Our good friends over at SUPER-A MAGAZINE has teamed up with Yoga Alliance Professionals to collaborate in a Special Yoga Edition featuring health and fitness experts, practitioners, coaches, healers, and teachers. It has a wealth of informative, thought-provoking, and amusing articles on all things relating to fitness, health, psychology, and wellbeing.
The Editor Wayne Lèal said a lot has changed since 1894 when Swami Vivekananda – the man seen as responsible – brought Yoga to the West.
Today millions of people worldwide regularly roll out their yoga mats to practice a tradition that was once the preserve of Hindu holy men.
Search ‘”#yoga’”, and you will find 92.6 million posts of people – including ‘”celebrities’” – contorting their bodies into a pretzel shape in all sorts of photoshop-filtered locations. Welcome to the world of social media yoga, the acrobatic, gymnastic-style poses tailored for Instagram.
Yoga is not about attaining dramatic poses; the benefits derived come from a consistent and mindful practice of postures that progressively and gently physically challenge you.
Lèal said, “’We live in an automated world ruled by science and technology, such that modern man entirely depends on it. When you compare Yoga with other exercises – which often provide only muscular and cardio-vascular fitness – Yoga gives an overall development beyond the training of superficial skeletal muscles.
Swathes of yoga enthusiasts consider a career change as the discipline’s popularity has become a growing industry.
Even though the world of Yoga has several alliances, wheels and federations, you don’t legally need a qualification to teach Yoga. I chose Yoga Alliance Professionals (‘YAP’, formerly Yoga Alliance UK). It is the largest organisation (non-profit accreditation) for Yoga Teachers and Trainers in the UK.”
YAP says, “Yoga is multi-dimensional, and its scope has increased in modern life. Yoga is an escape for the ‘modern’ man who has become a victim of everyday stress. It is time to encourage Yoga to be an integral part of our health care systems. If more people practiced Yoga, they would be physically, mentally and spiritually healthier.”’
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