The Good Yoga Guide

Yoga is an extremely ancient discipline that is getting more and more popular in modern times. People are turning to yoga in droves in this fast paced society to find some of the peace and harmony that yoga can introduce into their lives.

Why? And what exactly is yoga?

At first glance it appears that yoga is a form of contortionism. A series of awkward routines designed to make it as difficult as possible to reach them for mere mortals. But first appearances are of course deceiving. Yoga is an ancient artform which has been used for thousands of years ot attain spiritual insight and personal harmony.

In it's purest form yoga is intended to be a discipline which should join the human spirit with god.

It also has the aim of attaining a union of spirit mind and body to the benefit of each. It comes from Hindu philosophy. Yoga itself is the discipline that the Hindus exercise to reach out to spiritual harmony.

The word yoga is derived from the Sanscrit word "yuj" which means joining or to join.

However many just use yoga as a form of relaxation and exercise which is useful as a health discipline.

There are many different forms or types of yoga. Each has it's own forms of discipline and exercise and it's own practices. There are many but there are about 5 main ones.

Probably the most popular form of yoga is hatha yoga. I'm sure you've heard the name as it is quite well known. It focusses on yoga breathing and various hatha postures. These postures together with the correct breathing and stress postures are designed to help align your body's skeletal structure and also to help strengthen the muscles. And all together help strenthen the state of mind and the emotions. The postures combined with the breathing can be very cathartic and emotionally healing for those who need it and often free blocked emotional energy and physical tension.

Asthanga yoga is also a popular form of yoga. It is a system of yoga which was intially taught by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois at the institute in India known as the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute located in Mysore. It includes synchroising the breath with a system of postures producing extra body heat that helps improve overall circulation and also improves mental state.

Asthanga is almost a form of aerobic yoga with fast smooth transitions between different poses.

Kundalini yoga focusses on awakening and focussing energy that is our life energy inherent in all our bodies. This is kundalini energy.

Tantra is a form of yoga focussing on a study of the universe from the point of view of the individual to attain the highest ideals possible for an individual in her or his daily life. It studies a wide range of disciplines, including many of the sciences such as psychology, astrology and numerology. It is aimed at expanding awareness in the individual.

As you can see yoga is a very diverse discipline, with different methods, aims and disciplines according to the individual school chosen by the yoga participant.

One of the first decisions any person makes when they come across yoga and find that it appeals is which of the many disciplines will they practice.

Welcome to our yoga website The Good Yoga Guide. There are lots of people who regularly write interesting and informative articles all about yoga. If you are prepared to spend hours searching it is possible to find lots of these articles to read, but unfortunately it is extremely difficult to find them. You can waste many hours searching and never even come across half of them.

So our object is to gather together on one website a whole range of different articles written by variuos people with an interest or expertise in yoga. So you don't have to spend hours searching them all out. We will, over time, build this yoga resource up to the point where it will have hundreds of pages of articles - just about yoga.

So read away to your hearts content. Bookmark out site and come back from time to time, there will always be something new here.

Thanks for dropping by.

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