It almost seemed like a matter of time, didn’t it? Although there are many institutes where one can practice and become a certified yoga instructor, this is is taking it to a whole other level. China’s going to get to open the first “Yoga College”, an answer to yoga’s immense popularity among the country’s middle class. I wonder what type of electives they’ll be offering students! Definitely a must-read. Please share and comment. – Namaste, Marne

By Jing Daily

China’s growing middle class isn’t only becoming fixated on products that connote (or claim to connote) “the good life,” cars and luxury goods among them, it’s becoming obsessed with looking good both inside and out. As of 2010, China had around 3,000 health clubs, according to China Sports Business, with around 3 million active members paying annual fees generally ranging from 600 yuan (US$95) to 5,000 yuan ($793). And along with the usual spas, free weights and treadmills, rising demand from stressed-out middle class urbanites has been the popularity of yoga skyrocket over the past decade. Now, looking to address that demand by training qualified instructors, China is set to get its first official “Yoga college,” the brainchild of a former ELLE China editor and her yoga-teaching Indian husband.

Formally inaugurated this weekend in Beijing, the new yoga college is an offshoot of the Yogi Yoga Institute of China, established in 2004 by Yin Yan and Manmohan Singh Bhandari. Over the past eight years, Yogi Yoga claims to have trained over 10,000 instructors at its branches in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. With its new institution, Yin says, “We want to take yoga to a different level in China, as it has become immensely popular.”

According to the Press Trust of India, the new institute will offer a three-year course focusing on Hata Yoga, a popular Indian form, taught by a faculty from India and abroad headed up by Yin’s husband, Bandari. According to Yin, the entire 36 month course will cost around US$4,000, with its completion degree enabling graduates to become full-time yoga instructors throughout China.

Via the PTI:

Ever since it was established, Yogi Yoga has become vastly popular venture as its revenue touched USD eight million last year.

“It is an impressive effort by Yogi Yoga centre to spread yoga in China,” said [senior Indian diplomat Arun Sahu], who heads the cultural section of the Indian Embassy.

The institute appears to be very professionally run and the very Indian way with Vedic chants and Indian cultural practices, he said.

Over the years it turned out to be massive centre, he said.

As yoga took roots with many Chinese taking to it as a stress reliever, its exponents here also called for a more organised approach to it to provide qualified trainers as ill trained instructors could cause injury.

In recent years, we’ve seen a greater focus on health among China’s middle class build niche industries for products like organic vegetables and foods, vitamins and supplements, and even“luxury” bottled water. With the population increasingly concerned about the ill effects of urban pollution and food safety, health clubs have been keen to pounce. This new “Yoga College” is, then, a predictable development, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see copycats spring up in major cities throughout China before too long.

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What a great idea – adding yoga to physical education classes in our schools. Unfortunately, this practice is not happening in the U.S. (yet), but we can dream. Here’s a great story on how yoga’s entering Canadian schools and how it’s helping their students. Great read! – Namaste, Marne

Via CBS News

A former physical education teacher is helping to bring a successful project of teaching yoga to high school students to schools across New Brunswick.

Jenny Kierstead works with Breathing Space Yoga in Halifax and helped design the Yoga grade 11 and 12 curriculum for the Nova Scotia Department of Education.

The program’s success is now prompting schools across Canada to pick it up.

She said Nova Scotia was the first place in North America to offer yoga as a high school physical education credit.

Classes are already available across Nova Scotia as well as at Kennebecasis Valley High School in the Saint John area.

Kierstead said she’s already taught more than 200 teachers to implement this course and they are seeing impressive results in the classroom.

“Kids are being kinder and more compassionate and we’re noticing that the whole culture of schools is changing,” she said.

“So teachers are finding it easier to really deliver the message of kindness, compassion and respect.”

The former physical education teacher said the results are having positive effects beyond the classroom.

“There was a testimonial written from a girl who’s had a very challenging upbringing with alcoholism and whatnot. And she’s noticing through yoga that she’s actually able to sleep through the night,” she said.

She’s now helping to bring the practice to New Brunswick high school students.

People from all over New Brunswick are enrolling in the $250 workshops in Moncton, which will run on weekends through August.

The yoga classes will be offered in the schools in September.

Kierstead said she believes the classes are an important addition to a physical education curriculum.

She said there are benefits to students who normally do not participate in gym classes and other activities.

“Students are more fit, especially the students that typically sit on the sidelines in phys. ed. Girls are responding very positively to it because of its non-competitive nature,” she said.

“It’s a very complete form of physical activity. So it’s targeting the big physical challenges that kids have today: obesity, diabetes and inactivity.”

