Yoga is the perfect energy management for recharging your batteries, for regulating your physical and mental systems and for readjusting them if necessary. Your breathing function, cardio-circulatory system, nerves, glands and inner organs – all are benefited by yoga; and the self-healing mechanisms of the body are stimulated and strengthened. In addition to this, muscles and joints, sinews and ligaments are stretched and strengthened with the different exercises. Flexibility and energy are increased and you will feel generally more vital and alive. As you will discover, no other exercise offers such a well-tuned system, composed of relaxation, physical training, breathing and various stages of meditation, as does yoga.
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You can practice yoga at anytime, except just after a large meal. There are no hard-and-fast rules as to how you organize your energy in practice. Develop your own personal ritual. A short neck-relaxing session in your lunch break or a few stretching exercises before warming up on the driving range: everything goes and your body will thank you for it. However, it would be preferable if you could find a peaceful, undisturbed half-hour every day in order to exercise. Be realistic with your time-planning and don't bite off more than you can chew. However, do try to stick to your yoga plan. It would be more effective to exercise every day for 20 minutes rather than for one hour just once a week.
Sporting ambition or performance-oriented or competitive attitudes have no place in yoga. The golden rule in yoga is to be nice to yourself. This means: being consciously in the here and now, not being judgmental, and accepting the situation of the moment. This kind of attention enhances perception and increases clarity and awareness or, as the Buddhists say, mindfulness. Practicing mindfulness requires discernment, effort and discipline and is a straightforward, while at the same time extremely effective, method for letting go of the "autopilot mode" of rigid and unreflective behavioral patterns.
When practicing yoga, let time work for you. Accept your daily form and become aware of the process of change which will arise from regular and measured practice. You will find some exercises easy and pleasant, others difficult and even a few perhaps impossible to carry out. Also, do not be surprised if you find that the left and right sides of your body react differently during some exercises. Try to find the right proportion between challenge and letting-go and to differentiate between motivation, discipline and false ambition.
"Yoga is a light, which once lit, will never dim. The better your practice, the brighter the flame." B.K.S. Iyengar
Yoga involves the practice of finely tuned exercise which is fundamentally superior to western-style training methods. The main focus of yoga teaching is on a holistic approach: the development and shaping of the personality and the attainment of one's full potential. The goal is to integrate body, energy and mind into a harmonious whole and to live to the optimum. In yoga it is unthinkable to separate the purely technical from mental training, as is still practised on the driving range.
In the beginning you will practice movement sequences. Direct your whole attention to a harmonious and correct carrying out of movements and a stable posture. You will see how your suppleness increases and your stability and stamina in the postures slowly improve. As soon as you have become somewhat more proficient at the exercises, you can begin to differentiate and adjust your posture more precisely. Direct your attention to the sensations in your body and learn to understand its language and enter into a constructive dialogue with it. Understand the connections between external and internal blockages, your physical habits and behavioural patterns and learn to influence them with your fundamental positive mental attitude.
Increasingly you will assume the postures effortlessly with a feeling of pleasure and as a matter of course. You are actively in movement, but at the same time inwardly calm and focussed. Like meditation in movement, so-to-speak.
"Yoga is meant for the purification of body and its exploration as well as for the refinement of the mind." B.K.S. Iyengar
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Have you ever paid attention to your breathing when you are swinging your golf club? Do you breathe in or out? Or do you just let it happen unconsciously? If your answer is "I just let it happen," you will not be the only one. This is going to change soon. When practicing yoga you are constantly encouraged to pay attention to your breathing. Breathe in while doing this and breathe out while doing that; never mind the instructions to breathe deeply and rhythmically too – and always at a moment when your arms are threatening to drop, the leg you are standing on is trembling and you are just on the verge of losing your balance altogether. And now, focus your attention on your breathing . . . Yes, you can! And it feels great and makes everything easier too.
Deep breathing greatly increases the oxygen level in your blood. The more oxygen the blood is transporting, the more efficiently the cells in your body can fulfil their tasks. And controlling your breathing leads to the control of your mind. Yes, you read that right: control of your mind – the factor which decides between a good or a bad score. It is not surprising that just at this moment somewhere in the world a tour pro is practicing his or her daily breathing exercises: exercises that result in the breathing becoming deeper, more rhythmical and finer. When doing breathing exercises, many pros use one or another form of yoga. No wonder, as the yoga breath "pranayama" is more or less the mother of all breathing techniques. The Sanskrit word "prana" means life energy and "ayama" can be translated with "extend" or "draw out."