Posture Series – Uttanasana & Pascimottanasana
Posture Series #1 – Tadasana
By Nora Reda
The Yogic Advantage for Body Builders
By Alexis Louise Reda
In the world of body building likely due to the ‘external’ nature of the process and culture surrounding their sport, many amateur athletes lack a deeper awareness required during training. This very awareness which I will be discussing here, that I have had to relinquish from yoga and apply in the weight room due to chronic pain, has anecdotally, turned out to dramatically affect adaptive volume progression requirements*.
Bodybuilding is quite a demanding sport. You are required to progressively and systematically overload your body both structurally and overall. To grow muscle and to lose fat, you can’t always go by “how you feel” to sustain progress. As we know from quantum science and emerging research on yoga, very simply, your mental states affect your physical; so as your ‘mental’ subtly gets ‘messed up’ when pushed deeper into a program’s progression set on taking your body to places it doesn’t naturally want to go, intuition becomes somewhat unreliable. Moreover, I’ve realized several yogic-practice integrations that are imperative to being the bodybuilder who is in it for the long-run. Let’s check them out:
Continue reading “The Yogic Advantage for Body Builders”Svadhyaya, The Discovery of Self – A Powerful Yogic Practice
By Nora Reda
In one of the most quoted books on yoga, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the term svadhyaya is put into context in the second chapter (pada), under the term kriyayoga. Kriya means action and so the practice points to eight yogic disciplines that are further organized into three tiers within which the practices come in pairs. The first two tiers encompass spiritual practices (tapas): yama and niyama or ethical disciplines; asana and pranayama or posture and breath. In the second tier there is pratyahara and dharana or the withdrawal of the senses and focus, which fall under self-study or svadhyaya. The third tier is dhyana and samadhi, which are the vehicles to complete surrender of the individual self to the Universal Spirit, or God (Isvara pranidhana).
Continue reading “Svadhyaya, The Discovery of Self – A Powerful Yogic Practice”The First Muscle that Moves You
by Nora Reda
Committing to regular exercise is no children’s play. Or is it? Here is how we could shift our attitudes toward exercise and develop the muscle that moves us every time.
The Joy of Movement
Movement is one of the most innate nature of humans, and every living being. It begs the question then, why we need motivation to move as adults when we are so naturally and joyfully moving as children? What happens to the muscle that moves us in our young age later in life? It sounds so funny to ask this question in a world where we are constantly bombarded with messages about how to motivate ourselves to lead a more active life.
Within this statement lies a clue to the answer. So what logically follows is a movement that is done consciously for the betterment of our physical shape and thus the meaning has changed from movement being done for joy to performing it to reach a certain goal or expectation. There is innately nothing wrong with goals and expectations. However, what this mentality leads to is another thing to insert into our busy schedule. (Read more on training optimality here!)
Shifting our mentality about exercise has to do with changing the meaning associated with movement.
The Genuine Nature of Asana
By Nora Reda
Integration
The practice of yoga doesn’t necessarily start with asana (posture). Physical practice was originally a vehicle that carried the body to a level of agility that enabled the practitioner to sit in meditative posture for extended periods of time. Practice, as a whole, is intended for integrating the movements with the breath and focusing the mind on both of those actions. Instead of focusing merely on a physical performance, the inquisitive practitioner immerses him or herself in the quality of the breath and the qualities of the mind as he or she attempts and maintains the asanas.
The Meaning of “Asana”
According to T.K.V. Desikachar, son of yoga guru Sri Krishnamacharya, the word asana translates as “to sit”, “to stay”, “to be established in a particular position”. Yet practice means to move in a flow-like sequence and, while doing so, be in the moment, moment to moment. This harmony of motion and mind gives yoga asana practice its meditative quality. In other words what we feel in asana is much more important than how we perceive or care how others might perceive what we do on the mat.
Continue reading “The Genuine Nature of Asana”What is Hard Work?
By Alexis Louise Reda
It seems that every day I ask myself this question on some level:
What is hard work?
🤔…
What IS it?
Why should anything be “hard” work?
Why “work”?
WHY?!
I believe in the concept of what I call “Construct”. We create Constructs every day: things and thoughts which we give an arbitrary yet specific meaning to – and I say arbitrary because in each our own realities, we can make anything mean whatever we want to us, even if it rubs against the majority’s typical associated meaning. But some Constructs are so instilled in us because they have been in our heritage for so long, that they are hard to rewire. They are hard to perceive in a different way to our personal liking, and so they influence our “default” perception, whenever we are less than fully aware. These Constructs have long been kept in circulation, regularly agreed upon by the masses of the “Collective” of people within which we live. They are being constantly reinforced, exemplifying a principle called “the majority rules.” “Hard work,” and even “work” alone, are one of these long-held, thus difficult-to-rewire Constructs. Being so, you will likely understand when I say that the cultural connotation of “hard work” is very rough and tough… but since “work” comprises so much of our day, I strongly believe it is counter-productive to hang onto this notion. In daily practice then, operating by the default implications of “hard work” imposes an overdose of restriction, and restriction destroys energy flow, destroying a person’s ability to “work hard” over time.
Counterintuitive? You might think so.
Continue reading “What is Hard Work?”Redefining Holistic Health
By Alexis Louise Reda
Classical holistic health is an approach to healing that comes from using the given (natural) laws and materials of the planet we’re on as healing tools, which recognizes the mind as having a partial role in the healing process. The intention is to reunite the body with the mind.
Continue reading “Redefining Holistic Health”Build-on Series #3 – Flexion & Extension 1
