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Yoga is a type of body sculpting that can be done at home, or at the gym.

For best results, use a book or a video so you can see and watch the poses as they happen. The correct stance, the correct way to hold your body is going to make all the difference in the toning of your body. As with all types of exercise, there are beginner levels and upper levels – always look for books and tapes that fit your personal levels of fitness.

Before starting any exercise routine, you should stretch out on the floor. Stretching your muscles will help you to avoid any injuries while you are performing yoga.

The toning of your body can cause strains and pulled muscles if you are not careful to stretch and warm up your muscles before starting your routine for the day. Stretching takes just a few seconds and will save you pain in the long run.

Think about what your body is telling you. If you feel that you are too tired after a yoga routine, perhaps you should stay at the beginner levels a little longer. Yoga is going to tone and strengthen your body. If your body is not in tune, if it is not toned, you will find upper levels much more difficult to accomplish. Use lower levels of yoga until you feel completely comfortable with all the positions that you are undertaking.

One simple yoga practice is the act of sitting at the edge of your chair with your back held straight. If you do put your arms up on the desk, remember that your back position is really important. Sit with your back straight and your legs out in front of you, and your feet flat on the floor. This will be difficult for the first few minutes, but as you continue practicing over a few days, you will be able to sit better, longer, and your back will be much stronger for it.

Exercising in the home can be done in the living room, or in the basement, even in your own bedroom. What you need is a space that is about five foot square so you have a fair bit of room to move around without bumping into furniture. You can easily find space in your home by comparing what furniture you have in what area, and then putting a mat or a carpet down on the area for your comfort.

If you are going on holiday, you can use the gym or the exercise room in the hotel as an area to perform your yoga. Virtually all gyms will have a television and a vcr or dvd player. If you find a time when others are performing yoga, this will help you in keeping to your schedule. You can use the dvd or vcr player to insert your tapes and get busy performing your exercise routine.

And there you have it: I hope that this article has given you some of the information you need to start yoga.

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Yoga aims to bring together the mind, the body and the spirits. People that practice yoga view that the mind and body are one and that if given the right tools, it can find harmony and find a way to heal. Practicing yoga is then considered to be a form of therapy. Awareness of posture and patterns of movement, flexibility and relaxation are only a few of the things that can be achieved with the practice. To feel fit, be more energetic, be happier and more at peace are only some of the reasons why people choose to practice yoga.

Yoga dates back to thousands of years of practice, consisting of ancient theories, observations and principles about the connection between mind and body that are now proven by modern day medicine. Research has proven that there are a lot of health benefits, whether physiological, psychological or biochemical, that can be obtained through the practice of yoga.

Some of the physiological benefits include a decrease in pulse rate, respiratory rate and blood pressure which in other words would mean that the cardiovascular and respiratory efficiencies increase which can help in the increase of immunity. Bodily functions like gastrointestinal, endocrine and excretory either normalizes or improves which can help in the normalization of weight. Musculoskeletal flexibility and joint range of motion increase which can help in the improvement of posture, dexterity, balance and the integrated functioning of body parts. In essence, gaining all of that can help decrease any pains in the joints or muscles. With the practice of yoga, endurance, energy level and even eye-hand coordination improves. Weight can also normalize.

The psychological benefits of yoga include the increased awareness of somatic and kinesthetic waves, improvement of mood and subjective well-being which subsequently increases social adjustment. With a calmer mind, concentration, memory, attention and learning efficiency can also improve.

The biochemical benefits of yoga are effects of some of the physiological benefits. Levels of glucose, sodium, bad cholesterol and triglycerides decrease while levels of good cholesterol, cholinesterase, ATP, hemoglobin, vitamin C and serum protein increase. These changes are all beneficial for a healthier body.

Apart from all of this, the benefits of yoga have been compared versus that of the benefits of regular exercise. With the slow dynamic and static movements of yoga, there is a lower risk of injury to muscles and ligaments as opposed to regular exercise routines due to the lesser effort and relaxed way of movement which subsequently makes for better energizing since breathing is not taxed. There is also a more balanced activity of opposing muscle groups, thus being able to gain a normalized muscle tone instead of getting bulky.

Yoga does not need to be for people that are extremely flexible. It can be for people that are looking to improve on their flexibility or other areas of their physical or mental health. With these many benefits, its no wonder why yoga has been a successful practice for thousands of years.

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As recently as a century ago, when the average life expectancy throughout the Western world was less than forty years, people gave little thought to keeping fit. Life was simply not long enough. The few men and women who lived into their eighties and nineties were thought old souls of whom it was said that they were so mean nothing would kill them.