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There are certainly different poses necessary to get pregnant, but this article talks about how yoga poses and breathing can particularly help. We’re lucky to have guest blogger Jasmine Kaloudis giving us some great tips on how yoga can help when we’re ready to conceive. Please read and comment. – Namaste, Marne

By Jasmine Kaloudis

Breath is Life. The first thing we do when we are born is inhale, the last thing we do when we die, is exhale. Our lives are made up of all the breaths in between. Breathing is essential to life, but it is also essential to creating life.

Stress and Infertility – How Yoga Helps

When we go through infertility we are often stressed, we breathe shallowly and our body starts to hold inside all the disappointment, hurt and fear. Both physical and emotional pain gets stored in our bodies as stress.

When we are stressed – Cortisol is released in the brain, which impedes our ability to conceive by affecting the hormones that are responsible for ovulation and healthy gynecological function. Yoga teaches us to open the body with the breath, creating the ability to arrest the stress response, balance hormones and return the body, emotions and mind to a relaxed state.
You can literally learn to “breathe to conceive” as breath affects your state of being on every level, you learn to receive life literally and figuratively. The breath is the most effective tool we have to stop the “fight or flight” stress response of the sympathetic nervous system and return it to “the relaxation response” of the parasympathetic nervous system.

Improved Physical Health

Yoga can also impact the general reproductive health of women trying to conceive. Yoga tones and strengthens the muscles that support reproductive organs and improves spinal alignment, enabling better circulation and improved capacity and quality of respiration.  For women who are taking infertility drugs, better breathing can also help the body fight off the toxic effects of those drugs.

Reducing the Physical Effects of Stress

Yoga is perfect for dealing with one of the most pervasive mind/body fertility challenges: stress, often stress caused by the inability to get or stay pregnant. Women experiencing infertility are often stress- and pain-filled, saddened and angry.  These emotions generate chemicals in the body that weaken immunity and make for a less hospitable environment for a new life. Yoga, because of its use of relaxation breathing techniques, combined with the flushing out of physical toxins, provides an antidote to the negative physical impacts of anxiety, anger and depression.  It also helps to change your perspective to a more objective, detached state of mind so you start to view your challenges with more calm and control.

To treat infertility with beginner yoga there a some basic steps you can take to get you started. This first thing is to reduce your stress level. Stress can cause your hormones and organs to become off balance. When you are not in balance your body is not working to it’s full potential. Yoga breathing will help calm the body and mind replacing the negative thoughts with positive.

There are specific yoga poses in yoga that focus on your reproductive organs and pelvic area to increase blood flow and stimulate energy. There are also poses that soften the abdominal area clearing tension from the uterus, ovaries and fallopian tubes which will increase their productivity. Where are Fertility Yoga Classes in Philadelphia?  Does meditation help infertility?

Yoga will bring balance to your body, mind, and soul specifically your hormone levels. These poses will improve your glandular function which will stabilize hormones. In order for the reproductive process to occur your hormones must be in balance.   What are the best Yoga Fertility Poses? Can Infertility be helped with Yoga?

Yoga and Fertility, Infertility -  Not the Cure-all

This is not to say that yoga is an instant fertility potion, or that it works for everyone. It is not a quick-fix.  It does aid to keep your inner peace, which can be very hard when struggling with infertility due to the frustration, anxiety, sadness and despair that infertility can produce.

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Jasmine Kaloudis teaches beginner yoga classes in Philadelphia and is the author of the Best Yoga Websites for 2011.  She writes about yoga on her blog at http://www.synergybyjasmine.com/yoga-blog.

Facebook – www.facebook.com/couplesyoga
You Tube – http://www.youtube.com/user/SynergybyJasmine

Twitter – http://www.Twitter.com/synergyjasmine

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There are folks who don’t have the taste buds to eat hot sauce (specifically Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce), who will never attempt a Yoga pose or ever attend a Pilates class. Those folks are probably missing out because according to L.A. Times, three of the fastest-growing industries involve Yoga (and Pilates) studios, hot sauce and solar panels. It’s nice to know that our economy might be saved by industries that involve companies that are healthy (Yoga and Pilates) and environmentally friendly (solar panels). Please share and comment. – Best, Marne

Fastest-growing industries: Yoga studios, solar panels, hot sauce

By Tiffany Hsui

Smartphones, burgers and oil wells may be big moneymakers, but they can’t compete when it comes to speed of expansion. The fastest-growing industries in the U.S. actually involve 3-D printers, solar panels, self-tanning products, Pilates and yogastudios and hot sauce.

So says a new report from research group IBISWorld, which measured industries based on their contributions to the economy, revenue growth and expected future performance.

