sun_salutation | Entries tagged with style/school

Sivananda is the style of yoga taught by the International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centers and Ashrams, which were founded by Swami Vishnudevananda, who was sent to teach yoga in the West in 1957 by his guru, Swami Sivananda Saraswati, and named the centers after him.

Sivananda is a form of hatha yoga. Teachers tend to pride themselves on staying close to the original teachings of both Swami Sivananda and Swami Vishnudevananda as well as to their Hindu context. Asana practice is set firmly in its spiritual context; students are not pressured to adopt any spiritual practices themselves, but students who are interested in yogic spirituality will probably be more drawn to Sivananda than those who are not. Yoga is presented as a holistic lifestyle and as a set of techniques which can be used in conjunction with any form of religious practice in a student's personal life, but for classes and communal gatherings, Hindu symbolism is used by default. Students who are not comfortable with attending (even passively) ceremonies of other religions may therefore find that this is not the style of yoga for them.

Classes use a consistent basic sequence of twelve asanas, each one typically held for six to twelve breaths, with a short savasana after each asana or cycle of asanas to allow the muscles to recover and the breathing to return to normal. Sivananda can therefore be a useful style of yoga for students with disabilities, injuries or chronic illnesses. Weight loss talk, tight-fitting clothing and competitiveness in asanas tend to be discouraged, which may make it a good fit for those with body image issues.( Read more... )

libitina

So I tried yoga a few times and always walked away until this delightful yoga studio opened up near me, and I walked in only a couple months after they opened - and still practice yoga there three years later.

While there are many styles of yoga taught there, the core of the place and the style practiced by the founders is Forrest Yoga. This is totally a case of a Westerner "making up shit, slapping a brand name on it, and calling it a new type of yoga." And even though I've only met her a couple times, and only professionally, that the founder of the style - Ana Forrest - ~~is batshit insane~~ seems batshit insane to me. That said, I love this yoga.

It's a lot like Hatha yoga and is strongly informed by Iyengar yoga. While there is an A series and a B series, most of the order and selection on poses is individual to each class - there might be one more emphasizing hip openers or a day emphasizing shoulders. Poses are held, but not usually for more than a minute or two. Props are often used, but for about 20% of the class.

The main ( differences between Forrest Yoga and most other yoga styles )

Other than that, it's just yoga. But let me also take a moment to talk about how delightful my yoga studio is. ( Read more... )

rydra_wong

"What is shadow yoga, anyway?" said one of the women at the reception desk when I went to get my ticket for the class today, because apparently the universe wanted me to have a convenient hook for this post.

"It's the weird stuff," I said, managing to censor myself at the last moment and not say "weird shit."

Then I recited the potted history of how a strange Hungarian-Australian yoga practitioner, Zhander Remete, did some intensive study of the hatha yoga texts from the medieval period, back when hatha yoga was an esoteric and somewhat disreputable practice which might enable you to project yourself astrally or attain immortality. Based on his reading -- and his studies of martial arts and Ayurvedic medicine -- he decided that modern people, Westerners in particular, were often not fully prepared for asana practice.

And he invented these practice forms, the three "Preludes", which are designed to prepare the body for asana practice, both on a physical level and on an energetic one, working on the joints and muscles and on energy blockages at the same time (the "shadow" in the name refers to the koshas, the five "sheaths" of the self in Vedantic philosophy).

The result is something that looks like a peculiar (but rather beautiful) mixture of yoga, tai chi, and martial arts. Here are some samples from the Preludes for you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTWUq4GB0Gw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RBrNhfocHs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGW13qHrT9E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjUBwr8DiwM
http://vimeo.com/28173594 (the loooong warm-up that starts all the sessions)

Here's a longer video of a demonstration at a yoga conference, which gives some idea of how the forms progress from simple warm-up movements through to the complex and scary:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhFOiBA3ajY (NSFW for shirtless yoga dude)

Here is where I need to say that I'm still not sure what I'm doing in a shadow yoga class.

( Cut for length )

ETA: Mods, please can we have a "shadow yoga" tag?

rydra_wong

This came up in a recent post: one of the hardest things for yoga newbies can be figuring out all the different schools and styles of yoga (Iyengar, Ashtanga, power, Bikram, vinyasa flow, Anusara, Kundalini, Sivananda, shadow, yin ...) and finding the kind that suits them best.

And I know there are people here who practice a wide range of styles.

So I wondered if anyone fancied the idea of writing a brief -- or not so brief -- post describing the style/school of yoga that you practice, what it focuses on, what's different about it, etc.. Or if you like following a particular teacher (e.g. Shiva Rea or Jason Crandell), what's different and distinct about their teaching style and what you like about it. Or if you're more eclectic, how you mix things up!

I figure we could probably cover quite a few styles between us, and it could be a pretty good resource. Thoughts?

ETA: For anyone who wants to do this, we haz a style/school tag! And I guess this can double as a sign-up post for anyone who finds it helpful to commit themselves.

ETA2: Index!

Yin yoga
Shadow yoga
Forrest yoga
Hot yoga and Bikram yoga

zats_clear

Yin yoga is a lot like marriage - it requires patience and perseverance, often seems pointless in the moment, stretches you beyond what you thought you were capable of if you just give it a minute, and in the end, makes you a better person for having stuck with it.

If you practice yoga, you are probably familiar with some of the various styles – Hatha, Ashtanga, Bikram, Vinyasa. These are all considered yang practices, working the superficial or muscular tissues of your body. To balance your efforts in these asanas and to prepare your body for long-held meditative poses, you might want to consider adding Yin Yoga to your repertoire.

Yin Yoga strengthens connective tissues and joints in the body, opening the hips and allowing the spine to become more supple and supportive. While other forms of yoga help the practitioner achieve greater flexibility and strength, Yin Yoga works deep into the body, accessing areas not normally addressed in more active practices.

In the beginning, Yin Yoga can seem ineffective and even boring as you hold the positions for anywhere from five to twenty minutes, but there lies the challenge. The practice itself is not static; you do not remain motionless in Sphinx or stationary in Dragonfly. As the minutes slide by, you find yourself able to go deeper into the pose as the surface muscles release and those underlying tissues gently give way. You may need to bring your head up from Butterfly to rest your neck before drifting back down. These simple adjustments are not fidgeting, not incorrect, but rather modifications to suit your personal needs and abilities. As you become comfortable with a Yin practice, you will recognize a quietness of self both during and after your time on the mat.

To further investigate Yin Yoga, I recommend Paul Grilley’s YinYoga dvd. His style is more anatomically-oriented and he discusses variations on poses for different body types. Once you have a handle on Yin Yoga itself, Sarah Powers speaks eloquently on the spiritual aspect of Yin Yoga and movement of energy, chi, throughout the body in her Insight Yoga dvd.

I am including a video excerpt from Grilley’s Yin Yoga to illustrate his style.

beYOU | MySpace Video

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Sun Salutation

If you don't have time for any other yoga in the day

Entries tagged with style/school

Style/School: Sivananda

Forrest Yoga

Shadow yoga: the weird shit

Different types of yoga: anyone for write-ups?

Getting Yin To It

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February 2017

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