Today the picture has changed. On the one hand, science and medicine have combined to lessen the hazards to which we are exposed. Plagues have been wiped out. Anti-biotics and other miracle drugs are conquering diseases long considered incurable. Surgery is capable of life-saving magic. Our life expectancy has very nearly doubled and continues to rise.

On the other hand, we have acquired an entirely new set of problems. Even as the years of our lives stretch out longer, existence becomes infinitely more complex. By its very nature, twentieth century civilization makes this inevitable. The Atomic Age is hardly a relaxed age. We circle the globe in a matter of hours, we talk of trips to the moon as the reality of tomorrow – but we also know that tomorrow’s wars, unless prevented, will be on a scale to wipe out continents.

On the personal level, our urban civilization brings with it tensions virtually unknown in our grandparents’ time. We tend to live on the run, geared to split-second timing, to noise, to newscasts every hour on the hour, to phones jangling and cars honking, subway trains, deadlines and keeping up with the Joneses and seldom sufficient rest, relaxation or sleep. None of this is conducive to peace of mind. As for our physical conditions, as fast as the human body is enabled, through technical advances, to last longer, it falls prey to a new, totally different roster of ills.

Look around you and compare the medical picture with what it once was: Smallpox has all but vanished, tuberculosis is rapidly being wiped out, pneumonia rarely kills, and death in childbirth is no longer something to fear. But now it is the diseases of old age and of tension that are the evening. Today heart trouble is the number one killer. Ulcers, arthritis, allergies, and allergic respiratory disturbances – not to mention mental illness of every variety – plague the young, the not-so-young and the elderly.

But since the world we live in is the only world we have, and since we cannot individually do much to change it, the next best thing is to learn to adjust to it with some degree of comfort. True, we cannot very well go bucolic, escape to some Thoreauvian Walden, some Shangri-La of our own making. Nor can we shut our eyes, close our ears, and turn off our emotions enabling us to remain impervious to the life around us. We probably wouldn’t want to do that even if we could, for whom but a born hater would deliberately choose indifference to those very qualities which make us warm human beings?

Fortunately there does exist an answer to this problem. It is possible for anyone who will only take the trouble to learn to live serenely in our Age of Anxiety. Within easy reach is a key to living out one’s allotted span of three-score-and-ten or more, enjoying all the while a vigorous mind in a vigorous body, both of them functioning to the very limit of their potential. The key to such well-being is Yoga.

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Hatha Yoga can help you towards better health and calm your mind so that you can solve your personal problems, but I do want to stress two facts.

Firstly, that the aim of Hatha Yoga is not the acquisition of a superior muscular physique but the discipline and the purification of the body that we may forget our earthly shell enough to reach a state of heightened awareness through the control of the mind.

Secondly, that Hatha Yoga is neither the easiest nor the fastest system of physical culture to show results. Why then Hatha Yoga for your health? Why not weight lifting, club swinging, athletics, or even dancing? All of these will improve the circulation, the figure, and strengthen the muscles. What has Hatha Yoga to offer in addition to this? Simply that Hatha will provide an extraordinary control over the body and awaken the mind and spirit, the higher self if you like, as no purely physical culture system could possibly do.

Also, the above-mentioned activities are beyond the capabilities of a large section of the community, the aged, the infirm, the lame, and the physically frail. Those activities involve violent movement whereas Hatha Yoga is essentially a static science. Basically one gets into a Yoga posture or asana and remains so for as long as possible. Stress is laid on pressure of certain organs, glands and muscles rather than on movement.

When movement is necessary in Hatha Yoga it is always gentle and graceful, therefore anyone can benefit from Yoga regardless of age, sex, race, walk of life, or religious belief. It is a universal science. It can lead to more abundant living and a new awareness of higher things through ridding your body of the pains and diseases which drag your mind back into the earth when it wants to wing its way upwards towards the light.

It is reported that Lord Buddha, whose philosophy is based on the Veda from which Yoga was evolved, said that the first step on the way to spiritual freedom and salvation is perfect physical health. So if you are drawn towards Hatha Yoga do not be put off by others who might tell you that you will never reach a state of heightened consciousness by turning your body upside down or sitting in various leg-breaking postures. Tell them that if the blood is impure then the brain, the nerves, the psycho-spiritual life, yes even the thoughts, cannot but be affected. Tell them that a man cannot control his mind until his body is made pure and healthy.