In a season of rising gas prices, consumers and businesses are increasingly feeling the strain of dependence on fossil fuel. That’s why, according to IBISWorld, so-called “green” industries are doing so well.

Solar panel makers such as SunPower Inc. have seen revenue grow an average of 3.3% a year from 2002 to 2012, due in large part to substantial government subsidies and falling silicon prices, which have allowed more competition with cheaper foreign panels.

Solar panel sales are expected to grow 9.4% this year and then 8.2% each year in the future, according to IBISWorld.

Eco-friendly, sustainable construction companies are also on a tear, with annual revenue increases of 28.9% since 2002 and an 18.3% boost expected this year. Governments have begun implementing more building codes that mandate energy-efficient designs; building owners are finding that green certification earns their structures more acclaim.

The industry is expected to grow 22.8% a year going forward, eventually making nearly $287.8 billion in revenue by 2017.

Growing consumer concern over health has heralded the rise of self-tanning product makers and yoga and Pilates studios.

Worries about UV ray exposure and skin cancer have frightened some clients away from tanning beds, helping companies that promise a more natural glow boost revenue about 22.7% a year. A burgeoning focus on fitness – which has also recently advanced the fortunes of programs such as P90X and CrossFit – has helped yoga and Pilates establishment resist the recession and grow 12.1% annually.

Technological advances also played heavily on IBISWorld’s list. The presence of more retailers online – many now armed with virtual dressing rooms and “try-on” systems – enhanced Web sales of eyeglasses and contacts 28.2% a year on average. Major players include Walgreen Co. and 1-800-Contacts.com.

And as consumers find more uses for 3-D printers – They make planes! They make food! They make toys for Jay Leno! – the industry is expected to grow 20.3% this year. By 2017, revenue is expected to double to nearly $3.3 billion.

Several other industries are also outpacing the general economy. But our personal favorite is really spicing things up. As international influences creep into American cooking, ethnic supermarkets expand into more neighborhoods and foodies scramble for ever-more exotic tastes, hot sauce sales are smoking. Revenue in 2012 is expected to come in at just under $1.1 billion – by 2017, it’ll be $1.3 billion, according to IBISWorld.

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Since a lot of my friends know I do yoga, I always get asked which type of yoga I think they should try. Although I’ve been practicing for years, I really think it’s up to each person which type is best for them. It’s a good idea to try different types of classes whenever available and this story’s a good starting point. Please share and comment. – Best, Marne

Yoga, by definition, is one thing: union. But the methods used to achieve that union are many. By some counts, there are hundreds of styles. To help you understand what’s on offer, we’ve created this guide to prominent yoga styles.

By Yoga Journal Editors

Which yoga is for you? Yoga, by definition, is one thing: union. But the methods used to achieve that union are many. By some counts, there are hundreds of styles. To help you understand what’s on offer, we’ve created this guide to prominent yoga styles.

Anusara Yoga

What to expect: Anusara offers a playful, uplifting approach to an alignment-focused practice, including storytelling, chanting, and the life-affirming values of Tantric philosophy. Every class has a theme, which is used as a metaphor to reflect on while you’re doing poses. Opening your heart is an important aim of the practice, often emphasized in the many backbends you’ll do.

What it’s about: Anusara means “flowing with grace.” In class, students apply the Universal Principles of Alignment, which are techniques generally consistent with those taught in Iyengar Yoga. There’s an emphasis on understanding both the physical actions and the energetic channels you are attempting to connect with in each pose.

Teachers and centers: John Friend founded Anusara Yoga in 1997 after many years of practicing and teaching Iyengar Yoga. His experience with the Siddha Yoga lineage and Gurumayi Chidvilasananda sparked the creation of Anusara’s first principle, Open to Grace, which suggests that every pose originates internally from a deeply creative and devotional feeling before taking its outward, physical form.

Find out more anusara.com

Ashtanga Yoga

What to expect: The inspiration for many vinyasa-style yoga classes, Ashtanga Yoga is an athletic and demanding practice. Traditionally, Ashtanga is taught “Mysore style”: Students learn a series of poses and practice at their own pace while a teacher moves around the room giving adjustments and personalized suggestions.

What it’s about: The practice is smooth and uninterrupted, so the practitioner learns to observe whatever arises without holding on to it or rejecting it. With continued practice, this skill of attentive nonattachment spills over into all aspects of life. This is one important meaning of K. Pattabhi Jois’s famous saying, “Practice, and all is coming.”

Teachers and centers: Founded by K. Pattabhi Jois (1915-2009), this system is taught around the world. Jois’s grandson R. Sharath now leads the Shri K. Pattabhi Jois Ashtanga YogaInstitute in Mysore, India. There are teachers everywhere around the globe.

