yoga

i spent 2/3 1-hour sessions a week in this baby

it's a hot pod. 37 degrees inside. it's like a sauna workout and it has benefited my life increasingly more: i experience more vitality and awareness. it's also helping me to laugh a lot more about silly things & see serious things more playful.

do any of you practice it? does it help or benefit you?

have others tried but find it to their dislike? could you try and explain why?

Farting with style.

shalom

That's a beautiful spot. Yeah, I've being doing yoga for around 3 years now. I love it. It's best with a bit of weed beforehand. Proper OG yogi style. If anyone were to ask me what single exercise I thought was most effective I would answer yoga. It's almost a perfect exercise for humans. I especially like the meditative aspects.

haha, i never dared to smoke weed directly for class, but when im at home after class, and light up the hash pipe, it's really nice to stretch out and relax and do some postures while high

  On 12/17/2015 at 1:08 AM, AdieuErsatzEnnui said:

If anyone were to ask me what single exercise I thought was most effective I would answer yoga. It's almost a perfect exercise for humans. I especially like the meditative aspects.

I totally agree!

*raise your hands up in the air, like you're totally spatially aware*

Not really yoga, but recently started taiji. And with that doing zhan zhuang daily (2 times 20/30mins). Which is basically standing like a tree. Connecting with the earth, straightening the spine and trying to get all the tensions in the body to move to the quads.

Feels godly when it works. And improves balance and energy in daily life.

Nice!! As you said, that's very effective for balance and grounding.

My teacher says it's one of the most fundamental postures we hardly practice; just to be able to stand on your two feet. She calls it the mountain pose, because when you stand firmly, no human will be able to push you over.

whilst standing on my 2 feet, i find how easy i lean on my knees with my full body weight: while this certainly helps me to not collapse on the floor, it's not an ideal way to stand (and can cause you injury in your back, hips and knees).

The trick, or practice, is to firmly stand on your feet, and slightly pull your body up with your entire body.

How does that work? With internal body locks (bandha's) and pulling up yourself slightly with all the muscles in your body.

how does that work with you godel?

It's part of my meditation routine now. Really helps you getting confident with your body.

this youtube gives an excellent explanation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhrBhR2SGNE

whenever you feel anything besides your thighs burning (and bumping like jackhammers!), that means either your posture is incorrect (look in mirror), or there's tension at the place. (incorrect posture leads to tension obv.)

btw: have seen plenty of youtubes on taiji/zhan zhuang but none were as helpful as those from ian sinclair. to me at least. lots of wishy washy nonsense out there, but ian makes it plain and simple. lots of videos telling you to relax, but none tell you how to do it. and where this tension actually goes. because tension doesn't simply disappear. you can only direct it somewhere else. and hardly anyone explains where to direct it. at which point the explanation becomes complete nonsense, imo.

another one with an excellent explanation of the concept of peng jin, where you can actually see pretty good the difference between being grounded and not grounded

if you google for other explanations, lots of wishy washy bs. lots of nonsense out there.

Yoda.

  On 12/17/2015 at 10:56 AM, goDel said:

this youtube gives an excellent explanation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhrBhR2SGNE

 

Nice. Went ahead and tried standing like that, first having my back against the wall for checking the spine is straight and then going on. Felt suprisingly pleasant.

Very good.

Couple of tips. Standing with your back against the wall helps to straighten your back, but not exactly your spine. Because the middle of your back often can't touch the wall because other parts stick out more. You can use a corner or something else less wide than your back to actually put your spine against your reference. It's also useful to start bending over (in front) and slowly roll back your spine from bottom to top against the corner. At points you'll probably notice your lower backs tendency to come off as you go higher. At that point I'll bend over again and try another time, while trying to relax the spine against the corner. Whenever your lower back doesn't touch the corner, there's tension in your spine. (And it's pretty difficult to train that tension out of your body!).

Personally, another issue of mine apart from the lower back (and the hips themselves) are the knees. It's fairly easy to build up more tension in your knees while doing this. And it'll hurt pretty soon whenever that happens. What helps at that point, for me at least, is to send more weight into your heels. In my case, tension in the knees comes from having too much weight in my toes. So it's really a posture thing. In the beginning you can see and correct it with a mirror, but after a while you have to learn to feel what is going on in your body and learn to correct it because the mirror won't show the difference.

  On 12/17/2015 at 1:07 PM, goDel said:

Very good.

 

Couple of tips. Standing with your back against the wall helps to straighten your back, but not exactly your spine. Because the middle of your back often can't touch the wall because other parts stick out more. You can use a corner or something else less wide than your back to actually put your spine against your reference. It's also useful to start bending over (in front) and slowly roll back your spine from bottom to top against the corner. At points you'll probably notice your lower backs tendency to come off as you go higher. At that point I'll bend over again and try another time, while trying to relax the spine against the corner. Whenever your lower back doesn't touch the corner, there's tension in your spine. (And it's pretty difficult to train that tension out of your body!).

 

Personally, another issue of mine apart from the lower back (and the hips themselves) are the knees. It's fairly easy to build up more tension in your knees while doing this. And it'll hurt pretty soon whenever that happens. What helps at that point, for me at least, is to send more weight into your heels. In my case, tension in the knees comes from having too much weight in my toes. So it's really a posture thing. In the beginning you can see and correct it with a mirror, but after a while you have to learn to feel what is going on in your body and learn to correct it because the mirror won't show the difference.

Nice. Thank you.

I've had problems with a sore back if I have to stand still for long periods so a proper posture should help a lot. For example some concerts have been agony for me.

Always amusing when martial arts teachers are overweight

  On 12/17/2015 at 11:57 PM, AdieuErsatzEnnui said:

Always amusing when martial arts teachers are overweight

https://youtu.be/L9y7qcm3Ugw

I've only practiced yoga at home.. never have gone to class or anything. I bought this app for $3 (i think), it's called Yoga Studio. I've used it a lot and I think it was worth the $3 (and I rarely pay for apps). It has pre-made "classes" ranging from 15 mins to 60 min sessions and they have beginner, intermediate and advanced classes. It even has an index of all the poses so you can read how to do them if you're not sure how, plus it explains the benefits of each pose. Anyways, I found it a good place to start if you are interested in yoga but might be a bit too intimated to go to a class right away, I've learned a lot from it :)

Basically I've been doing yoga on and off for years following just this one video:

found a great channel for yoga

did this just now and i thought it was a good workout, i've always felt inflammation and discomfort in my legs but now im laying in my bed after that 20-min workout and my legs feel some relief.

Ill never go to a class tho, ill keep this in the privacy of my own home.

  On 12/21/2015 at 4:49 PM, Deer said:

found a great channel for yoga

 

did this just now and i thought it was a good workout, i've always felt inflammation and discomfort in my legs but now im laying in my bed after that 20-min workout and my legs feel some relief.

 

Ill never go to a class tho, ill keep this in the privacy of my own home.

I've only been to a couple classes. I just do the p90x yoga video. It's pretty intense. Been doing it for a few years, and it's still challenging every single time.

Yoga is awesome yes!!!! :)

feel so much better after going to a session, definitely grounds the mind more to the breath and the body, couldn't recommend a regularish routine of yoga weekly enough!!!

it's a hella confidence booster rocking advanced headstand poses ;) everyone is always a beginner with yoga - you never really master it, you just go deeper and deeper!!!!