What Doctors Should Know about Yoga
Yoga is being studied more and more, following an explosion of interest in it over the last ten years. As a result, experienced yoga...
Celebrating Life with Yoga: A Metaphorical Journey
By: Virginia Iversen, M.Ed. What can Yoga Teach us about celebrating life? For the past twenty-five years, I have been diligently practicing Yoga several times a week. I began to practice Yoga when I developed severe lower back problems in my mid-twenties. One day, as I was walking across a city park in Denver, the [...]
Teaching Inversions For Mood Elevation
By: Virginia Iversen, M.Ed. Is there a method for teaching inversions and raise the mood of an entire class? Teaching mood elevating Yoga classes, which address and ameliorate the underlying causes of anxiety and depression, are a wonderful way to uplift your Yoga students and serve your community. In addition, gearing some of your classes [...]
Nurturing Harmony in a Yoga Class: Individual Considerations
By: Virginia Iversen, M.Ed How do we go about nurturing harmony in our Yoga classes? According to BKS Iyengar, who was one of the most well loved and highly respected Yoga teachers of our time, “Health is a state of complete harmony of the body, mind and spirit.” He goes on to state that, “ [...]
Teaching Balancing Holiday Yoga Classes: Ananda Balasana
By: Virginia Iversen, M.Ed. How can you teaching balancing holiday Yoga classes? Once again, the holiday season is upon us. Many homes are now displaying brightly colored Christmas lights and glowing Menorahs in honor of the holiday season. At this time of the year, many Yoga practitioners find themselves challenged to maintain their practice, as [...]
Creating Healthy Habits with Yoga: Regularity
By: Virginia Iversen, M.Ed Creating healthy habits can be difficult for many of us. Establishing a regular time to practice Yoga is one of the primary keys to benefiting fully from this ancient system of physical postures, pranayama exercises and meditation techniques. For instance, engaging in a thirty-minute practice several times a week, or even daily, will benefit [...]
Teaching Yoga Classes and Effective Themes
By: Virginia Iversen, M.Ed. Choosing effective themes for teaching Yoga classes is one of the subtle nuances of teaching that will help to keep your classes fresh and engaging. Sequencing a series of physical postures, breathing exercises and meditation techniques that nurtures your students’ well being, in a balanced and effective manner, is similar to [...]
Yoga Interventions for Energetic Alignment Following an MRI
An MRI works by a strong magnetic field being created by passing an electric current through the wire loops. While this is happening, other coils in the magnet send and receive radio waves. This triggers protons in the body to align themselves. Once aligned, radio waves are absorbed by the protons, which stimulate spinning. Energy is released after "exciting" the molecules, which in turn emits energy signals that are picked up by the coil. This information is then sent to a computer, which processes all the signals and generates it into an image. The final product is a 3-D image representation of the area being examined.
Guidelines for Pregnant Yoga students
There are many contraindications for practicing Yoga during pregnancy, and all Yoga teachers and students should be aware of them. Pregnant students should have formal doctor’s permission for “Prenatal Yoga”. If you are teaching pregnant students without their doctor’s approval and you are not a certified prenatal Yoga instructor, you are “playing with fire.” It [...]
Yoga Therapy – Considerations on Milking the Next ”Cash Cow”
When recommending a specific YT intervention, a comprehensive knowledge of modern disease pathologies, allopathic interventions and side effects of treatment is a must before planning and subsequent evaluation. This is incorporated into modern YT training but with a strong emphasis on time, and the content may be less or contain shorter time intervals to digest than required. Remember for many health professionals the understanding of these processes takes years to digest, first as part of a degree programme and then on the coal face. If planning does not come from a sound theoretical and practical knowledge base, then planned interventions may prove fruitless.