American Buddhist Net

By Ali Nassor

A group of St. Petersburg scientists have returned from the Himalayan Mountains after learning the secrets of an almost-extinct form of Tibetan yoga that they hope can be used to cure diseases in the West.

The scientists have recently completed a two-month mission to find traces of Tum-Mo, a form of Tibetan Buddhist yoga that preserves body temperatures through excessive production of internal heat despite the body’s exposure to extremely cold mountain climates.

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Monday, June 02, 2008
By Madhusree Chatterjee

Indian yoga guru Swami Ramdev, who has helped popularise ancient fitness regimens and traditional ayurvedic medicine in different parts of the world, wants to contribute to politics now to realise 'the India of my dreams'.

'I have political ambitions, but not to grab power. I want to change the way of life and thoughts of those who are in power,' the 55-year-old guru said.

'I hate the country's political system. It paints a negative picture of our country abroad,' Swami Ramdev told IANS in an informal chat aboard the Superstar Virgo off the South China Sea.

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Monday, May 26, 2008

London: It’s a spiritual practice that provides all the health benefits of physical exercise. Yet, a British exorcist has claimed that yoga could put people in danger of being possessed by evil spirits.

According to Father Jeremy Davies, exorcist for the leader of Catholics in the UK, yoga puts people at risk from devils and the occult is closely associated with the scourges of “drugs, demonic music and pornography” which’re “destroying millions of young people in our time”.

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By Nick Hytrek

PONCA, Neb. -- As a hungry and thirsty college professor leading a group of equally hungry and thirsty students, Bob Johnson did what was necessary to score free beer and food at the Coors brewery.

On the spot, he and his students created their own organization so they could meet Coors tour requirements.

"When you go into the brewery as a group, they give you beer and something to eat," Johnson said. "To go into the brewery, we needed a name, so we christened ourselves the Milarepa Rangers."

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By Steve Knopper

...When facing a stressful situation or even a scary email, people often hold their breath. Yoga can break that habit.

Under pressure, "most people breathe incorrectly," says Frank Lawlis, a fellow of the American Psychological Association and author of The IQ Answer. The result: more stress and less oxygen to your brain. "So the first thing that goes is your memory."

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Monday, May 12, 2008
By EILEEN RIVERS

WASHINGTON - Derrick Farley, a 29-year-old Army sergeant stationed at Fort Bragg, N.C., has seen many people die. He served in Iraq for three year-long tours of duty with only six-month breaks between them. He remembers driving trucks along the dirt roads of Tikrit, ever alert for telltale signs of a sniper or the sudden blast of a hidden roadside bomb. His vehicle, he said, was hit 13 times.

After he returned home from his last tour, it was often the less tense moments from Iraq that ran through his mind. For months, he had nightmares during which he screamed out in Arabic as he relived run-ins with detainees. At times, the sound of shots ringing out from the firing range at Fort Bragg would launch him right back onto the roads of Iraq.

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May 09, 2008

It starts with some chuckles, grows into giggles and then launches into belly laughs. And, when mixed with yoga, it becomes 'laughter yoga' -- the fun way to reduce stress.

According to University of Michigan Health System fitness experts, laughter yoga -- part of a growing trend in parts of the United States, India and other countries -- can really make a difference in your overall health.

Not only is it fun to laugh, but laughter yoga (also known as Hasya yoga) can provide many health benefits: help to reduce stress, enhance immune system, improve cardiovascular function, and even tone muscle, the experts said.

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Thursday, April 24, 2008
Marney Rich Keenan

I'm all for holistic and alternative therapies like echinacea and melatonin, but treating sinusitis using a form of self-induced water-boarding was too green-o-manic for me.

But then, what do I know?

I never thought I suffered from allergies, just a cold that would not quit, followed by a nasty sinus infection.

It wasn't until my doctor started asking questions: Were my symptoms mostly during the spring? Did they include itchiness in eyes, nose and throat? I had to consider that even outdoorsy, animal-loving me could fall prey to chronic sinusitis triggered by allergies.

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April 23, 2008
By Ravinder Singh Robin

It was a bit unusual to see a yoga school in a Latin American country like Chile, but classes at a yoga school in Chilean capital Santiago seems to be catching on.

Just three-years-old, the yoga school today has over 700 students practicing yoga. Chilean teachers teach yoga asanas to their students, which they have picked up from India.

