The benefits of yoga are vast, and can help the busiest of people unplug, unwind, and reconnect with themselves. It’s one of those activities you can do just about anywhere, be it home, gym, office, and now the airport.
Yesterday San Francisco International Airport (SFO) opened a dedicated yoga room within the concourse. It’s been deemed the first of its kind at any airport in the world. Located in terminal two near Virgin America, the yoga room has been well designed. The former storage closet offers a quiet, serene escape from the hustle of the terminal. Inside yogis will find chairs, yoga mats, and low dim lighting. The room cost SFO about $20,000, and they say their work isn’t done. There are plans to add felt-covered “rocks” to the room to inspire a Japanese Zen-garden ambiance later in the spring. Read Full Post >
Hastily responding to every cell phone beep, email alert ding and news feed notification bing are the familiar ways a lot of us spend our waking hours every day, whether we are at work, or worse, at home spending some down time with family.
“The speed at which information is coming at us can get overwhelming,” says Google’s Gopi Kallayil, a marketing manager for Google+. Kallayil, also a yoga teacher, says she sees more people in Silicon Valley, the heart of the high-tech industry, turning toward yoga and meditation as a way to find a centering reprieve from the stressful blitz of the fast-paced digital world.
With the physical and mental health of these computer-habituated people at risk, many high-tech industries have adopted wellness programs that go beyond a gym membership and a monthly massage. Recognizing the hyperactive tendencies of those caught in the whirlpool of tweets, status posts and microblogs, companies such as Google and Twitter have incorporated “urban-wellness” programs that include yoga and meditation specifically designed to allow people the time to unwind, unclutter, and most importantly, unplug.
“Twitter is really into this,” says Deborah Burkman, meditation teacher for Twitter. “There is a whole mindfulness program they’re trying to build there. Like a lot of companies, they’re concerned about the well-being of their employees and they’re big believers in trying to have people be consciously connected.”
If you haven’t quite found your fitness niche yet in the new year, maybe it’s time to look at yoga. Praised for its benefits ranging from fitness and weight loss to disease management and stress reduction, this ancient practice has become quite mainstream in the US over the past few years. “Yoga slows you down, keeps me calm,” Kathryn Budig told us, one of the brightest stars in the yoga community today.
More and more yoga studios are popping up in towns across the country, and a growing library of yoga DVDs from true experts are making the practice more accessible than ever. Kathryn Budig’s name can be found on both of these.
Originally from Kansas, and not quite 30, Budig is making quite an impression on the yoga industry. Now calling Santa Monica home, where her yoga studio is located, she’s steadfastly creating a growing yoga brand that shows just how open and fun the practice can be. She was even recently praised by Forbes Magazine’s Stephanie Taylor Christensen in a feature article that focused on her business acumen and less on her eye-catching yoga poses. Christensen called her “a savvy business woman who has built an enviable career that encompasses the goals that many strive for– but struggle to achieve: Getting paid for your passion, traveling, giving back to others, and keeping the mind and body healthy.”
Watch our interview to see why we named her as one of theFitness Stars to Watch in 2012 at Yahoo. You’ll learn more about Budig, including the major projects she has in the works this year with Gaiam, Rodale, and ToeSox, and what she calls the biggest trends in yoga this year.
A recent article published by the New York Times suggested the many ways yoga can wreck your body. While this is true, it is important to understand that injuries can be avoided. Without knowing much about yoga, especially the myriad ways yoga is practiced in our modern day society, one might read that article and take it as a reason to toss out their New Year’s resolution of trying a yoga class for the first time. But the reality is, yoga doesn’t do the body wrecking, you do, and it happens when you neither honor your limits nor trust in your abilities. Having a qualified yoga teacher also helps prevent needless wrecking and wrenching of our fragile bodies, but ultimately, we are our best teachers.
The bottom line is that with any type of physical activity we all must trust ourselves, our own inner teacher. There are times when it is appropriate to dig in a little deeper to move past self imposed limitations of movement, and there are times when it is completely acceptable to bow out of a pose or an exercise if it hurts. Also, no two styles of yoga are exactly the same. It is best to find one that fits your body type, rather than try to fit your body into a style that does not suit you.
While some yoga poses will be extremely inappropriate for you, some yoga poses are necessary to counter other poses in an effort to avoid muscle imbalance and instability. A qualified instructor will lead you in such a way that you have no choice but to listen to your body’s needs. You will know when too much is too much, and you will understand why some poses are needed to keep you aligned.
Many of us are well into our New Year’s resolutions by now and are moving forward with a level of enthusiasm that only happens in January. While some of us have set our intentions to achieve more and workout harder, some of us are striving to take care of our health by doing less.
We all know that being stressed out can cause a myriad of diseases. From deadly heart attacks to frustrating low back pain, stress is a word many of us would like to think of as something in the past. A lot of Americans are perpetually anxious and it is a good choice to slow down and take it easy for a change. Thankfully there are more and more places available beyond the typical yoga studio or massage parlor where one can experience some blissful down time.
At Raffa Yoga in Cranston, Rhode Island for example, members now have access to a 15,000 square foot mansion of leisure, equipped with seven heated therapy rooms to rest and experience mind-body healing. “When we relax, we are more ourselves,” says Christine Raffa, owner of Raffa Yoga and founder of Urban Sweat, a new destination where people can gather and get away from the turmoil of life.
Urban Sweat, an integral part of Raffa Yoga, began with the intention to offer more opportunity to improve health and well-being, not by adding more yoga to the schedule or increasing the intensity of classes, but by providing a space for deep relaxation. Recognizing that many cultures maintain rituals and gathering places to rest, detoxify and cleanse, Raffa thought it would be of great importance to stressed out Americans to have a place of their own as a refuge for healing.
