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The Yoga Practice Guide

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Yoga is not only an extremely popular form of exercise, but depending on the form you practice, can be exciting or calming, social or meditative, energizing or relaxing. No matter which of these best describes your yoga class, here are a few tips to help you get the most out of every class you attend.

* Go to yoga class with an empty stomach. Yoga is full bending, twisting, lengthening, stretching, and strength moves. Eating a big dinner before that kind of movement could result in you cramping up or feeling nauseous and having to leave the class or not participate as fully as you'd like.

* Communicate with your yoga instructor. If you have a bad back or a sprained ankle, let your instructor know before class. She or he will offer you adjusted versions of poses or give you a nod when you should skip a pose that could make your condition worse.

* Leave your cell phones and pagers outside. Don't just put them on silent mode, but literally keep them in the car. This is not only a favor to your classmates and their focus, but your mind should be focused only on yoga and not concerned with whether not someone is trying to contact you about work or spilled juice on the living room carpet.

* Don't be late and don't leave early. This disrupts the instructor's train of thought and the concentration of others in the class. Also, you certainly won't get everything you can out of your hour if your hour is cut to 50 minutes before you've even begun.

* Be respectful of others in the class. This means keeping your voice down when you talk to others and in general, keeping conversation to a minimum. Bring your own towel or yoga mat if you need to and make sure that you are clean and not wearing any perfumes or strong scents. If props are used, make sure that you put yours away when you're finished and by all means, leave them there for the next class.

The Yoga Practice Guide

Why should the concept of surrender to a higher power be a potential source of conflict? If you look at the principle closely, this is to put your faith and trust in a higher power's hands. At the same time, there is a problem with describing what that higher power is.

Humans have struggled with the concept of a higher power since the beginning. There are no shortage of names for The Great Spirit, The Divine, The Father, God, Allah, Yahweh, and Brahman. We have all heard many more names, and there are many religions to complement our variety of beliefs.

Yet, putting our trust into the hands of God is not a call to exterminate every person who does not agree with our religious beliefs. Intolerance and fundamentalism have been a "tribal minded" curse on humankind since the beginning.

If we observe the social behavior of chimpanzees, we can look back into a "window of time." We can observe primal behavior and the chimpanzee's simplistic approach to tribal life. Although they appear peaceful, sometimes chimpanzees hunt other monkeys and kill each other.

Although humans are a unique primate species, we also display a tribal mindset through intolerance and violence toward each other. Human behavior has not completely evolved beyond massive warfare, genocide, and violence.

Realizing this - who is prepared to listen to an "outsider's" concept of God? When we surrender to God, how will we know what God wants us to do? In fact, we know what is right, and what is wrong, but it is very difficult to walk the right path.

If we really want to practice Ishvara Pranidhana, we must practice all of the other Yamas and Niyamas. To live a life of non-harming, honesty, charity, purity, contentment, discipline, and spiritual learning is a difficult path.

To be pure in our thoughts is nearly impossible because everyone has negative thoughts at one time or another. With thousands of thoughts running through our minds, they cannot all be pure and good. Most people do not take action based on fleeting negative thoughts because they live according to a moral code of conduct.

Therefore, we inherently know what is right and what is wrong. If you look into the moral guidelines of societies, from opposite corners of the earth, ethics are very similar.

Ishvara Pranidhana is to live an ethical lifestyle of non-harming, honesty, charity, purity, contentment, and discipline. All we have to do is let God handle the details.

Copyright 2008 - Paul Jerard / Aura Publications

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About Author

Both Stephen Kreutzer & Paul M. Jerard Jr. are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Stephen Kreutzer has sinced written about articles on various topics from Computers and The Internet, Women and Tax Software. Stephen Kreutzer is a freelance publisher based in Cupertino, California. He publishes articles and reports in various ezines and provides yoga tips on

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