independent life are considered the perfect candidate for this practice.

By: Lucile Taylor

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Yoga and Yoga Meditation - Benefits For the Mind and Body

Yaga is a practice of synchronizing the body and the mind through movement, breathing, and meditation that has been around for over 5,000 years. There are many different types of yoga, including Hatha, Vinyasa, Iyengar, Ashtanga, and prenatal yoga. Although the practices started in the Far East, people in the United States have seen countless benefits, both physical and mental, from practicing all these different types of yoga.

Yoga's movements promote flexibility and lubrication in the joints, muscles, tendons, and ligaments. Yoga's movements also massage internal organs and glands and tone muscles. That is, yoga is a total body workout that sends new blood and oxygen to all parts of your body- an essential part to detoxification. Yoga also benefits your endurance, energy and balance, circulatory and respiratory systems, pain tolerance, and core strength. Yoga also has the potential to positively influence your weight, posture and quality of sleep!

Mental benefits of yoga come from the harmonization of the body and the mind through meditation. Many people use yoga to decrease stress, increase relaxation, gain emotional balance, and improve concentration. Yoga also reduces anxiety attacks, blood pressure, and muscle tension while increasing self-confidence, serotonin levels, and strengthening your immune system.

So, go grab your yoga mat and start on the road to a healthier you! Although there are yoga studios, instructors and classes all over the United States, you can also practice yoga right in your living room. Yoga DVDs, books, and home programs are readily available for those who do not have enough time or flexibility to make it across town for regular classes.

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Yoga Benefits For the Mind, Body and Spirit

One of the most popular forms of exercise and fitness, yoga benefits almost everybody cutting across age groups due to its unique philosophy. The word 'yoga' comes from the word 'yug' that means to 'unite' and yoga serves to do just that. It serves to unite the body; mind and spirit into a single powerful consciousness that helps you achieve an active lifestyle among many other benefits.

Yoga Benefits

There are six different kinds of Yoga each with its unique set of benefits:

Hatha Yoga: Ideal for beginners, Hatha Yoga is also called the Yoga of postures. It includes pranayam or breathing techniques, meditation as well as different levels of Asanas as they are referred to. It includes various sub styles which include Iyengar, Ashtanga, Jiva Mukti and Kripalu, each being the same with different interpretations. This is also the best yoga for health.

Bhakti Yoga: This form of yoga is meant for people who are looking for a path to god. Also called the Yoga of devotion, it is commonly practiced amongst 'yogis' in India and its goals are spiritual and not fitness.

Raja Yoga: Also called the yoga of self control, Raja Yoga is the yoga that is based on the teachings of the Eight Limbs of Yoga and is ideal for building discipline of the mind.

Jnana Yoga: This form of yoga is centered on a man's intelligence and is also called yoga of the mind. It gives utmost importance to learning and wisdom and not so much to physical aspects.

Karma Yoga: Karma means service and Karma Yogis work towards a better tomorrow by doing good actions. This form of yoga teaches you to perform selfless service during your lifetime.

Tantra Yoga: This form of yoga is often misinterpreted as a form of sex and is much in demand. Unfortunately sex is only a small part of this yoga of rituals which is really about sacred experiences.

Each form of yoga's benefits depends on what you are looking to achieve. It is important to find a guru well versed in the kind of yoga that you want to learn. There are many commercial courses available for Hatha Yoga but for the rest, yogis are more difficult to find. Yoga has become a lifestyle statement amongst celebrities who swear by its benefits. The truth is that yoga has a very special place in today's stressful existence. In the modern day pressures, it is easy to lose oneself and succumb to depression. Yoga is a form of holistic healing that helps you become stronger in mind and body from within. Yoga benefits also include a fitter and more flexible body which helps you lead a more active and enriched life.

It is important to read up on the kind of yoga that you want to learn before embarking on this journey. For many, yoga is about weight loss while for many others, it's just the latest trend. Unless your reasons for learning or following the path of yoga are honest, it will be difficult to reap the complete yoga benefits.

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