Karmic Seeds Body Mind & Spirit

by   Madisyn Taylor When anger has no outlet it can morph into resentment and carries the potential to cause great turmoil. Anger, when channeled into the pursuit of change, can be a useful tool in our emotional palette. Anger is experienced by most people, some more than others. It is when anger has no outlet and morphs into resentment that it carries with it the potential to cause great turmoil. Allowing us to assign blame for the pain we are feeling, thereby easing it, resentment tends to smolder relentlessly just below the surface of our awareness, eroding our peace of mind. The target of our resentment grows ever more wicked in our minds and we rue the day we first encountered them. But resentment is merely another hue on the emotional palette and therefore within the realm of our conscious control. We can choose to let go of our resentment and to move on with our lives, no matter how painful the event that incited it.  Hanging onto resentment in our hearts does not serve us in an

by  Joumana Medlej  http://design.tutsplus.com/articles/human-anatomy-fundamentals-flexibility-and-joint-limitations- General Flexibility Facts Flexibility is the ability to stretch a joint to the limit of its range of movement, aka "how joints can and cannot move".  The female body tends to more flexibility, the male body to more muscle power. Flexibility in one joint does not necessarily imply flexibility in others. More muscles means less flexibility. Bodybuilders have the most limited range of movement for all the joints, first because they don't stretch, second because the bulging muscles get in the way . Only athletes and performers who follow power workouts as well as stretching routines  can have both muscle strength and flexibility, and their muscles are fine and sinewy, not bulging. In daily life, something like cycling will also decrease leg flexibility if not balanced by just as much stretching. So it's very common for people not to even have

The sacroiliac joints are where the sacrum joins the hip bones The joints are connected by strong ligaments designed for support & intended to remain stable During pregnancy, the hormone relaxin loosens these ligaments Sacroiliac Joint Anatomy 101 A joint is where two bones come together. The sacroiliac joint is where the sacrum bone and the ilium bone join one another. The sacrum is located at the base of your spine. It is composed of five vertebrae that have fused together during development to form a single bone roughly the size of your hand. When you view the sacrum from the front, it looks like a triangle with its point facing down. When you view it from the side, you see that it curves, concave in front, convex behind, and that it tilts, so its top end is well forward of its bottom end. Protruding from the bottom end of the sacrum is the tailbone (coccyx). Each half of the pelvis is composed of three bones, the ilium, the ischium and the pubic bone, that have

Before attempting to manipulate the breath with pranayama, it makes sense that we and our students would have a felt sense of what unhindered, natural breathing feels like. Different teachers refer to this as natural breathing, free breathing, belly breathing, yogic breathing, diaphragmatic breathing and essential breathing. Experts tell us that often people's unconscious breathing is not free but rather is restricted and incomplete. Even with clear instructions, it takes many weeks of practice before some students can actually breathe fully all the way to the bottom of their lungs, and even longer for some to be able to rapidly pump their bellies toward their spines in an energizing exercise like Kapalabhati." – Amy Weintraub, Yoga for Depression: A Compassionate Guide to Relieve Suffering Through Yoga © 2004, pg. 127 Following are ways in which our students may be inhibiting their free breath. Reverse Breathing Some people* are "reverse" breathers which me

Understanding Chakra; a traditional perspective http://www.rishikulyoga.com/understanding-chakra-a-traditional-perspective/ In the system of Kundalini yoga and Tantra philosophy; understanding the concept of chakra is one of the most sought after topics amongst the seekers of kundalini yoga. Kundalini yoga is the system of transforming, refining and uplifting the consciousness by harmonizing and purifying the energy. It is the process of metamorphosis of consciousness and energy. In traditional Tantra philosophy, consciousness as Shiva and energy as Shakti (also Shiva’s feminine counterpart) are essentially considered as one and the same reality at absolute level. Only at the plane of phenomenal duality they are seen as separate entities in order to understand their roles and functionality. Realms of duality as interplay of Shiva and Shakti Tantra maintains this view that the experiences of dual realm of reality are the creation of the interplay of consciousness and energy. Interplay

          In  part one   of this article series, we examined a hidden anatomical imbalance in yoga that impacts the health of our shoulders. Although yoga is often described as a completely “balanced” practice, an analysis of asana movements shows this to be not necessarily the case. It turns out that traditional yoga does a very good job of strengthening our bodies' shoulder “pushing” muscles, but fails to strengthen the opposing group of shoulder “pulling” muscles. Yoga is a wonderful activity with a myriad of benefits, and this inherent strength imbalance is not a shortcoming of the discipline in any way—it is simply the nature of a mat-based practice that does not utilize objects that are pulled. The result of this push/pull movement disparity is a functional strength imbalance in many yogis’ shoulders that increases their long-term risk of injury. Although yoga is often described as a completely “balanced” practice, an analysis of asana movements show

BY   JENNI RAWLINGS Most people who practice yoga believe in its inherent ability to produce balance in the body, mind, and spirit. Although yoga is a wonderful and transformative practice, there is one aspect of asana that is surprisingly not very balanced. In fact, it's likely to create an imbalance that can lead to physical injury.  If we examine yoga’s asanas through the lens of anatomy, we can see that some shoulder muscles are significantly strengthened through asana while others are hardly strengthened at all. The term “balance” encompasses a range of experiences from the spiritual to the psychological to the physiological state of being balanced in physical space. But the type of balance I’m discussing here is the functional muscular balance of your shoulders. Although we’re often taught that yoga is a completely balancing practice for the physical body, if we examine yoga’s asanas through the lens of anatomy, we can see that some shoulder muscles