Get Your Work-Life Balance Back With Yoga

With stressful working environments and hectic schedules, many people struggle with the negative impact of their busy work lives. Those who have difficulty managing their personal and work lives in balance with each other are increasingly turning to yoga. Yoga gives them peace of mind so that they can achieve a perfect work-life balance.

The mind-body connection is piquing interest in this ancient practice, and research shows that it can indeed reduce blood pressure and stress, improve your work performance, and even make you age more slowly.

Although the focus on yoga may be different depending on the environment, its basic premise is to relax the body while keeping the mind focused and alert. For example, when you do yoga, you focus on body movement, breath, sound or even an object. When your mind wanders, as it inevitably will, you bring your attention back and start again.

The ancient practice of yoga garnered renewed interest in the 1960s, when those interested in consciousness began to follow its practices. However, after this, yoga began to fall out of favor. It may have been because yoga is not quite like other types of exercise. For one, you need patience in order to get its full benefits. It offers steady but slow results. This is in direct contrast to the almost frenetic activity and quick results of aerobics.

Many people rush to work out every day during their lunch hours, force themselves to keep up a brisk pace, and then rush back to work. Of course, it's probably physically beneficial, but it still adds pressure to an already overwhelmed life. Yoga, by contrast, offers a less competitive and stressful way to work out, while supporting and even causing an overall feeling of simply "being."

One of the major reasons yoga is making a comeback is because it can be so healing as an activity. The over-the-top push for fitness generated by the traditional exercise regimes of aerobics, running, or weight lifting also has caused injuries, including neck pain, back pain, or strained knees. Because we are such a competitive society, these activities have also inspired books, tapes and videos touting this or that as the latest and greatest thing.

Today, even health practitioners are getting in on yoga practice, with chiropractors, neurologists and orthopedic surgeons sometimes referring patients to specific yogis during treatment.

In fact, it's moving to the mainstream increasingly. Mainstream hospitals and businesses are now having yoga techniques taught, while books about these techniques are bestsellers, with discussion groups on the Internet springing up to talk about this "new" innovation as well.

Surprisingly, perhaps, even the Army has gotten in on the act. It has asked the National Academy of Sciences to study New Age techniques such as meditation to see if soldiers' performance can be enhanced in this way.

In addition, yoga has become a pursuit for some runners, weight trainers or aerobic dancers who don't find peace in their exercise regimes and want the de-stressing aspects of yoga to be part of their workouts.

Approximately 60 to 90% of doctors' visits in the U.S. are related to stress. Mind-body approaches offer cost-effective and safe treatments for this ailment that don't involve drugs or surgery. Among people who use these techniques, 34% of patients who are infertile get pregnant within six months, while 70% of those who have trouble sleeping or even have medically defined insomnia become regular sleepers. In addition, the numbers of those suffering from pain and making regular doctor visits because of it go down by 36%.

Back Pain With Chakra Balance

A chakra is a centre of activity that receives, assimilates and expresses life force energy. The word Chakra is sanskrit for wheel or disc and signifies one of the seven energy centres of the body. Each of the seven musical notes and seven colours corresponding to the chakras have emotional and physical issues attached to them. It is the quest of Sound Essence to give the information and the tools needed to allow the song of your soul to be heard. Back pain can also result if the lower chakras are out of balance.

Chakra is the Sanskrit word for moving wheel; the chakras are vortexes of energy present in the ethereal body and in corresponding locations of the physical body. There are seven major chakras and they function as pathways for energy to be taken in.

The Chakra Energy Centres are very well known and taught in the World of Metaphysics and New Age. Chakras are originally a part of ancient yoga practice. Chakra Yoga could be an option for you to lose your back pain. You gain experience and a energized practice in revitalizing the body's seven energy centres, dissolving emotional blockages, opening the mind and body connection combining asanas, breathing work, learning affirmations, and Yoga mantras.

One way of using the power of Yoga is using method of Chakra Healing. The Chakra Energy Centres are very well known and taught in the World of Metaphysics and New Age. Chakras are originally apart of ancient yoga practice. Would you like to increase your powers of concentration, better energy, increase prosperity, Fitness, and improve your ability to focus? Then Chakra Yoga is an option for you helping you with your back pain. You gain experience and a energized practice in revitalizing the body's seven energy centres, dissolving emotional blockages, opening the mind and body connection combining asanas, breathing work, learning affirmations, and Yoga mantras.

