5. Legs Up The Wall Pose (Viparita Karani )

At the end of the day, especially if your job involves staying on your feet, your feet and ankles can get swollen and tired. This simple pose helps recirculates your blood flow.

• Find an empty space on your wall and place your mat perpendicular to the wall.

• Sit down on the mat and bring your left or right side to the wall as close as possible, so your side body meets the wall.

• Lie back onto mat, and gently place your legs up the wall.

• Relax your arms by your sides.

6. Corpse Pose (Savasana)

Corpse pose is the traditional final resting pose of yoga practice. You can let your breath return to normal in this pose.

• Lie back on the mat.

• Hug your knees in towards your chest tightly and take a deep inhale.

• Exhale and stretch your legs out away from you while keeping your tailbone grounded on the mat.

• Your feet should be hips width apart and relaxed away from each other, toward the edges of the mat.

• Let your lower back soften and relax. You should not feel any pain or tightness in your lower back.

• Relax your arms at your sides, palms facing upward.

• Check to make sure your shoulders are not hunched, and, if so, relax your shoulders away from your ears.

• Optional: Place a folded towel over your eyes to block out any light.

Ārya Tārā

Ārya Tārā  is an important figure in Buddhism, especially revered in Tibetan Buddhism. She appears as a female bodhisattva in Mahayana Buddhism, and as a female Buddha in Vajrayana Buddhism. 

She is known as the "mother of liberation", and represents the virtues of success in work and achievements.

Tārā is a meditation deity revered by practitioners of the Tibetan branch of Vajrayana Buddhism to develop certain inner qualities and to understand outer, inner and secret teachings such as compassion, kindness, and emptiness. Tārā may more properly be understood as different aspects of the same quality, as bodhisattvas are often considered personifications of Buddhist methods.

Tārā is also known as a saviouress, as a heavenly deity who hears the cries of beings experiencing misery in saṃsāra.

Whether the Tārā figure originated as a Buddhist or Hindu goddess is unclear and remains a source of inquiry among scholars.

Bikram Express

What is Bikram yoga?

Bikram is the name of founder of hot yoga.

He was the first person who introduced hot yoga to the world in the 1970s.

The room for practicing Bikram is heated to 40 degrees and around 50% humidity.

Therefore we call Bikram yoga, HotYoga or original hot yoga.

This type of hot yoga is a series of 26 postures  and two breathing exercises, suitable for all ages and skill levels.

These 26 postures systematically move fresh and oxygenated blood throughout the body.

All the organs, glands, tendons, ligaments, bones, and all the cells of your body, your emotions, your mind and your spirit are involved in this practice.

The heat helps our body to burn fat more effectively and tone the muscular structure.

Sweating also helps elimination of toxins through our skin which is the largest organ of the body.

In Bikram Yoga there are no levels. No matter the physical condition, age or gender.

Hot yoga helps us to have a healthy body, which allows us to be at peace and ready for spiritual growth and the realization of personal happiness.

These postures are designed to provide total health through balance and strengthening of all body systems, with the aim of preventing disease, injury and limiting the effects of aging.

These series of postures combines abilities of concentration, patience, determination and self-control, which lead to increase clarity, increase self-confidence and vitality.

Spring Cleanse

We are celebrating March 20th at Hot Yoga Stavanger.

March 20th is the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere as the day and night are equal in length. This is my favourite time of the year as it brings an exciting energy of growth, renewal, and change, not to forget this time of the year has a great impact on our health as a gentle spring detox can help us to balance our hormones, release toxins, and kickstart our metabolism coming out of the winter months.

In the winter our body just try to preserve and maintain itself but as spring arrives snow melts and new life sprouts up through the earth there is growth and transformation all around us and the nature of our body wants to join this renewal, and therefore this is the best time to start cleansing.

The easiest way to start is to stop eating junk foods and pre made dishes and instead eat more berries and leafy green vegetables. Next to that sweating and regular practice of hot yoga have a critical role in cleansing the body following by drinking plenty of natural vegetables and fruit juice .

If you are experiencing some of these symptoms it means your body needs help with detoxification:

• Headaches

• Bloating

• Sleep disorder

• Acne, eczema or skin rashes

• Gallstones or difficulty digesting fats

• Constipation or diarrheas

• Sensitivity to smells, also known as multiple chemical sensitivity

• Fatigue

• Low sex drive

• Hair thinning or loss

• Poor concentration or memory

• Slow metabolism and weight gain

• Women: Breast tenderness and/or irregular or heavy periods

However we don’t need to wait for these symptoms to arise before doing our first cleanse! Spring is the prime time to start performing the “annual maintenance” through a gentle spring detox.

Hot Yoga & Rehabilitation

Rehabilitation enables partitioners to improve their individual functions in everyday life. This individual functions can be in three different levels of physical, psychological and social. 

Hot Yoga is one of the best tools that can assist individuals to build and rehab their physical , mental and emotional strength. 

Variety of physical movements in the hot environment of studio can easily build our demanding strength and mindfulness meditation during the hot yoga practice strengthening our mental abilities.