You will find that Yoga knowledge, once accumulated, will begin to influence and help you in your daily life, whoever you may be. It will gradually invade every part of your life, from your attitude towards your fellow men to the way you sleep, breathe, think, and even eat. Did I say eat? What has eating to do with Hatha Yoga? It has very much to do with it. It is a strange fact that Yoga’s doctrine of non-violence very soon influences even the most enthusiastic meat-eater to think again about a vegetarian diet. As the senses become more acute through the practice of Yoga, one begins to experience distaste for all forms of killing and violence.

Meat becomes unpalatable because many devotees of Yoga are actually able to see the astral bodies of the slaughtered animals as they tuck into a thick, juicy steak. Their senses gradually becoming awakened, they think on things that never occurred to them before and in the case of slaughtering helpless animals they begin to understand and revolt at the hideous practices that go on in abattoirs all over the world. So you have been warned! You, who are reading a book on Yoga for perhaps the first time in your life, you who have eaten and enjoyed meat and fish for many years and intend to go on doing so, you will suddenly discover, if you practice Yoga, that meat is not quite so delicious as you hitherto thought and that other foods, cheese and vegetables and fruits, taste much better.

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Yoga has become a very popular form of physical activity for many individuals in Dallas, Houston and elsewhere in Texas. It involves both physical and mental balance and is good for strengthening your “inner core.” It’s an activity that individuals can take at their own pace. In other words, it can be as light or as vigorous as you want to make it.

Where did Yoga come from?
The practice of Yoga is thousands of years old. The word itself means “union” in Sanskrit, which was the language of ancient India, where Yoga originated. So quite literally, you can say Yoga is the union that happens between mind, body and spirit.

But Yoga is probably more accurately described in Sanskrit as “asana,” which is the practice of physical postures or poses. And yet, Asana is only one of the eight types of Yoga. The majority of Yoga practices involve mental and spiritual well being, rather than physical activity. However, the words asana and Yoga have become almost synonymous these days.

Yoga poses.
Many people believe that Yoga is just about stretching. And yes, stretching is involved, but Yoga is really more about creating balance in the body by developing both strength and flexibility, which is done through the performance of poses.

Each pose has specific physical benefits. And the poses, when done quickly in succession, create heat the body through movement, or, when done more slowly, increase stamina and perfect the alignment of the pose. There is an ideal way that each pose should be done, although not all yogis (Yoga masters) will agree on what is the perfect pose.

Yoga practice makes for perfect poses.
When you begin a Yoga class, you might hear your teacher refer to “your practice,” which means your individual experience with Yoga over time. And with Yoga, your practice should always be evolving and changing, to make sure it never gets boring.

Many yogis will tell you that although Yoga poses do not change, your relationship to them will. Believe it or not, Yoga is for everyone, even if you don’t think you’re very flexible or very strong. This will all develop over time.

Thinking of Yoga as “your practice” also encourages the noncompetitive spirit of Yoga. One of the most difficult, yet most freeing things about Yoga is letting go of your ego and accepting that no one is better than anyone else. Everyone who practices Yoga is just doing his or her best.

Where everyone gets bent.
Yoga classes in Dallas, Houston and throughout Texas may also include instruction on breathing, call and response chanting, meditation, or even an inspirational reading by the teacher. This will depend on the individual teacher and the type of Yoga in which they have trained. Usually, Yoga classes held at a gym will be more focused on the physical benefits of Yoga, while classes at a Yoga center have a tendency to focus on the practice’s spiritual side. Some individuals find that the physical practice of Yoga becomes a gateway to a spiritual exploration. Others just enjoy a wonderful low-impact workout that makes them feel great inside and out. Whatever type of Yoga you’re attracted to, you should be able to find a class that suits your style.

The Dos and Don’ts of Yoga.
DON’T:
- Eat a big meal right before class. Eat lightly a few hours prior class.
- Drink water during class, but have some before and after.
- Wear shoes or socks during class.

DO:
- Review Yoga etiquette to feel comfortable when entering an unfamiliar situation.
- Tell the teacher it’s your first class. Don’t worry. You won’t be alone.
- Ask the teacher for help.
- Look around and see what other students are doing. This helps if the teacher doesn’t demonstrate every pose. Be careful of watching advanced students. Don’t compare yourself to them.
- Familiarize yourself with some beginners’ Yoga poses prior to taking your first class.
- Come back in a few days for the next class.

Pat Carpenter writes for Precedent Insurance Company. Precedent puts a new spin on health insurance. Learn more at http://www.precedent.com