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By Dibin Samuel
Christian Post Correspondent
Tue, Apr. 01 2008 09:32 AM ET

Hindu religious leaders have strongly criticized a Catholic spiritual teacher for encouraging her pupils to find God through yoga.

Winnie Young, 96, meanwhile, questions why people misunderstand yoga to be a religion.

Young who studied yoga under one of the world's leading yoga practitioners, Yogacharya BKS Iyengar, claims to have spent most of her life teaching yoga.

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March 31, 2008
By Eric Eyre

..."It's really fun and relaxing," said Dajon Watkins, a 10-year-old fourth-grader at Malden. "If I was angry about something, I come to yoga and I forget what I was angry about. I try to forget about the bad things and think about the good things."

..."It's a very wonderful program," said Ricci Trusty, an 11-year-old fifth-grader. "It helps us relax in school and with our grades. We can think more clearly. We're more focused."

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Neuroscientist Shanida Nataraja has proved meditation does more than clear your head, it can put both halves of your brain to work, improving your concentration, memory and decision-making. She tells Andy Darling how it works.

Tuesday March 18, 2008

When Dr Shanida Nataraja was growing up in London during the 70s and 80s, meditation wasn't an esoteric, mystical practice done by hippies in baggy orange clothes. It was what her parents did.

"I was raised in a family where meditation was a central part of life. My father is Indian, from a Hindu background, and my mother is Dutch and Catholic. Over the course of growing up, I saw them embrace different meditation approaches: Hinduism, Buddhism, and then a Christian approach. I rebelled. We hate to believe that our parents know something we don't, so, when I became a research scientist, I wanted some concrete proof that what they were doing worked. I really didn't expect to find that meditation plays such a role in optimising brain function and health, from cognitive abilities to cardiovascular wellbeing."

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March 9, 2008
BY LINI S. KADABA

...Long a fixture in spas and health clubs, yoga is winning over campus jocks. A growing number of college teams have rolled out the yoga mats to augment training regimens and improve flexibility, strength and mental grit, coaches and instructors say.

...Whatever the style, the goals are similar: Improved flexibility. Better concentration. Fewer injuries.

"We bring stability to the entire body," said Adam Marcus, cofounder of Enso Studio in Media, Pa. "It's not just about having strong quadriceps."

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Monday, March 03, 2008
By Desiree Johnson

Paul Coates is the last person anyone would expect to see when walking into their first yoga class.

At 81 years old, he unties his light brown loafers or slips off his moccasins and has a seat at the front of the classroom – in a chair. His dress slacks don't exactly match class members' brightly colored yoga pants and T-shirts, but don't let his looks fool you. Coates is the instructor for a reason.

...Once students can get past the competitiveness, yoga is an exercise that can make a world of difference both mentally and physically. "There is such concentration and inward-seeking in yoga," Coates said. "When all your parts are working well, you run like a well-oiled machine. I'm 81 years old, and everything is still in fine working order."

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29.02.2008

In Oriental mythology gods have one distinguishing feature – they could fly. But ordinary mortals, albeit very few, also possess the unique art. For example, Indian Brahmans, yogis, saint hermits, magicians and fakirs master the art of levitation.

The Indian Vedas (translates as knowledge from Sanskrit) contain even practical guidelines to levitation. However, most ancient Indic words and concepts lost their meanings and concepts through the years, which makes it impossible to translate the priceless ancient text into modern languages.

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Mon Feb 25, 2008

By Sophie Hardach

TOKYO (Reuters Life!) - Imagine Indian yoga, Japanese zen, Chinese tai chi and qigong, wrapped into a 20-minute warm-up to be completed before you've even had your first cup of coffee of the day.

It may sound like the takeaway menu of an over-ambitious Asian fusion restaurant, but Aaron Hoopes, the founder of Zen Yoga, says adapting ancient exercises and meditation practices to modern lives does not erase their deeper spiritual meaning.

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By Elaine Woo, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 6, 2008

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of the Transcendental Meditation movement, who taught the Beatles to meditate, made "mantra" a household word in the 1970s and built a multimillion-dollar empire on a promise of inner harmony and world peace, died Tuesday in Vlodrop, the Netherlands. He was believed to have been 91.

Bob Roth, a spokesman for the Transcendental Meditation organization, said the Maharishi died peacefully of natural causes at his private residence in Vlodrop, a village about 120 miles south of Amsterdam where he moved his headquarters in 1990.

John Hegelin, the director of the TM organization in the United States, told The Times on Tuesday that the Maharishi had a transformative effect on Western society.