What are the Chakras? To help you understand, Chakras are a natural, spiritual energy system in your body. Chakras have been known and used by yoga masters for thousands of years. Some Psychics can see and feel them, Your chakras allow you to automatically, open up to unconditional love, empowerment, joy, increased income, better health and stress management for daily living. In Chakra Yoga, You are energizing the Mind and Body to heal and become more balanced in Energy. An Off Balanced Lifestyle can cause damage to your health (back pain), family and love relationships, work life, finances, college life, and other daily concerns.

Glen Wood - The Yoga Teacher, dedicated to unlocking the Real Secrets of Back, Neck and Shoulder Pain.

Jnâna yoga

Jnâna yoga (Devanāgarī:) or "path of knowledge" is one of the types of yoga mentioned in Hindu philosophies. Jnâna in Sanskrit means "knowledge"

As used in the Bhagavad Gita, the monist philosopher Adi Shankara gave primary importance to jnâna yoga as "knowledge of the absolute" (Brahman), while the Vaishnava commentator Ramanuja regarded knowledge only as a condition of devotion. In the Bhagavad Gita (13.3) Krishna says that jnâna consists of properly understanding kshetra (the field of activity--that is, the body) and kshetra-jna (the knower of the body--that is, the soul). Later in the Gita (13.35) Krishna emphasizes that a transcendentalist must understand the difference between these two.

Natya Yoga

Natya Yoga, popularly known as Dance Yoga, the all-inclusive spiritual path of action, is a combination of mainly Bhakti Yoga and Karma Yoga with many elements of Hatha Yoga and Raja Yoga.

Those practising Natya Yoga believe that the fastest way to realize all the intricate aspects of Bhakti (e.g. different types of Lilas) is by enacting various devotional songs, which require one to master one's emotional states.

According to the Karma Yoga principles, the practitioner of Natya Yoga learns to do everything with a certain attitude that leads to the complete detachment from and control of one's physical, emotional and mental activities. One is expected to devote all one's actions to the Supreme as a sacrifice. The stage performances are an opportunity for the dancer to remain indifferent to the spectators' reactions, which require a great deal of self-control. The dancer strives to learn to be guided in every smallest move by the various devas that are supposed to be established in various chakras.

Unlike the shamanistic dance practitioners, the Natya Yoga dancer must not let himself become possessed by the lower spirits. Natya Yoga involves far more than, for instance, Sufi whirling.

Those practising Natya Yoga are expected to perform 108 karanas, in addition to standard asanas and pranayamas, as well as meditation practises that involve various visualizations that lead to the "internalization" of the dance. In fact, the dancer learns the intimate links between the movements of the physical, emotional and mental bodies. The example of such links can be found in hastas and mudras that the dancer is supposed to master.

Nada Yoga, or the meditation on sound, is also part of it, as the practitioner of Natya Yoga learns to focus on certain sounds and teach his body to move according to them in order to achieve a certain state of consciousness. Therefore, the musical instruments used for the meditative dance in Natya Yoga are the ones that can produce the mystic sounds described in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras.

According to Natya Shastra, Natya Yoga was initially practised by Narada and Gandharvas, especially by Apsaras. The birth of Bhakti Yoga greatly modified the Natya Yoga techniques. In the medieval times, Natya Yoga was practised by the devadasi's and some temple Brahmins. Many elements of Natya Yoga have been preserved in the orthodox Bharatanatyam and Odissi. The followers of the Siddhendra Yogi line of Kuchipudi practise it too. Natya Yoga is part of Integral Yoga, and is taught in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram through Odissi.

According to Balasaraswathi, "The greatest blessing of Bharatanatyam is its ability to control the mind. Most of us are incapable of single-minded contemplation even when actions are abandoned. On the other hand, in Bharatanatyam actions are not avoided; there is much to do but it is the harmony of various actions that results in the concentration we seek. The burden of action is forgotten in the pleasant charm of the art. The feet keeping to time, hands expressing gesture, the eye following the hand, the ear listening to the master’s music and the dancer’s own singing - by harmonizing these five elements the mind achieves concentration and attains clarity in the very richness of participation. The inner feeling of the dancer is the sixth sense, which harmonizes these five mental and mechanical elements to create the experience and enjoyment of beauty. It is the spark, which gives the dancer her sense of spiritual freedom in the midst of the constraints and discipline of the dance. The yogi achieves serenity through concentration that comes from discipline. The dance brings together her feet, hands, eyes, ears and singing into fusion which transforms the serenity of the yogi into a torrent of beauty. The spectator, who is absorbed in intently watching this, has his mind freed of distractions and feels a great sense of clarity. In their shared involvement, the dancer and the spectator are both released from the weight of the worldly life and experience the divine joy of the art with a sense of total freedom."