Find out more kpjayi.org; ashtanga.com

Read More

 

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This is a really great article on how yoga can help heal even the most broken in all of us. I hope more of our veterans discover yoga. Enjoy and please share. Best, Marne

Yoga and meditation may be therapeutic for returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan suffering with PTSD or the stress of returning to civilian life.

By AUDRA D.S. BURCH aburch@MiamiHerald.com

One week into his second tour of duty, U.S. Marines Sgt. Hugo Patrocinio was wounded by a suicide bomber who drove a dump truck stocked with 1,000 pounds of explosives into a house in al-Anbar, on the outskirts of Fallujah. He had been attacked before, hurt before, but this time Patrocinio was just 20 feet from the explosion.

He would eventually recover from the wounds — the shrapnel in his foot and leg, the severe concussion — but the psychological injuries lingered. His nights were soon crowded with re-runs of the bombing that injured 10 other platoon members. Often, he didn’t sleep at all, tormented by searing memories of friends killed in the war. He was angry, prone to headaches and mood swings, one of thousands of soldiers returning from Iraq or Afghanistan suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, one of the masked casualties of war.

In the 18 months of Patrocinio’s spiral, he eventually turned to yoga after learning about it during group therapy as a way to quiet the inner noise. He found the discipline, the poses, the breathing — and especially, the stillness — worked to restore what had been taken that July in 2006.

“I didn’t understand yoga but I knew it was helping somehow. I was in a horrible place, a fog,” says Patrocinio, 29, who was awarded a Purple Heart medal for his military service. “There is no magic pill that can erase your past or what you have seen but the practice helps me to cope. Now I am not afraid to go to sleep.”

Patrocinio is part of a wave of returning veterans — with thousands more expected as the United States continues its military pullouts from two decade-long wars — who are embracing yoga as a calming therapy. For many, it is a companion medical treatment, to ease the symptoms of post-traumatic stress on the mind and body. For others, it is simply a way to relieve the stress of reintegrating. Some are turning to the poses and deep breathing of yoga. Others to the quiet of meditation.

“Through yoga or tai chi or some other discipline, the vet can create a space of calm. And that is a place that the brain can return to when faced with a trigger,” said David Frankel, executive director of Connected Warriors, a nonprofit offering free weekly yoga sessions to veterans and their families in South Florida. “More than anything, the vet returning from a trauma needs a sense of peace.”

Faced with a growing national health crisis, military officials and the medical community are exploring other methods to help treat psychologically wounded soldiers. Between 11 and 20 percent of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have PTSD, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

In 2005, the U.S. Department of Defense conducted a narrow feasibility study at the former Walter Reed Army Medical Center on the effectiveness of Yoga Nidra, an ancient meditative practice, on soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with PTSD symptoms. After eight weeks, all the participants’ symptoms were reduced. Buoyed by the results, research was expanded to several VA hospitals and centers, including the Miami VA where a study of meditation was conducted on veterans. The local study has been completed but not yet published. The program used in the study, eventually renamed Integrative Restoration or iRest, was added to the weekly treatment for soldiers at dozens of centers across the nation.

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There’s nothing like the feeling of vitality after a good yoga class. And there’s nothing like a great big hearty laugh that soothes your soul. Imagine combining both! I found this story on “Laughter Yoga” that made me think and laugh. Enjoy and please comment.

Laughter yoga: Cackling your way to better health

By Xazmin Garza Las Vegas Review-Journal

They laugh about their credit card bills. They laugh about their aches and pains. They laugh about the medication they have to take. They laugh about everything in laughter yoga. That’s the point.

About 30 women and one man sit in a circle at the Las Vegas Veterans Memorial Leisure Center. They each came to take part in laughter yoga, “a global movement for health, joy and world peace” that takes place here the last Saturday of every month. The exercise room’s glass windows let passers-by take a peek at the crowd.

About five minutes into the class, they all appear to have just heard the most hilarious joke ever delivered. Instructor Suzanne Pappas squats down to support the heft of her laugh as her cheeks turn red and her veins surface. She grabs her belly and tosses her head back, too. Laughter yoga isn’t about yoga. There are no downward dogs here, just basic stretches performed while sitting in chairs. Laughter yoga isn’t about chuckling, either. It’s about exploding with the kind of laughs you feel in your belly and in your soul.

Research from the University of Maryland School of Medicine has found that hearty laughter reduces one’s risk for cardiovascular disease, while studies from Loma Linda University find that it reduces stress and blood pressure and increases endorphins. It’s mostly the endorphins, the feel-good stuff, that brings students to class. It lets them put their worries and problems aside for just one hour a month as they laugh their hearts out.

