Posts for 'Exercise' Category

f you've dismissed yoga as a chill workout that's just a bunch of stretching and deep breathing, consider this: A growing pile of research backs its many physical and psychological benefits. Want to slim down and reshape your body—and feel really freakin' good? Read on.

Secret Slimming Powers

Yoga calms your mind, but it can't possibly help you lose weight, right? Wrong. For starters, you'll sweat, blast calories, and tone and shape your entire body, especially if you practice a more physically active style of yoga, such as Ashtanga, Vinyasa, or Bikram (hot yoga). In fact, you can torch 400 calories in one Bikram class, roughly the same amount you'd burn by running for 40 minutes at a moderate pace—but with a lot less stress on your body.

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Yoga A Perfect Activity For The Eco Minded:  With its principles of healthy, balanced living and an awareness of our body’s connection to the elements, yoga is a natural fit with sustainability. The discipline of yoga is based in a centuries-old Sanskrit tradition that includes principles like “ahimsa,” or “doing no harm.”

As a form of exercise, yoga can improve strength and flexibility and help manage stress. If you’re interested in trying yoga, look for a basic class at your gym or local community center, or ask around for yoga studio recommendations. It’s easy to practice at home once you learn the basics.

And yoga does require a few basics. Consider investing in a mat and other items that reflect the practice’s Earth-friendly ethos. Mind your mat A successful yoga pose depends in part on a mat that’s “grippy” enough to keep you from slipping around. It should provide some cushioning, but not so much that you lack stability.

Some people prefer rough-textured mats for added traction, while others find smooth mats more comfortable.

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Yoga Video- First Good Look At Miranda Kerr's Baby Bump: Miranda Kerr has unveiled her burgeoning baby bump for the first time since announcing that she and husband Orlando Bloom are expecting their first child. In a video to promote her organic skincare range Kora, the 27-year-old's growing tummy is perfectly evident as she is filmed practising yoga.

The Australian beauty, who is four months pregnant, promotes the benefits of healthy living in the clip – in particular the importance of exercise, relaxation and healthy eating. And judging by her virtuous lifestyle, Miranda will no doubt maintain her enviable figure throughout her pregnancy.

Speaking on the video, she says: "Kora is about nurturing your core, your inner and outer self – your mind, your body and your spirit. Kora is a choice in how we live our lives."Both she and Orlando, who married in secret in Anguilla last month, are advocates of eco-friendly living. In past interviews Miranda has said of the future: "My ideal situation would be to live on a farm in a solar-powered house with a hammock and a vegetable patch."

Soothies Yoga:  Researchers from the Boston University School of Medicine have thrown yet more fuel on the fire which is sending up smoke signals saying that yoga is powerful medicine for mind and body. The researchers wanted to compare yoga to walking in terms of affect on mood. Walking is a wonderful exercise and we all know that time spent outdoors has a positive impact on mood. Time and again however, yoga is showing up as having effects beyond the physical and beyond the emotional; there seems to be profound changes in the whole being that result from yoga practise.

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One afternoon in New York, I found myself on a street corner in midtown, licking salt off a slightly burned soft pretzel. I gazed about in a wondering daze, transfixed by the LCD nightmare.

Time seemed to stop for me just then, as though I were Dr. Manhattan from "Watchmen," only without the continually erect blue penis. Suddenly, I knew that everything in.

Times Square  the breeze-blown fliers for some outlier porn shop, the vaguely contraband luggage stores, the endlessly replicated advertisements for TV shows that never had a prayer, even the tourists from Nebraska -- was part of a larger cosmic reality whose boundaries we can't begin to perceive. The power of the universe, I realized, is transcendent, infinite, all-knowing, beautiful beyond measure. I quaked at the awesome kindness of its eternal might.

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IN mid-July, while the oil slick in the Gulf and the Goldman Sachs settlement were dominating the news, a blog named YogaDork had a worldwide exclusive. “Lady Gaga Takes Private Yoga Class in Cleveland,” the post read, offering a breathless account of Lady Gaga’s drop-in yoga session while touring in Ohio, along with a cellphone photo of the pop superstar, in dark sunglasses and blue bandana, hugging Sandy Gross, the awestruck instructor.

Within moments, the news was reposted on hundreds of Twitter messages, and posted on news sites as different as NPR and indiatimes.com. While it may not have been a scoop on the magnitude of, say, the guest list at Chelsea Clinton’s wedding, it was a definite coup for YogaDork, a blog that chronicles the often insular world of those practicing their sun salutations.

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As Cathy Lilly folded into downward dog at a workshop in January, a novice instructor, eager to help, lifted Ms. Lilly’s thumbs and angled them forward. Her thumbs are still recovering from the strain. Ms. Lilly, 53, a yoga teacher with more than two decades on the mat, also once injured her rotator cuff jumping distractedly into plank pose. And after another instructor suggested she kiss her knee while in heron pose, her hamstring suffered the consequences.

Isn’t yoga supposed to be good for you? After all, doctors prescribe it to injured athletes and cancer patients. And while tennis players can expect ripped-up elbows and runners know they may blow out their knees, yogis don’t usually anticipate having to hobble off their mats.

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There is so much going on in John Friend's life right now that an assistant once teased him about waking just before dawn and calling to ask for coffee, only to be reminded that he, Friend, was in Quito, Munich or Seoul, while the assistant was back at home base in the Woodlands, a cushy suburb north of Houston. That Friend, the founder of Anusara, one of the world's fastest-growing styles of yoga, has an assistant is itself significant; many people still picture yogis as serene guys who live in respectable deprivation in places like Mysore or Pune, India, and wait for disciples to find them. Not Friend.

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A study shows that when they are unwell, cats became less stressed when they listen to relaxing music. Student veterinary nurse Sian Barr carried out the research on cats being treated at a vet's surgery. She found that those who were played yoga meditation music and Om Shanti tunes calmed down and began to breathe more slowly while in cages at the practice in Powys, Wales.

Miss Barr, who has just graduated from veterinary school with a first class honours degree thanks to her research, said: "Stress in small doses can be a good thing, such as if a cat is under stress to eat, then it can perform better. "But otherwise, it will have a negative effect, such as in a veterinary practice.

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Edmonton -Don't expect to drip sweat, struggle to balance or fight to breathe during a yin yoga class. But do expect to work, intensely and deeply. Yin yoga looks and sounds simple, but it is not for absolute beginners. Instead of holding each pose for a few breaths, as in most other types of yoga, yin practitioners hold each pose for minutes at a time.

The traditional "pigeon pose," for example, becomes an exercise in endurance in Graham Parsons' class at Edmonton's Lotus Soul Gym. The pose, in which a leg is stretched forward in a deep lunge, then turned to the side, is held for an uncomfortably long time under Parsons' gentle direction.

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