ABOUT THE YOGA*
IS IT SAFE TO PRACTICE BIKRAM YOGA .....
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Why is it important to learn from a Bikram certified instructor?
It takes more than a hot room and a list of postures to make your Bikram Method Yoga practice a safe, rewarding experience. Bikram Method Yoga is a specialized form of yoga, requiring appropriate training and knowledge to teach it effectively.
Bikram Choudhury, the creator of Bikram Method Yoga, personally trains and certifies his instructors to ensure that his methods and philosophy are preserved and properly taught. To be certified as an instructor in the Bikram Method of Yoga, an instructor must complete an intensive nine-week training requiring over 500 hours of study. A studio guided by a Certified Instructor provides the best possible instruction in the Bikram Method. Certified Instructors have a continuing connection to Bikram Choudhury and his training staff, allowing the Certified Studio to draw from all of the resources Bikram's training center has to offer. This includes special seminars, posture clinics, guest instructors, and answers to questions which may arise in a particular student's practice.
Anyone can claim they teach "Bikram Yoga," but unless there is a Certified Instructor supervising how and what is taught at that studio, you are not getting true Bikram Method Yoga.
credit--Bonnie Kuykendall
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How does Bikram yoga work?
By the tourniquet effect: stretching, balancing (using gravity), and creating pressure all at the same time. The blood supply in arteries and veins is being cut off, creating pressure. When released, a lock gate effect is created, causing blood to rush through veins and arteries, flushing them out. Also, pressure is applied to the heart by its relative position to the rest of the body.
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Does Bikram Yoga help with balancing the emotions ?
Bikram Yoga helps balance the emotions in several ways.
Physiologically, regular practice harmonizes the nervous and endocrine systems, two systems which figure heavily in emotional well-being.
In addition, practicing Bikram Yoga cultivates the mental faculties of faith, self-control, concentration, determination, and patience. As we become more aware of our inner life, we notice how events, interactions, and even the atmospheric pressure effect us. When we are aware, we can exercise choice in our response. This helps us balance our emotional life.
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IS IT SAFE TO PRACTICE BIKRAM YOGA .....*
When menstruating?
It is perfectly safe to do Bikram's yoga when menstruating. Inverted postures are normally the postures contraindicated for menstruation. But there are no inverted postures in Bikram's yoga.
So in fact, Bikram's yoga is very good for toning the reproductive system as it directly affects the reproductive organs and the endocrine glands--pituitary, pineal and thyroid gland in particular. The women's cycle becomes regular; complaints of irregularity and PMS decrease.
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When pregnant?
With high blood pressure?
Consult your doctor, use common sense, and don't push hard in any of the poses the first three days. The poses in which high blood pressure patients must continue to exercise caution until their blood pressure checks out normally are these: the backward bending portion of Half Moon, the Standing Bow Pulling, Balancing Stick, Cobra, the third part of Locust, Full Locust and the Camel.
Depending on the severity of your condition, the above should be done for a count of no more than five at first, building to ten counts only after two weeks. If you are supple enough to do the Fixed Firm fully the first few days, limit that to five counts as well. Be absolutely sure to rest between each set. It is also essential for heart patients to breathe normally during the postures. As for the Bow Pose, (on the floor) a beginner with high blood pressure must never perform the pose without a qualified teacher present.
It is because these backward bending positions create pressure in the chest, and so on the heart, that high blood pressure patients must use caution. Do not eliminate them though--with the exception of Bow Pose. They are the very friends you need to control your ailment.
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With Rheumatoid Arthritis?
Many people think arthritis occurs because of an overabundance of calcium in the body. But there is really no overabundance. The problem is that the calcium is deposited as a form of calcium phosphate in the joint-tissue, including the spine. At that point, the calcium phosphate deposit begins to build layers in the joint--spiky crystal formations like a cactus--until no room is left for the joint to pivot smoothly in its socket. And these spiny needly irritate the surrounding muscles and nerves, and the agony of arthritis begins.
Rheumatism? It is closely related to arthritis, but you have only to do your Yoga and you will be free of rheumatism.
Gout is also a problem that attacks the joints. And again and again in my series of exercises, you find me addressing myself specifically to exercising the joints. If I seem to be reducing some of the oldest, most painful, and perplexing diseases to lack of exercise, you're right. But that is what they often seem to boil down to.
Sadly, the theory seems to be that with advancing "age" one should "slow down," "take it easy," don't exert oneself or do too much exercise. And if you get something like arthritis, take it even easier, don't move, except to open your mouth to swallow the latest pill being offered as a cure. This advice is simply more nails for an earlier coffin. Exercise--meaning daily Yoga--is the cure.
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With Asthma, Emphysema, Chronic Bronchitis?
Without knowing the cause of your asthma, we can tell you that Bikram yoga will be good for you in several ways. It is done in a warm room which promotes relaxation of the muscles and nerves, and is the type of exercise that you can do with as little or as much intensity as appropriate for your needs. In other words, you can do each posture with less effort if you're concerned about overexertion triggering an attack, or you can sit down and rest whenever you need to during the class.
It will relax your mind and help let go of tensions, toxins and negativity. It also strengthens your heart and lungs, improving your lung function. You will breathe easier and deeper than you ever have before.
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With Back Problems?
Picture your spine as a series of ball bearings (vertebrae) one on top of the other, each separated from the next by a cushion (a cartilege disc). When the spine in shiny and new, all the ball bearings are smooth and round, moving freely in all directions, and the cushions are strong and thick. Now picture your daily activities. In one position after another, probably ninety-five percent of the time, that spine is leaning forward.
What is happening, then, is that each vertebra of your back is compressing its cushion in a frontwise direction. This goes on year after year until there is no resiliancy left in the front of the cushions, while the two sides and back have grown weak and slack from disuse. In addition, lack of movement has made the bearings rusty and barnacles have developed. The result: backache, stiff neck, headache, and countless other complaints.
The cure: exercise! Make the spine work so that resiliency and strength are restored to each cushion, so that the rust and barnacles are worn off the ball bearings, so that an X ray would show them smoooth and round, sitting snugly on their fat, renewed cushions.
Beginning with Half Moon, my series of exercises is designed to make your shocked and shriveled spine work to both sides, to the back, and then to the front. Only by exercising in all directions can your spine be healthy; and only with a healthy spine can you have a healthy nervous system.
If your chronic problem is something such as sciatic pain, lumbago, sore back muscles, whiplash, vertebrae out of line, shoulder trouble, radiating pains down the arms, tension headaches, swayback, spinal curvature, pinched nerves, or "something not quite right that the doctor said I ought to watch," stop watching. Act! Get to work on these exercises. Even those who have had spinal surgery should get to work--with their doctor's okay and a qualified teacher who can lead them in my particular series of exercises.
People with slipped disc are often in such pain that Yoga seems further torture. However, in numerous slipped disc cases, determined Yoga can save the day. So endure the pain. But please ntoe that those with slipped disc should also work under the supervision of a qualified instructor using my exact series of exercises and the safety rules laid down in the body of this book.
As you can see, the best thing is to adopt a Yoga regimen before any of these troubles develop--for if you do, they probably won't develop.