quickfityoga - Your Bikram Yoga Tips and Techniques Newsletter

Dear Yogini/Yogi,

This issue includes...

1) What's Heat Got To Do With Yoga Anyway?

2) Bikram Yoga Can Reflect Much More Than You See In The Mirror!

3) Tips & Techniques: Did You Know...?

Feature Article

What's Heat Got To Do With Yoga Anyway?

Many yogis have heard of Patanjali's Sutras. Often known as the 8 'limbs of yoga', they describe one's path toward achieving enlightenment through yoga. As many of you may already know Yoga Asana is just one of these 8 paths.

In the Western World yoga is commonly equated with just the physical practice or the postures only – the asanas. An asana practice certainly isn't everything but it is a great place to start on your journey towards your self-awareness. Indeed it is the doorway through which many thousands of yogis have sought to deepen their spiritual awareness.

These days it seems that possibly too much attention is paid to one's external appearances. A great question to ask is: are we spending enough time on our inner selves to find calm and peace, and a better functioning body and a healthier mind?

Yoga cleanses, working on the inside and the outside of our bodies purging the body of impure elements of the body (toxins) and mind (unhealthy self-talk). A veritable cleanse of the cells, organs and the mind!

According to the yoga sutras we can arrive at purity of body, mind and spirit through heat or 'tapas'. This tapas helps you forge a new path to an improved you! You will definitely generate this tapas in your yoga practice by the movements of the body.

Bikram Yoga adds extra dimensions. The most important is the addition of external heat. In our experience this definitely hastens the process and gets you results fast, and arguably faster than any other style of yoga. And not just the physical stuff like toning and musculature (you know, the results that people look for in a gymnasium).

Another important difference with Bikram Yoga is the use of full length mirrors along at least one wall of the studio providing another sometimes confronting and other times welcoming element to your practice.

These 2 challenging elements can help you find yourself embarking on the unfamiliar to help you create a new you. More efficiently than ever you will come face to face with the difference between what you want and what your current self is allowing you to create. Thus heat is created in a metaphysical realm – or tapas – and hey presto!

Feature Article

Bikram Yoga Can Reflect Much More Than You See In The Mirror!

Your yoga practice and your responses to every stimulus, or emotion, or movement is a microcosm of your world outside the yoga room. No matter what style of yoga you practise there is always the chance that you will face doubts and personal conflicts which may interfere.

The trick is to take a step back, rather than react as if there is danger and perhaps back off or change tack. Because you are in a safe environment you can take on a much more objective view and learn something about yourself 'everyday'.

Some days you will find yourself asking: Do I really like this style of yoga, is it really for me? Why do I put myself through this challenge?

The challenge right then at this crossroads is to observe yourself:

• Are you seeking the door and a way to escape?
• Are you now on a quest to once again change style to something fresh and new, fooling yourself that you need a new challenge rather than sticking with it and deepening the learnings in a more profound way?
• Or do you have the courage to find a lesson in the challenge by examination of your own process or thoughts or feelings or changes in your own body?

Here is a helpful pointer to help you learn the most from these moments:

• Start to notice the way things are, your breathing, the position of your body in space - this is the beginning of keeping yourself 'in the present moment'.
• Do this every time you start thinking of the 'escape route'.

Every day in the yoga studio or in your practice may come a time where the discomfort of discovery may challenge your ability to withstand the 'heat' or the offerings that your practice is presenting you. Embrace the challenge, breathe, enjoy the growth. Maybe not even right at that moment.

Notice what you notice about your own reactions. In effect you attempt to take a step away from your normal reactions. Emerge cleansed. As with many things, not all changes are obvious as they happen.

Often it may take weeks or months to notice that something that used to bother you does not anymore. Maybe you don't even notice until someone you know notices the changes. Maybe like me you started going and without realising it found your body was just taking you back to explore more.

Tips & Techniques

Did You Know...?

That your body tends to respond to physical or emotional or mental stress in exactly the same way. So learning to breathe through the safe 'stresses' in the yoga room and to learn about your responses or reactions to stressful stimuli will see you emerge with a greater understanding of you.

In other words, learn to breathe calmly, focus and concentrate through a demanding Bikram Yoga practice and when you are confronted with stress in the real world you will find that your experience of stress is attenuated, what used to stress you just doesn't seem to bother you anymore.

Practically speaking, you will find that you have the headspace to respond with measured calm and a greater awareness, perhaps without the feeling of being a slave to your own reactions.

We live in a world geared towards FAST reactions. We have fast computers, everyone is contactable all the time, everything has the appearance of being more urgent.

What we appear to be losing is the ability to sit, be calm, find peace and just be. It is little wonder that most of us at one time or another feels stressed and unbalanced.

Namaste
(Sanskrit for "I honour or bow to the divine in you")
The quickfityoga team