“If you put effort into your laughter, you don’t get into your thoughts anymore,” Pappas says. The more physical the laugh, the more your body commits to the feeling it brings. Instructor Betty Evans sums it up when she tells the class about one of the primary rules: eye contact.  Read the rest of this entry »

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I’m not quite sure how to feel about talks that there’s a movement trying to get yoga in the 2012 Olympics. We’ve certainly become quite a competitive society. This is a very interesting article. Enjoy and please comment.

Olympic Yoga: Is There Room For Competition in Yoga?

Despite a movement to bring competitive yoga to the 2016 Olympics, yoga remains a haven for people looking to calm their nerves while building strength and balance.

by Treach Colbert, patch.com

Yoga’s deep breathing, careful balance, and gentle stretches may ratchet up to a new and competitive level if the ancient practice becomes an Olympic sport, which could be possible in 2016. USA Yoga wants to become the governing body of yoga asana, or posture, and has petitioned the U.S. Olympic committee for recognition.

Yoga has traditionally been noncompetitive, blending spiritual and meditative components with exercise, and some devotees dislike the concept of yoga competitions where poses are rated and judged. Gabriel Hall, yoga instructor and owner ofYoga World in Long Beach, separates the idea of yoga as an Olympic sport from the everyday practice people can enjoy to benefit their physical and mental well being.

“No one should look at a yoga pose done by a 26-year-old Olympic athlete and think, ‘I need to look like that,’” he said.

However, Hall says that certain yoga poses are beautiful and awe-inspiring and that Olympic recognition would be a way of honoring the skill required.

“Some poses take grace, strength, flexibility, focus, and coordination,” he said.

But competition doesn’t belong in a yoga class where people are there to calm their nerves and build their strength, Hall added.

“You’re not there to outdo your neighbor, and there is no audience,” he said. “It’s not a performance.”

Whether your style leans toward fierce rivalry, noncompetitive oneness, or something in the middle, you can take home the health benefits of yoga:

Ease joint soreness. Gentle yoga is especially good for people who have arthritis. In a study done in the United Arab Emirates, people with rheumatoid arthritis who practiced yoga had significantly less disease activity and better quality of life than the group that did not participate in yoga. Read the rest of this entry »

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Yoga’s definitely become the chic exercise these days, with studios and classes popping up everywhere. Still, as with every exercise program, there are plus and minuses to consider before you start. This is a great article to read, and one that might save you from a painful sun salutation soon.

DailyHerald.com – From bikram to vinyasa, it seems like yoga has become the exercise experience of choice these days.

In “The Science of Yoga,” New York Times science writer William J. Broad examines the growing popularity of yoga and some of his findings are surprising, The Washington Post says.

According to Broad, while yoga’s “low-impact nature puts less strain on the body than traditional sports, increasing its appeal for younger people as well as aging boomers,” some yoga positions, such as head and shoulder stands and the plow position, raise real injury concerns.

“The idea of damage runs counter to yoga’s reputation for healing. Few practitioners anticipate strokes and dislocations, dead nerves and ruptured lungs,” writes Broad, a longtime yoga practitioner who injured his back doing an advanced yoga pose.

Among yoga’s well-known positives supported by actual studies: relaxation, mental calmness, flexibility, reductions in blood pressure and, Broad says, a better sex life.

Among the negatives: possible weight gain, because all that yoga-induced relaxation can lead to a reduction in your metabolic rate; joint instability; even brain damage or stroke from positions that demand extreme bending of the neck.

Broad isn’t saying don’t do yoga. On the contrary, he makes the argument that yoga will — and should — remain a good source of exercise and relaxation, but he says practitioners and teachers alike need to be more attuned to potential downsides. Read the rest of this entry »

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I love Madonna and all things Madonna.  Her performance this past weekend for Super Bowl Sunday was the highlight of the game for me (I’m not much into football, as you can tell).

Singer Madonna, who’s earning raves for her electrifying performance at the 2012 Super Bowl half-time show, had her yoga teacher stay with her for a week before her big show.

Madonna, a fitness fanatic who works out up to two hours a day, had a hydraulic yoga mat with a platform that extended to the ceiling installed at her Indianapolis hotel, sources said.

The 53-year-old Material Girl also reportedly had her yoga instructor travel with her so she could do Bikram yoga to stay limber and toned before her big show.

90-Minute Workouts, 5 Days a Week

The hard work paid off, as Madonna brought down the house with an energetic half-time show that featured performances by Nicki Minaj, M.I.A., Cee Lo Green and LMFAO.

For more on this article, please go here.

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