Application of hot yoga and breathing exercises gradually changes our lifestyle to a more healthy and positive side. By just these small changes, little stretching, sweating, meditating, eating and drinking healthy.

This is what almost everyone of us need, to let go of all the bad habits that are not serving us anymore and step by step shift to a lifestyle that supports our health and lead us to feel better and better by the time.

Fasting Days Explained

Every 11th day after the full moon and the 11th day after the new moon is called Ekadashi. The human physiology follow the cyclical movement of moon called a mandala, in this cycle of 28 days there are two specific days, when the body does not demand food. Forcing yourself to eat food on those days is not a good thing to do. If you identify those days in your life and not give the body food – because it is not asking – a lot of your health issues will be handled by that simple pattern.

This cycle in the system is something that most people can identify if they take away the nonsense of “so many calories, so much protein and so much mineral should be eaten.” If they listen to the body, these two days can be easily identified by most human beings. You should not eat on these days. This was said because someone observed their own system and expressed this. But then people did not have the awareness so they fixed the Ekadashi for not eating.

On the day of Ekadashi, the very planet is in a certain state, so if we keep our body light and available, our awareness will turn inward. The possibility of opening the door within is more on that day. If you have a full stomach, and you are unaware and dull, you will not notice it. So to stay alert and also to purify the body, you go without food on that day – you ate dinner the previous day and the next thing you eat is dinner on Ekadashi.

It may not be a good thing for everyone to fast, but it has many benefits if it is done with proper understanding. Finding the right situation for the system and taking off food at that time will be a good thing to do. If you are unable to go without food, if your activity levels are such and you do not have the necessary sadhana to support you, then you could go on a fruit diet, which is light on the stomach so that your inner doors will open. Forceful denial of food is not the point. The point is to make everything into a conscious process. We do not want to compulsively eat like this, we choose.

For more information you can click HERE

When diet is wrong medicine is of no use.
When diet is correct medicine is of no need.
~Ayurvedic Proverb

HOT YOGA STAVANGER

10 DAYS HOT YOGA CLEANSE

We clean our room and our house and our car, and we take shower every day to clean our body. But how to cleanse our body? From where to start?

Indeed practicing yoga itself can cleanse our body and mind to some extent but with some small twists we can increase the effects of cleansing.

Fasting is one of the best ways we can optimise the benefits of our yoga practice in the individual level. It is better to fast base on the Ekadashis on the lunar calender, when we are fast we can go deeper in the yoga asanas and in the same way we can go deeper in our mind.

We can also take juice fasting something between a day or three day or more. Juice fasting next to te daily yoga practice can help us ‘reset’ our system and reactivate our natural healing ability and raise the full potential of our health.

This yoga and juice cleanse will help you let go of old habitual patterns that are life-depriving and cultivate new patterns that are life-enhancing for you.

We can start with a one day juice cleanse to leave our body and mind with a clean slate and a healthier mentality. Then in the spring our ten days juice fasting challenge begins!

Participants in the 10-Day Challenge receive the support and motivation of community.

Get connected to us HERE and step forward for a healthier lifestyle

HOT YOGA&DETOXIFICATION

I love sweating, and yoga both, therefore combining the two is a wonderful workout for me. By this practice we normally get to cleanse our body inside and out. We sweat away toxins and heavy metals while also getting all the benefits of a yoga class. It also can help us to focus more on the asana forms instead of speeding through the poses, because we may feel so hot therefore have to concentrate on what we are doing.

Next to hot yoga and sweating, receiving plenty of natural cold press juice of fresh fruits and vegetables while eliminating not-so-healthy foods from our diet for a few days elevate our health increasingly, in a way we will feel it in our body and mind. Our sleep gets deeper and more balanced, our moods and attitudes get more positive and uplifting. Overally we get happier and more tolerant during the day. Our mind gets sharper and we are more focused.

Hot yoga offers the same benefits as traditional yoga, such as stress reduction, improved strength, and flexibility.

But, hot yoga has the ability to give our heart, lungs, and muscles even more intense workout.

What is hot yoga?

Hot yoga, just means that the room is heated above normal temperature. something between 35 to 42 degrees.

infrared heaters are the best and cleanest way to heat the studio.

Hot yoga sessions can be different but generally we can expect to have, Bikram, Hot Vinyasa, Hot Yin, Restorative, Hot Pilates and Meditation as well.

The main goal behind these sessions is to provide relaxation of the mind and improve physical fitness.

So let have a look at the benefits of practicing hot yoga.

Hot yoga Improves flexibility of the body and helps us to achieve a greater range of motion in our muscles.

We can burn more calories, something around 500 calories in one session while in one hour workout in the normal temperature we burn only something around 200 calories.

Builds bone density, reduces stress, fight depression, boost cardiovascular system, reduces glucose levels of blood and nourishes the skin.

Sweating, is one of the main objectives of hot yoga, especially if you live in a cold environment.

One of the benefits of sweating is that it can improve blood circulation, bringing oxygen and nutrition to skin cells and this even nourish the skin from inside.