Practicing Yoga as Resistance


Book Description

Bringing together a diverse chorus of voices and experiences in the pursuit of collective bodily, emotional, and spiritual liberation, Practicing Yoga as Resistance examines yoga as it is experienced across the Western cultural landscape through an intersectional, feminist lens. Naming the systems of oppression that permeate our lived experiences, this collection and its contributors shine a light on the ways yoga practice is intertwined with these systems while offering insight into how people challenge and creatively subvert, mitigate, and reframe them through their efforts. From the disciplines of yoga studies, embodiment studies, women’s and gender studies, performance studies, educational studies, social sciences, and social justice, the self-identified women, queer, BIPOC, and White allies represented in this book present an interdisciplinary tapestry of scholarship that serves to add depth to a growing assemblage of yoga literature for the 21st century.




Weight-Resistance Yoga


Book Description

Transform strength training into a mindful, meditative practice • Explains how to induce a calm, meditative state through the movements, breathing, and focus of strength-training exercises • Contains illustrated instructions for 26 exercises to safely strengthen the neck, shoulders, arms, hips, knees, ankles, and torso • Offers themed meditations on the embodied experience of the exercises to facilitate a mindful state during your session • The perfect complement to a yoga flexibility practice Applying the wisdom of hatha yoga to weight-lifting exercises, Weight-Resistance Yoga reveals how to transform a strength-training session into a mindful, calm, and meditative yoga practice. Through 26 fully illustrated weight-resistance exercises using machines, free weights, and the body itself--along with an emphasis on coordinated rhythmic breathing, stability, stillness, and full absorption in the body’s movements against resistance--fitness trainer Max Popov explains how to access the tranquility that dwells within each of us while safely, effectively, and efficiently strengthening your neck, shoulders, arms, torso, hips, knees, and ankles. To support the meditative state of this practice, the author includes 20 themed meditations on the embodied experience of the exercises. The perfect complement to yoga flexibility practice, weight-resistance yoga allows you to fully inhabit your body, empty your mind of everyday preoccupations, and fill your soul with comprehensions of deeper realities, providing strength, calm, and spiritual illumination through your physical fitness work.




Yoga as Resistance


Book Description

A powerful manifesto outlining the personal inner work and practical steps that yoga practitioners and studios need to take to move to true equity and inclusion – on the mat, and off. The book is structured around the Sanskrit roots of yoga: TAPAS, AHIMSA, ASTEYA, SATYA. The meanings are explored in alignment with the social justice work presented. Each chapter closes with a yoga or meditation practice or journaling activity, to embody deeper understanding and work through any discomfort and issues that may arise. Diversity and inclusion within the wellness industry has been increasingly under the spotlight. This book responds to the appetite for guidance on how we actively create change. The mission of Yoga as Resistance is to educate and empower yoga practitioners and professionals to take action in aligning their practice on the mat with their lives off the mat.




Yoga Fitness for Men


Book Description

Maximize athletic performance and increase strength and endurance through the power of yoga. Incorporating yoga into your fitness regime can help you perform better on the sports field and in the gym! Learn how yoga works and integrate key yoga poses and routines to improve flexibility, core strength, and prevent injuries. For centuries yoga has been used to improve overall health and strengthen the mind and body. This yoga guide focuses on helping men perform at their highest fitness levels. Inside the pages of this yoga book you'll find: - More than 50 postures with full-colorr photos and step-by-step instructions. - Over 20 workout routines tailored to specific performance goals, such as endurance and power, or improving your running or weightlifting performance. - Focuses on the functional aspects of yoga, including sports performance and injury prevention. - Information on how yoga can specifically benefit men. - Easy-to-follow steps to execute yoga postures. Yoga is known to have plenty of benefits, but did you know that it also has benefits specifically for men and athletes? At the core, this ancient practice is based on stretching different muscle groups for greater flexibility, ease of movement, and greater power. And these benefits translate to sports performance, gym gains, and overall health - allowing your body to move as it should. No chanting required to master these yoga postures and workouts! Written by Dean Pohlman, sports coach and author, this yoga book for men is focused on yoga's functional fitness benefits and less on the spiritual or emotional aspects. A wonderful gift and fitness resource, Yoga For Men: Build Strength and Improve Performance will help men meet their performance goals, play harder and feel better.




Black Women's Yoga History


Book Description

How have Black women elders managed stress? In Black Women's Yoga History, Stephanie Y. Evans uses primary sources to answer that question and to show how meditation and yoga from eras of enslavement, segregation, and migration to the Civil Rights, Black Power, and New Age movements have been in existence all along. Life writings by Harriet Jacobs, Sadie and Bessie Delany, Eartha Kitt, Rosa Parks, Jan Willis, and Tina Turner are only a few examples of personal case studies that are included here, illustrating how these women managed traumatic stress, anxiety, and depression. In more than fifty yoga memoirs, Black women discuss practices of reflection, exercise, movement, stretching, visualization, and chanting for self-care. By unveiling the depth of a struggle for wellness, memoirs offer lessons for those who also struggle to heal from personal, cultural, and structural violence. This intellectual history expands conceptions of yoga and defines inner peace as mental health, healing, and wellness that is both compassionate and political.




