What is a Yoga Asana?
Asana translated means posture.
Yoga incorporates stretching movements to open specific parts of the body. You warm up before Yoga just as you would before a race or a performance. This would include hamstring movements, shoulder openings, even certain breathing techniques to calm nerves or clear the throat . However, these would not be referred to as Yoga asanas.
What then separates a Yoga pose from a simple body stretch? It is the application of the movement and the focus of the mind: applying yourself with total awareness of both inner and outer movements and following the way your breath moves. Allowing yourself special time in a sacred space, having no attachment to the outcome of what you do, and learning to surrender and relax during this time is the essence of Yoga practice.
Too many times we do things out of ‘have to’, ‘got to’. Doing things out of ‘love to’ is to be inspired. The results are unattached, and the heart opens to share what you have experienced. Just think back to the times you loved doing something—a movie you saw, a book you read, a holiday you went on, and how eager you were to share the experience with another person. This is how a Yoga practice can be applied.
Yoga asana is about listening to the needs of your body and not the wants. It’s about recognising the strengths and weaknesses of the physical, emotional and mental self, but most important of all, it’s about doing the practice with an open heart and with love. Yoga asanas can be divided up into 4 categories
Asana translated means posture.
Yoga incorporates stretching movements to open specific parts of the body. You warm up before Yoga just as you would before a race or a performance. This would include hamstring movements, shoulder openings, even certain breathing techniques to calm nerves or clear the throat . However, these would not be referred to as Yoga asanas.
What then separates a Yoga pose from a simple body stretch? It is the application of the movement and the focus of the mind: applying yourself with total awareness of both inner and outer movements and following the way your breath moves. Allowing yourself special time in a sacred space, having no attachment to the outcome of what you do, and learning to surrender and relax during this time is the essence of Yoga practice.
Too many times we do things out of ‘have to’, ‘got to’. Doing things out of ‘love to’ is to be inspired. The results are unattached, and the heart opens to share what you have experienced. Just think back to the times you loved doing something—a movie you saw, a book you read, a holiday you went on, and how eager you were to share the experience with another person. This is how a Yoga practice can be applied.
Yoga asana is about listening to the needs of your body and not the wants. It’s about recognising the strengths and weaknesses of the physical, emotional and mental self, but most important of all, it’s about doing the practice with an open heart and with love. Yoga asanas can be divided up into 4 categories
- Standing poses. This includes poses done on the feet .
- Forward bends. Here the poses are done on the floor bending forward over the legs, or sitting in the classical lotus position. Also included are spinal twists.
- Backbends are as they sound, done either with support or without.
- Inverted poses. These include handstands to headstands with all sorts of variations.
No comments:
Post a Comment