Simple, accessible, and life affirming: these are the gentlest of Hatha yoga exercises, easy-to-do poses and postures that heal the body and nurture the spirit. Every move shown in these appealing photographs becomes a tool for self-empowerment, reducing stress, and increasing receptivity to wellness. The various components of a comprehensive program are offered, with all the elements working together to create a total healing practice. Start with positive affirmations, visualizations, and journal writing that will become part of your daily yoga lifestyle. Take instruction in proper breathing, which will bring energy and calm to the mind. Try the 35 basic postures, all with specific guidelines and photos, and follow with deep relaxation and meditation. To make the yoga more effective, there's additional advice on eating well; special counsel for those recovering from injury and illness; techniques for self-massage; and ideas for combining yoga and nature.
Relax, relieve, restore—a beginner's path to healing with restorative yoga Recovering from an injury, an illness, or just interested in a natural way to relax? Restorative yoga focuses on simple poses in supported positions, encouraging deep relaxation so your mind can enter a peaceful, meditative state. Dive in with an introduction to the spiritual origins and rejuvenating benefits of restorative yoga. Find the right position to reduce lower back pain, relieve stress, breathe easier, improve your energy, and even prepare your body for childbirth—all with illustrated instructions to get you into and out of each pose safely and comfortably. Restorative Yoga for Beginners includes: Take it easy—Make restorative yoga a lasting practice with simple suggestions on what to wear and what props you'll need. Strike a pose—Ease into 36 essential restorative yoga poses, including labels with the therapeutic benefits of each—and extend your practice for deeper healing with 20 sequences. Breath of fresh air—Refresh your vital energy (prana) with breathing exercises and meditations designed to improve your digestion, heart rate, and more. Restorative Yoga for Beginners offers the guidance to begin your yoga practice and bring harmony to your quality of life—one gentle stretch at a time.
Presenting ways in which Restorative Yoga can contribute to healing emotional wounds, this book invites yoga teachers, therapists and practitioners to consider the psychological impact of ethnic and race-based stress and trauma. It aids in the process of uncovering, examining, and healing one's own emotional wounds and offers insight into avoiding wounding or re-wounding others. The book describes how race-based traumatic stress differs from PTSD and why a more targeted approach to treatment is necessary, as well as what can trigger it. It also considers the implications of an increasingly racially and ethnically diverse and global yoga community, as well as the importance of creating conscious yoga communities of support and connection, where issues of race and ethnicity are discussed openly, non-defensively and constructively. By providing a therapeutic structure that assists those directly and indirectly impacted by ethnic and race-based stress and trauma, Restorative Yoga for Ethnic and Race-Based Stress and Trauma provides valuable tools for aiding in the processing of stressful experiences and in trauma recovery.
Many of us have experienced a traumatic event in our lives, whether in childhood or adulthood. This trauma may be emotional, or it may cause intense physical pain. In some cases, it can cause both. Studies have shown that compassion and mindfulness based interventions can help people suffering from trauma to experience less physical and emotional pain in their daily lives. What’s more, many long-time yoga and meditation teachers have a history of teaching these practices to their clients with successful outcomes. In Yoga for Emotional Trauma, a psychotherapist and a meditation teacher present a yogic approach to emotional trauma by instructing you to apply mindful awareness, breathing, yoga postures, and mantras to their emotional and physical pain. In the book, you’ll learn why yoga is so effective for dealing with emotional trauma. Yoga and mindfulness can transform trauma into joy. It has done so for countless millions. The practices outlined in this book will teach you how to use and adapt the ancient practices and meditations of yoga for your own healing. Drawing upon practices and philosophy from eastern wisdom traditions, and texts such as the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the Bagavad Gita, and the Buddhist Sutras, this book will take you on a journey into wholeness, one that embraces body, mind and spirit. Inside, you will discover the lasting effect that trauma has on physiology and how yoga resets the nervous system. Combining yogic principles, gentle yoga postures, and mindfulness practices, this book filled with sustenance and practical support that will move you along your own healing path.
Yoga teachers Donna Farhi and Leila Stuart have joined forces to produce a definitive guide to centering the body. With over five decades of combined experience in working with people of all ages, and from diverse movement disciplines, Farhi and Stuart share their gentle, yet incredibly effective approach to balancing body structure for optimal pain-free movement. This book demystifies the catch phrase “core strength” and teaches you how to center your pelvis and find optimal spinal alignment as the foundation for true core stability. Farhi and Stuart begin by walking you through the anatomy of the deepest core muscle in the body: the supportive psoas. Using easy to understand terms, combined with beautiful illustrations, they unravel the complexities of the psoas to reveal its function as an extraordinary unifying structure for the entire body. When these deep core muscles are tight, weak, or unbalanced, the position of the pelvis and spine is thrown off-center. Poor posture, back pain, and discomfort in lying down, sitting, standing, and walking can result. In a step-by-step protocol, you’ll learn how to release, lengthen, balance, and move again with ease. As deeply held tension is resolved, this work can help you to feel more grounded, mentally focused, emotionally calm, and more able to stay connected to yourself and to others. Trialed over decades of working with hundreds of Yoga students, Farhi and Stuart share simple and accessible techniques that realign the body and pave the way toward whole body rebalancing. Exercises incorporating the Muscle Release Ball can be practiced in as little as 5-10 minutes, often with immediate and remarkable reduction of chronic muscle tension and back compression. With this foundation work under your belt, later Chapters in the book help you to learn how to engage and strengthen your core and apply these principles to the practice of basic Yoga postures and everyday movement. Pathways to a Centered Body is an invaluable guide for Yoga and Pilates students and teachers, personal trainers, dancers and athletes, as well as physical therapists, chiropractors, and somatic practitioners, indeed, anyone who wants to live in their body with greater ease, grace, and stability. With over 108 color photographs accompanied by concise instructions, this manual will be a requisite text for movement training programs worldwide.