Core Awareness, Revised Edition


Book Description

An indispensible resource for those interested in all forms of movement education, including yoga, pilates, dance, and more Somatic educator and writer Liz Koch has spent decades studying the principles of Core Awareness—a body-based approach to movement that utilizes attention to inner sensation as the key to increasing strength, gaining flexibility, preventing injury, and improving resilience. In this book, she shares her vast knowledge of Core Awareness with readers, providing movements, stretches, and mindfulness explorations that she developed herself. Her exercises are designed to enhance sensory development and shift readers from the standard paradigm of the body as an "isolated object" to a holistic paradigm of the human being as part of a living process of dynamic expression. This shift in perspective offers practitioners and teachers of movement, yoga, pilates, bodywork, exercise, and dance an empowering model for self-healing and the key to becoming stronger, more flexible, and more resilient. As Koch describes the practice of moving from one's core, she highlights the importance of engaging the psoas muscle—located on either side of the spine—to integrate the body, mind, emotion, and spirit. Koch also discusses how the pelvis is the foundation of our physical core, the vital connection with our bones, and crucial in gaining a sense of support, nourishment, joint integrity, skeletal balance, and healthy muscle tone. Rewritten with updated information, this revised edition includes 247 new photos and 25 new Core Awareness explorations—with 64 in total. A suggested reading list at the end of the book provides resources for continuing the development of the ideas presented within the book.




Scars, Adhesions and the Biotensegral Body


Book Description

This highly illustrated book explains the effects of scars and adhesions on the body through the lens of biotensegrity, a concept that recognizes the role of physical forces on their formation, structure and treatment. It includes contributions from specialists in the fields of fascial anatomy, biotensegrity, movement, surgery and other manual therapies. It takes a comprehensive approach to providing a better understanding of these complex issues and will be valuable to every hands-on practitioner. The text is supported with online videos demonstrating five ScarWork therapeutic techniques.




Skill in Action


Book Description

Transform your yoga practice into a force for creating social change with this concise, eloquent manual of social justice tools and skills. Skill in Action asks you to explore the deeply transformational practice of yoga as a way to become an agent of social change and work toward a just world. Through yoga practices and philosophy, this book explores liberation for ourselves and others, while asking us to engage in our own agency—whether that manifests as activism, volunteer work, or changing our relationships with others and ourselves. To provide a strong foundation to begin this work, Michelle Cassandra Johnson clearly defines power and privilege, oppression, liberation, and suffering, and invites you to make changes in your life that promote equality and freedom for all. This revised and expanded edition offers journaling practices and prompts in each chapter; includes more material on how power and privilege inform the yoga industry; explains how to integrate justice into teaching the eight limbs of yoga; and offers ways to support people as they move through their resistance and discomfort in the face of injustice. This edition also offers a fuller look at how the yamas and niyamas—the ethical precepts of yoga—can be studied in order to create a more just world, and it offers more support for yoga teachers seeking to radicalize their yoga.




The Yogi Assignment


Book Description

A high-profile Ashtanga Yoga teacher introduces an inspirational 30-day program that will “completely overhaul your attitude . . . eliminate negativity . . . while also allowing yoga to transform your body” (PopSugar) “The brave heart of a yogi is defined by actions that make the world a better place.” Live with authenticity. Practice patience. Let go of negativity. These are some of the core tenets of a yoga lifestyle, on and off the mat. Yoga is about much more than twisting yourself into shapes—the heart of this ancient practice is an inner journey, one of reflection, spiritual awakening, and ultimately a calm, clear mind. The Yogi Assignment is a 30-day introduction to these life-affirming and simple—yet revolutionary—principles. Led by master Ashtanga yoga teacher Kino MacGregor, this journey will challenge and uplift your body, mind, and spirit. Each day offers a practice and meditation that will help you confront your emotional, physical, and mental limitations and inspire real change in your life. MacGregor is a fierce, loving guide who encourages you to look deeply within to find your wellspring of inner strength and courage.




Off The Mat


Book Description

Most people think of Yoga as a physical exercise, good for flexibility and maybe even relaxation. But Yoga has so much more to offer than that. In this inspiring volume of essays, Yoga teacher Nicole DiSalvo Billa, shares insights into how the effects of Yoga practice can be even more powerful off the mat. Weaving together Yoga philosophy and personal experience, these essays offer wisdom regarding how Yoga can enrich and enlighten our daily lives.