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By Michael Roberts

"THERE'S A LOT of bullshit in spiritual circles," my meditation teacher is telling me. It's a leafy fall afternoon in Massachusetts's Berkshire Hills, and we're sitting in the café of the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, one of the nation's premier destinations for physical and spiritual renewal. I've spent much of the last week on the Insight Meditation and Mindfulness Yoga Retreat, a five-day program that I'd hoped would turn me, a meditation virgin, into an Enlightened One.

...Thankfully, my teacher—my guru—Larry Rosenberg, 76, is a straight shooter. Raised in Brooklyn, he's spent the past 35 years studying various Buddhist approaches to meditation. His instruction is frank and lively—Mr. Miyagi meets Mel Brooks. This afternoon, he tells me that pairing insight meditation (a.k.a. vipassana) and breath-focused mindfulness yoga is a model that's becoming increasingly popular. The combination was intrinsic before, as he puts it, "Western leotard yoga amputated the meditation."

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(...)

"I'm just explaining how good this apple pie tastes," he said. "I can't explain it; you just have to take a bite."

He addressed mindsets that participants should avoid to save the mind, including guilt, defensiveness, aloofness and unfairly comparing oneself to others.

"This banana can be a great banana - sweeter and riper - but a banana cannot be a mango," Nityapragya said.

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By Christine Kearney Wed Sep 5, 5:25 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Botox and plastic surgery may promise to reduce wrinkles and worry lines, but some New Yorkers are turning to facial yoga to achieve a youthful appearance.

At a recent class in Manhattan's wealthy Upper East Side, yoga instructor Annelise Hagen teaches several facial exercises designed to stretch and tone facial muscles.

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By Phil Hill

A VICAR has rallied to support a yoga teacher banned from holding toddler classes at two Taunton churches.

Louise Woodcock was told her Yum Yum Yoga sessions for pre-school youngsters were not welcome in Silver Street Baptist and St James CofE church halls.

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By Regina Sass CLOUT INDEX
Published Aug 23, 2007

Most visits to a physician's office are for hypertension or high blood pressure. In America alone, there are 50 million people suffering from hypertension. Unfortunately, despite these numbers, there is no really adequate treatment. This leads to hypertension being the highest common risk factor for stroke, heart failure and kidney disease and there is no indication that it is going to get any better in the near future.

...Of the three techniques used, yoga produced the best results. Combining yoga with meditation, greatly reduced the systolic number and yoga alone reduces the diastolic. The reduction in the numbers that the yoga group achieved is comparable to the numbers necessary to reduce vascular death rates and a decrease in overall cardiac risk.

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Author says meditative practice more stylish than spiritual

07:57 AM CDT on Saturday, August 11, 2007
From Wire Reports

Yoga has lost its moral compass as a result of its rapid rise in popularity in North America, says a book by one of the world's leading yoga scholars.

Georg Feuerstein, author of Yoga Morality: Ancient Teachings at a Time of Global Crisis, is worried that in the process of becoming so many things to so many people, yoga has lost its ethical, philosophical and spiritual roots.

Confined just four decades ago to the hippie or ethnic fringes in Western culture, yoga has become, especially in the past five years, thoroughly mainstream.

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As a young Israeli soldier, Anat Zahor kept one thing with her at all times.

It wasn’t her rifle. It wasn’t a picture of her beau. It was her yoga manual.

That was many years ago, but Zahor’s passion for yoga only grew. Today, at 45, she is one of Israel’s leading practitioners of Iyengar yoga, a system developed by 90-year-old Indian yogiamaster B.K.S. Iyengar.

Mindfulness, she is quick to add, is a quality germane to yoga, Judaism, Buddhism and many other “isms.” But for Zahor, “isms” don’t cut it anymore.

“I don’t put any weight on those concepts,” she says. “I’m not really a Buddhist or a Taoist or a Jew. I’m a human being. A whole human being.”

It’s all One to her. “My religion is free from attachment,” she says. “It’s completely free from any idea. It’s about freedom. And freedom is what everyone looks for.”

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Monday, June 11, 2007

Rather than focusing on posture positions, Stephen Cope examines the psychology behind yoga in his latest book, "The Wisdom of Yoga."`

The book centers on a small group of friends and their struggles through life. Each person has a destructive pattern: Compulsive lying, overeating, phoniness and perfectionism. According to Cope, the purpose of yoga is to observe how the mind works. Through awareness, the mind can be observed neutrally and the destructive patterns interrupted.

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