Types of Yoga

Types of Yoga


Take the time to learn and find out about the many types of yoga before you sign up for a class! 

There is yoga for physical strength, flexibility, cardio and much more.

 When I first started out, I thought yoga was just a form of physical exercise. However, there are types of yoga that can also be just meditation or acts of service or study.

My approach was to begin by finding a beginner class to improve my physical flexibility and strength.


Click here or scroll down to find out more about the types of yoga.

 Insights

Flexibility and Strength

Find a class that first improves your flexibility and strength.

After I quit my corporate job, I realised how inflexible I was, even though I had attended cardio classes such as Zumba.

I started off by attending a beginner class. It included asanas and some basic breathing exercises.

I did this for about six months, and my strength and flexibility significantly improved. 

Yoga Teacher

Ideally, find a teacher who understands the impact of yoga from a spiritual perspective. This will result in a deeper experience.

If this is not possible, it is absolutely fine, too, as every bit of yoga will help you heal your body, even if you don’t always understand how the healing is happening.

Timing

Try and do yoga first thing in the morning!

As I no longer had the pressure of work deadlines, I set myself a routine of rising at 5 AM and doing yoga for forty-five minutes before the children woke up. 

There is something incredibly therapeutic about waking up whilst the world sleeps and seeing the sunrise whilst doing your yoga!

The only downside was that I had to go to bed earlier. However, after a while, my body adjusted, and it just became a routine. 

It is a beautiful way to start your day!

If getting up early is not feasible in your circumstances, then don’t worry, whatever time you can squeeze in for some yoga is always a bonus.

 Don’t beat yourself up for not being able to always get up early and do a daily practice.

Change with Growth

Once you reach a certain stage of physical fitness, if you listen to your body, it will automatically tell you when you need to change to a different type of yoga class.

After about six months, I knew it was time to move to a more intermediate class with more variety and more advanced asanas..

I started to attend an intermediate yoga class in my community, as well to use some intermediate YouTube yoga videos to continue on my yoga journey. At home, I continued to do the breathing exercises I had learned. 

After about one year of doing asanas and breathing exercises (pranayama), I had reached my goal of improving flexibility, building strength and losing a lot of weight.   

I had slowly started to realise the powerful effects of yoga on my well-being and was starting to have an awareness of a different level of consciousness.

Sometimes, my intermediate class would turn into a moving meditation. (More on meditation in the Mind section.)

However, there was something in me which wanted to experience a much deeper spiritual form of yoga. I listened to my intuition and came across Isha’s Upa Yoga and Surya Kriya after seeing these classes in my local newspaper.

After attending the week-long class, I was completely in awe. The manner of the teaching was very particular and meticulous, with a focus on getting the postures and alignments absolutely right. The visualisation practice ensured we could remember exactly what we had to do when at home.

Although the movements were slow, the focused breathing with eyes closed during the poses led to a fantastic, deep meditative experience.

I highly recommend Upa Yoga and Surya Kriya yoga from Isha.

I made sure to include this style of yoga once or twice a week at home, along with my normal strength-and-flexibility yoga routine. My schedule was now two days of YouTube yoga, three days of my intermediate class, and two days of either Upa or Surya Kriya Yoga, depending on what my body felt like it needed on a particular day. 
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