Month: August 2018

Top 10 Benefits of Hot Yoga

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1. Lower Stress Levels

We all experience stress in our lives, its inevitable. A key to living a happy life is learning to manage stress. Yoga, especial hot yoga, allows for the release of energy that causes tension within our body that can be built up by stress. As we commit and deepen our practice, stress drips away with the sweat off our brow and we are able to re-enter the world as a more compassionate and functional being.

2. Increased Flexibility

Flexibility is more then being able to touch your toes, it is also in the way we are able to gracefully live our lives. At times we encounter unexpected life changes, and being flexible supports us in coping and accepting such changes. As we are more flexible on our mat, we are also more flexible off it.

3. Improved Brain Function and Focus

Our brains are said to be the most powerful tool we have in our lives. Its claimed that “what we think about we bring about”. As we deepen our practice we also deepen our mental facility. As we focus our minds in the present moment while moving through asanas, we are training our brain to do the same when we have other tasks at hand.

4. Anxiety Relief

Anxiety has become one of the most common words of our generation and the generations after us. Hot yoga is a natural remedy that has been found to reduce anxiety and increase the necessary chemicals, such as serotonin and dopamine that have been proven to best combat depression and other anxiety-related disorders.

5. Increase Mindfulness

Mindfulness brings depth to our lives. As we tune into what is going on within us, we are able to notice more of what is going on around us and our perceptions completely change. Yoga opens the door to our core, to who we are at our depths, revealing to us blockages, our relationship to pain, our relationship to our bodies and so much more. We are so beautifully and naturally forced to raise our awareness during a hot yoga class, that mindfulness an easier state of being for the rest of our day.

6. Improved Lung Capacity

Breath. It moves through us, and yet it moves us through our lives. The connection between mental, emotional and physical health is breath. As we expand our lung capacity through the practice of hot yoga we train ourselves to use our breath in mindful ways. In our daily lives we can use breath as a tool to transport us through any exterior circumstances with calmness and clarity.

7. Healthy Weight

Though yoga can help with weight loss, it is really about the unity of our health; mind, body and soul. As we practice, our self image gradually changes to be more nurturing and accepting. Once our perception changes, our views on weight change. This is when your practice becomes about being connected to the light, living from your heart and highest potential, and being an all around healthy person.

8. Stronger Muscles and Bones

Building strength in hot yoga happens so naturally. As a practice it produces the fastest results of any exercise when it comes to an increase of overall flexibility and strength. One can notice from one class to the next strength increasing. But to add to the increase of muscle, a study was done in 2009 that found the increase in bone density in older adults that practiced hot yoga as well.

9. Release of Toxins

No matter what it is that you put into your body, hot yoga will make you sweat it out. You will sweat out the cake you had for dessert, any water that you consumed prior to class, and everything else. It goes a step further by making you sweat out toxic emotions, situations you have been holding onto and anything else that is not serving you in a very graceful and natural way. Let yourself let go.

10. Being Part Of A Healthy Community

The yoga community is one of the friendliest and most welcoming communities there is out there. No matter where you go to on earth, if it’s your own back yard or across the world, if you are looking for a sanctuary, head into a yoga studio and practice. Say hello to your neighbour. You have no idea how the relationship can blossom, but what you do know, is that you are on your mat with a similar foundation and a desire to connect with self and others.

Do we have you convinced yet as to how truly amazing hot yoga is for your well being?

Buddha Belly Yoga and Wellness Edmonton would love to have you join us and dive into your own personal practice. We would also love to hear from you if there are any benefits that you personally have experienced and would like to add to this list let us know.

Who or what has been triggering you? Observing from the seat of Consciousness

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Has everything and everyone has been triggering you lately? Can’t seem to escape it?  Well that’s because you can’t continue to ignore your triggers. You can’t run anymore. They are are in there deeply seated in the unconscious just waiting for you to tend to them so that they don’t manifest into something much worse.

So let’s take a look at this. Think of who or what has been triggering you lately. It is normal to play the “he/she made me feel this way” card and the “they shouldn’t have done that” game, but that only creates more pain. So why are you feeding pain with more pain? Sounds counter productive doesn’t it? Instead of shifting the blame onto that person or situation. Why don’t we look within instead?

