Yoga

Recently, The New York Times published a piece on How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body. I'm not a huge yoga enthusiast, but the practice makes me feel better and fitter, and I am very careful not to overstrain my muscles because of a previous injury.

What experiences have you guys had?

I've only had a sample of yoga, in my gym class in my senior year of high school. Let's just say I'm not exactly adept at it.

I've thought about trying yoga, but I want an excercise program not a religion, and I've never been able to find people who seperate them.

We do it at the wat I go to every so often during meditation classes. I myself do a bit on my own as well for meditative and exercise related purposes. It's very, very easy to meditate during it I've noticed.

Rule of thumb: if it hurts, you're doing it wrong.

Unless you're hideously inflexible in which case pain just seems to be something you have to go through to an extent...GOT TO PUSH BOUNDARIES AND REACH FOR THE STARS (or have someone push you down!).

Like I said, I'm not exactly adept at it. (And I just realized, your avatar's the pi symbol!!)

edited 18th Jan '12 1:03:48 PM by 0dd1

No, if you're hideously inflexible, you alter the poses. (That's what things like straps and blocks are for.) It should be a gentle stretch. If you're getting someone to push you into the pose, you're just begging to tear a muscle or something.

edited 18th Jan '12 1:07:10 PM by troacctid

Damn you dance class and all the pain you put me through...Group stretching was PAIN. But it increased flexibility which is good. Just push a bit past into a point of pain and hold. Do this and other fun things daily. I must improve my flexibility, stamina, and other crap along with my meditative skills. So slightly painful stretching seems to help somewhat.

Though I switch between SLIGHTLY PAINFUL and nice gentle stretching. So then I get the happy gentleness and the satisfaction of knowing that I am improving myself slowly in the flexibility department. Very slowly, but it is improving.

And then it's back to walking. Slow walking.

^The pushing thing was a reference to group stretching in dance class where building up flexibility and stamina through pain was a very normal occurrence. It also seemed to work.

edited 18th Jan '12 1:13:38 PM by Aondeug

In my experience, gyms will usually pay some lip service to serenity and such without ever being overtly religious. Most of the instructors at the studio I go to are perfectly secular about it, although they'll speak in a soft, quasi-spiritual way to get you in the right mood.

Of course, but sometimes injury occurs seemingly suddenly, due to overstretching, and unless you're a specialist, you wouldn't have noticed the signs.

I should have gotten my accredation when I had the chance, but I had to move.

Yoga, which technically just means "discipline" comes from the Sanskrit "Jogi". Yoga as most people know it is really called Hatha Yoga and is one of four broad categories of discipline to lead to Moksha in the Hindu tradition called Raja Yoga or "body discipline". You are supposed to be using your body as a conduit to release from Samsara, or Rebirth.

If you have a good teacher who knows their stuff and knows your specific needs/issues then it is very effective and helpful.

Yoga is like any other strenuous workout program. It's not for everyone, and most people just jump in thinking that it's so easy and they are stupid and hurt themselves. I've also had experience with people going because they want to heal from an injury but they don't tell the instructor about it, so they end up hurting themselves more. You also have to be careful because Yoga is so known but also unknown.

Any registered instructor should be able to trace the lineage of their instruction at least four steps back. It's just like finding a good martial arts instructor. If you don't find someone who really knows their stuff instead of some new age, ignorant, goofball, then you can get hurt.