Category: Yoga

International Yog Festival 2019 Vinyasa with Yogini Mimi At the end of each of my classes, I have the habit of singing “It’s a beautiful day!” Today lived up to the song. I had a wonderful experience teaching a Vinyasa class at the International Yog Festival, organized by the Government of India, Garhwal Mandal Vikas Nigam (GMVN). The participants were enthusiastic, warm and friendly, eager to take part in the activities; and came from all over India and the world. There were bus loads of students from Maharastra, Garwal, Delhi, and participants from Rishikesh, Dehradun, Israel, Canada, Philippines, Australia. The staff was accommodating and provided the teachers with a yoga mat and gift bag with a bunch of goodies, among them a copper water bottle emblazoned with the IYF 2019…

Pranayama, loosely translated, means breathing techniques; and, is one of the eight limbs of yoga that sage, Patanjali, explains in the Yoga Sutras, written circa 150 BC.Pranayama is comprised of two root words: prana (vital energy or life force) and ayama (extension or expansion). Pranayama, therefore, means to extend the vital energy. Pranayama provides a way to activate the life force and expand it beyond one’s normal limitations to attain a higher state of vibration.Through a series of breath retentions, known as kumbhaka, pranayama can be described as a method of voluntary hypoventilation, which allows us to normalize our breathing by normalizing the oxygen supplied to brain cells.There are eight distinct varieties of pranayama practices discussed in Hatha Yoga Pradipika to control one’s breathing. These eight pranayama varieties differ based on how kumbhaka is incorporated into…