The only reason we are being triggered is because there is something in us that wants to heal. What is causing us this pain or discomfort by this person is simply an opportunity for us to heal. THEY ARE JUST THE CATALYST. If we can shift our awareness from “they made me feel this way” instead to “why did I allow this persons behavior to disrupt my own inner peace?” “where does it come from in my past that is triggering me and what can I do to work on in myself?” “Why am I blaming them when I am truly responsible for my own thoughts and behaviors that make me feel this way?”, “How can I be a better person?” “How can I be a happier person consistently and not just when things are going my way?” “How can I retain my inner peace even when storms surround me?”

You might have to just grin and bear through it, but you might also be able to figure your way around it if you can just figure out why — and who the person is behind this process, and how to befriend them.

Instead of condemning these people who “hurt” us, what if we send them love for subconsciously helping us. Thank them for being a catalyst to our inner path of healing. They are not deliberately hurting us. People do not wake up every day looking to hurt others. That is our perception and may be a belief system. So if we shift our perception and send them love instead of condemning them, the hurt will go away. These scenarios might stop attracting into our lives. We have all hurt someone in our lives without even knowing it, simply by a word or an action and we don’t notice because it is not something that would have hurt us… but it hurts them because of their past experiences and beliefs. Most of the things that are happening are really happening around us in the background, to them, not to us. But we choose to believe they are happening to us. So we have a choice to let it go or hold on to it. Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. We don’t have to like it… it’s just easier if we do. Most people’s reactions to obstacles are resistance, which leads to annoyance, frustration, despair, futility, or anger. Dig yourself out of that hole one shovel at a time, find your light again and let it shine like the marvelous you that you are!

We are all humans, all on the path to enlightenment, living and learning lessons along the way. We are all lost somewhere or another. None of us came with a manual. We all need to look at each other as brothers and sisters and have compassion for one another. Underneath our skin and ego we all have a heart, a higher self, and we all have blood running through our veins. We all need love patience and understanding as we figure out this thing called life and as we figure out how to be a better person each step of the way. Every single one of us has some form of a mountain to climb. We all face adversities, none worse than others, just different. What if we stop making it about “me” and treat others the way we would want to be treated back. If they are not loving you the way you would like, so what? Love them back even harder. They probably are struggling with their own self love. If you are not treated the way you would like to be treated, get honest with yourself and ask yourself how have I been treating others or even more importantly, how have I been treating myself? Have I been showing myself love and kindness and compassion or have I been to hard and unforgiving on myself?

Some people experience a lot of hurt at the beginning or their lives and some experience it here or there. We can’t discount what other people are going through because we will never understand the life that they are living because we are not in it. We are all acting and responding according to how we think we should be according to our circumstances. At the end of the day, there’s really no right or wrong. It’s just perception. We should always be doing WHAT IS BEST FOR US. If we don’t make ourselves a priority and forget to give ourselves the love we need, we will not have it in us to give to anyone else. At the end of the day we all just want the same things. We want to experience joy and peace. We want to love and be loved without walls. We all want to give and receive. We are all seeking our purpose in life. We all want to be happy. So why can’t we love one another and extend compassion, understanding and kindness? Why can’t we support and build each other up rather than condemn and compete and judge? We are all the same at the end of the day. We are one. We come from one consciousness, so we are just in fact hurting ourselves.

If someone is going through something we don’t understand, or someone is behaving in a way that we don’t like, we could instead try to understand why. Put our self in their shoes, in their situation. We do not know why they do the things they do because we have not lived the life they did. This is why we are all unique individuals. We all had a different life, different parents, different belief systems, different traumas, different things bring us joy, different things trigger our pain; some things trigger one person whereas another person might not even blink an eye to the same scenario. YOU are responsible for how you are feeling inside, no one else. That’s a really tough thing to come to terms with and we naturally want to resist it because its uncomfortable. If you are giving people your power, that’s on you, not them. Now were aware, but how do we shift it? Contain your energy, don’t give it away. When negative situations come up where you are feeling hurt, come back inside yourself. Breathe. Meditate.Go to yoga. Ask yourself why is this happening? What did this trigger inside of me from my past and how can I heal it? Then, you send that person love instead…because we are all just humans having a human existence, doing the best we can with what we know and the skills we have been given that have been passed down by past generations. Heal these things in yourself, love yourself, have compassion for yourself, and you will heal all the generations before you.

MEL
xox

This originally appeared in Mel’s blog on http://www.melaniecosens.com

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