New to Yoga
Practices
Yoga in Your Daily Life
Yoga Beyond Asana
Sister Sciences »
Our Sangha »
If you snickered at the title of this post because your experience of Downward Facing Dog pose is anything but resting, then you are not alone. Virtually everyone experiences some form of struggle with Downward Facing Dog, especially at first. It’s a challenging...
Sivananda Yoga is a form of Hatha Yoga brought to the West in 1957 by Swami Vishnudevananda at the urging of his Indian teacher, a medical doctor named Swami Sivananda. Vishnudevananda founded the International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres based on Swami Sivananda’s...
Most people today look to the Gregorian calendar or even their smart phone for an awareness of the passage of time. Whether or not skilled in time management, most of us can feel the pressure of the unfolding of time. Sunrises, sunsets and the lunation cycles are the...
Viniyoga™ adapts various methods of yoga practice to the unique condition, needs, and interests of the student, using tools to individualize and actualize the process of self-discovery and personal transformation. Adapted from the teachings of T. Krishnamacharya to...
Around the year 1965, a woman named Sue Luby moved to my hometown of Andover, Massachusetts and changed my life. Sue offered yoga classes – we’d never heard of yoga, but for some reason my mother decided we should give it a try. This would have been around the early...
From an outward perspective, the practice of yoga seems very physical. An often continual progression of movements, yoga is rightly considered to be a physical exercise. But there is one element of the practice that sets it apart from other exercises—the breath. In...
Here are some of the great entries from our Yoga Creative Writing Contest. Thank you all for sharing with us how yoga has changed your life! Amy P. "Yoga has improved my health, wellness and spirit. I cannot thank my teachers and friends for sharing their practices...
Ashtanga Yoga is a form of Hatha Yoga developed by the late Sri K. Patabbhi Jois in conjunction with his teacher Sri T. Krishnamacharya, the father of Western yoga. The practice is said to be adapted from the 8-limbed Ashtanga yoga system outlined in Yoga Korunta, an...
Some days it seems as though you have an endless list of reasons to not practice yoga. You’re too tired, you have too much to do, you can practice later/tomorrow, you just don’t feel like it, etc., etc. Your mind will come up with an impressive and convincing range of...
Bob and I first met when a temporary housemate of his whom I had been casually dating invited me over to see the house. Bob was painting the ceiling of his sunroom, I recall. There was an immediate attraction. Bob recalls that I was wearing tight yoga pants—I don’t...
Iyengar Yoga is a form of Hatha Yoga based on the teachings of B.K.S. Iyengar who studied with Sri T. Krishnamacharya beginning at age 16. He began teaching in 1936 in Pune, India at the age of 18. He later authored the yoga classic Light on Yoga and is one of the...
My first yoga class was in 2002. I remember one pose in that class, Viparita Karani, known in English as Legs Up the Wall. It struck me as being very relaxing and not at all what I expected. In 2003 I retired and found myself with time to devote to a more fit...
I was born in Michigan and moved around the mid-west as a child, living in Michigan, Missouri, and Indiana. When I was 15, I was a passenger in a car accident. During the accident my sixth and seventh cervical vertebrae were dislocated, partially severing and...
The most familiar form of yoga practiced in the West is Hatha Yoga, which is a combination of physical postures (asana), breath work (pranayama), meditation (dhyana), and relaxation. There are many different styles, or expressions, of Hatha Yoga. In fact, there are so...
Although most people come to the practice of yoga with some sort of goal, it usually becomes clear that there is so much more to the practice than any one particular goal can encompass. But it can still be easy to fall into a pattern of striving to achieve a certain...
“Unified Consciousness results when the gunas return back inward because the Ascendant’s purpose is fulfilled, or when the Absolute Self is permanently stabilized in the Divine Power of Pure Consciousness.” The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Sutra IV.34 Of all the...
As we approach the busy season here in Punta Gorda, I can’t help but be obsessed by this idea we call time. We all have a million expressions for it: “Don’t waste your time,” “It’s about time!” “In the interest of saving time,” and so on. I, myself can’t help but feel...
This month, we are honoring Jane Eckles, who recently passed away, as our yogi of the month. Jane has been a part of The Yoga Sanctuary for quite some time. She was kind and compassionate, and always interested in others. She loved her family and really enjoyed her...
Kapha dosha is the mind-body constitution made up of the elements earth and water. People with a dominant kapha dosha tend to have qualities associated with these elements: stability, groundedness, and fluidity. Typically, kapha types are peaceful, calm, and consistent.
As we get more and more familiar with the physical practice of yoga, we find that we can more easily move into and out of the postures without having to think about them so much, or without having to look around at what the postures should look like. We begin to...