The sequel to the bestselling Yoga Deck from Olivia H. Miller. This handy deck of cards provides detailed instructions for a variety of yoga poses that help alleviate and prevent pain and enhance overall wellbeing. Whether you're a yoga novice interested in pain prevention and relief, or if yoga is a part of your everyday routine, these handy cards can help you take control of your health. Each card has an illustration of a pose, step-by-step instructions, and options for more or less of a challenge—ensuring that people of different ages and physical abilities can safely use the deck and reap all the benefits. The tri-fold introduction card includes a table of contents, suggestions for using the deck, a brief explanation about the benefits of yoga, and suggested sequences. • Shows how to perform 60 yoga poses, meditations, and recommended sequences to alleviate pain, prevent chronic conditions, and boost overall well-being • Contains illustrations for more than 50 new poses • Each illustrated card includes step-by-step instructions, a list of benefits, and an affirmation Fans of The Yoga Deck: 50 Poses & Meditations for Body, Mind, & Spirit, The Stretch Deck: 50 Stretches, and The Chakra Deck: 50 Cards for Promoting Spiritual and Physical Health (Relax and Rejuvenate) will love this card deck. • Idea cards for anyone who wants an alternative way to alleviate pain • Great gift for yoga enthusiasts of all ages and levels • Perfect, portable deck for those practicing self-care and wellness rituals
It's no secret that yoga increases muscular flexibility and strength, but you may not know that yoga is a proven treatment for back pain, knee pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, and other chronic pain conditions. Yoga also helps to ease the stress, anxiety, and depression that can create and reinforce pain, making you feel more comfortable in both your mind and your body. Written by a yoga instructor and former chronic pain sufferer, Yoga for Pain Relief is packed with gentle postures and practical strategies for ending pain. This complete mind-body tool kit for healing also includes deep relaxation practices drawn from the yogic tradition and psychological techniques for helping you make peace with your body and dissolve pain. As the ancient practice of yoga releases the hold that chronic pain has over your life, you will begin to feel more like yourself again.
Using yoga to manage the challenges of cancer and its treatment • Explains how to create a safe home yoga practice that addresses the specific physical needs, risks, and emotions of cancer patients and survivors • Includes 53 yoga poses and 9 practice sequences that use movement and breathing to reduce and manage treatment side effects • Reveals how current research supports the physical and psychological benefits of yoga to aid recovery and reduce risk of recurrence • Written by a cancer survivor and certified yoga teacher For those faced with a cancer diagnosis and the journey of doctor-led surgery and treatments, yoga offers a way to regain control of your body and take an active part in your recovery and long-term health. In this easy-to-follow illustrated guide, yoga teacher and cancer survivor Tari Prinster presents 53 traditional yoga poses that are adapted for all levels of ability and cancer challenges. She then applies the movements and breathwork of these poses to address 10 common side effects and offers 9 practice sequences for varying stages of treatment and recovery. Sharing her own story as well as those of cancer survivors and yoga teachers with whom she has worked, Prinster explores how yoga can be used to strengthen the immune system, rebuild bone density, avoid and manage lymphedema, decrease anxiety, detoxify the body, reduce pain, and help the body repair damage caused by the cancer and conventional treatments. She reveals the research that supports the physical and psychological benefits of yoga as an aid to recovery and in reducing the risk of recurrence. Explaining how yoga must be tailored to each survivor, Prinster gives you the tools to create a safe home yoga practice, one that addresses your abilities, energy level, and overall health goals. Through personal stories, well-illustrated poses, and sample practices for beginners as well as experienced yoga practitioners, Prinster empowers survivors to create their own wellness plan in order to regain their independence and their physical and emotional well-being.
Stretch the mindful way with this all-encompassing guide to Yin Yoga. In today's fast-paced world it's easy to lose the balance in our lives and the connection with our bodies. DK believes it's time to change that! Yin Yoga offers a remedy to the stress and hustle of everyday life. Heard of the term but don't know where to begin? No worries, we've got you covered! The same way that Yin balances Yang in ancient philosophies, the slower yin-style yoga featured in this yoga book offers an alternative to the faster more active forms of yoga. Instead, Yin yoga concentrates on holding and breathing through floor-based poses, awarding you with the time and space to clear both your mind and body. Dive straight in to discover: -Over 50 poses focusing on specific areas of the body -Each yoga pose is demonstrated with photographic step-by-step detail -20 sequences linking the poses, tailored to your physical and emotional targets -Introductory spreads covering the basic techniques behind Yin Yoga The first full-coloured step-by-step Yin yoga book on the market, this all-encompassing yoga guide is a must-have volume for individuals seeking a mindful and meditative approach to their yoga practice, as well as beginners and older yoga practitioners who are looking to adopt a slower-paced approach to yoga. You can explore gentle variations to much-loved yoga poses, from the comfort of your own home. Every exercise utilises the essential elements of Yin yoga to ensure you can gain all the physical and mental benefits, and will also allow you to perform all 20 sequences, which combine over 50 different poses into one singular experience and focus on specific health benefits each pose has on your body. For years, books on yoga have asked readers to bend over backwards (literally!) to conform to their physical demands. At DK, we believe it's time to change that! Why not allow for readers to demand that yoga conform to their individual needs instead? This is gentle yoga for the mind, body and soul. A must-have volume for those who want to take up Yoga but don't know where to begin, or simply those seeking to start a gentle low-impact exercise whilst encouraging mindfulness, Yin Yoga can be tailored to your individual fitness needs, so you make the most out of your poses! Why not stretch yourself, literally, this New Year and try something new? Perhaps your mind, body and soul will thank you!
