Today we will get to know what are the categories and systems of yoga and how we can quickly refine and improve our learning?
Hatha Yoga
Hatha Yoga is also known as traditional yoga. In the word Hatha, “ha” means the sun and “tha” means the moon. It represents the balance of male and female, day and night, yin and yang, cold and heat, and any other complementary opposites.
Asana practice is slow, gentle, comfortable and quiet. The training is achieved through body posture, breathing and relaxation techniques. It is beneficial to the nervous system, glands and internal organs, and is designed to promote rhythmic breathing and develop the body’s potential. Consistent practice enhances the health and youthfulness of the body and purifies the mind. Positive changes in the body lead to relaxation and calmness in the mind, and the ability to deal positively with external stress and distress. It is a non-competitive practice that emphasizes the feeling of each asana rather than perfection. The whole person is completely focused and the body and mind work in harmony, bringing a sense of well-being to the body and mind.
Hatha yoga is best suited for zero-basic yoga learners. A sustained practice will provide a solid foundation for future asana practice in all different schools of yoga, helping you to reach the highest level of yoga, the ideal state.
Yin Yoga
Yin yoga is a school of yoga practice that combines the strengths of medical science with the essence of Chinese Taoism and martial arts, and is loved by many people. An inch of tendon growth is a decade of life! Yin yoga is the use of yoga asanas, where each pose is held still for a period of time to stretch the deep connective tissues (including fascia) in the hip, thigh, pelvis, and lower back areas – the locations where the meridians are located, as they are called in Chinese medicine. Yin yoga practice unblocks the meridians, promotes blood circulation and nourishes the qi and blood. It also promotes the secretion of synovial fluid, which nourishes and protects the joints. The practice emphasizes the stretching of the body, with slow movements and long, focused periods of time within one’s own limits, allowing the practitioner to achieve deeper relaxation and stretching, and to combat stiffness and aging, allowing the body and mind to grow younger and younger.
Yin yoga is suitable for men, women and children, as well as people with blood loss, physiological disorders, menopausal women, stiff hip joints and ligaments, and anxious personalities.
Iyengar Yoga
Iyengar Yoga was founded and taught by B.K.S Iyengar, an Indian yoga master who grew up weak and sickly. In his later years, due to a car accident, he could no longer practice yoga as he did before. This is a practice that emphasizes the physiological structure of the body and the function of the bones and muscles, emphasizing the precision and accuracy of the postures, correcting and restoring the body, as well as improving your yoga practice. Whether you are a beginner, stiff, injured or experienced practitioner, you will benefit from Aiyang Yoga.
Iyengar Yoga is suitable for beginners and stiff people.
Flow Yoga
Flow yoga is a modern and popular style of yoga that draws on the vinyasa tandem style of Ashtanga yoga, with a creative and enjoyable asana arrangement. A flowing yoga class not only stretches your body and mind, but also helps you burn a lot of calories and help you lose weight and shape up. It is a fun and challenging practice that will enhance your physical strength and flexibility, improve your responsiveness and concentration, and improve your breathing and sleep quality, as well as your physical and mental health. Through the teacher’s guidance, you can practice effectively and benefit your body. At the same time, you can also feel the beauty of melody and body movement. Suitable for people: like to sweat, like to challenge, like to innovate, come to flow yoga!
Ashtanga Yoga
Ashtanga yoga is one of the most ancient and popular styles of yoga practice in the world. It is known for its rigor and science, with a fixed sequence that cannot be changed or innovated at will. This challenging power yoga can quickly improve physical strength and concentration, focusing on the synchronization of movement and breathing. The intense internal heat generated by this exercise cleanses all parts of the body, keeping it free from disease and giving the practitioner a lighter, stronger body.
Ashtanga is a slightly more intense exercise and is suitable for people who are physically fit or already have a regular yoga practice.
Physiotherapy Yoga
Yoga therapy is the application of yoga methods to healing. Yoga therapy and Ayurveda are sister disciplines. Ayurveda is the discipline of Vedanta (Ayurveda) that provides theoretical explanations of health and disease. It also gives us practical advice on how to maintain health and treat disease to achieve a long and healthy life. The theory of Ayurveda enables us to understand how and why to use yoga as a method of healing.
Yoga therapy is a yogic approach to disease, through the scientific and rational yoga practice, to relieve pain and eliminate disease, through the cervical spine, lumbar spine, joints; organs, senses; muscles, bones and other parts of the body and step-by-step conditioning exercises, with effective prevention and rehabilitation of disease.
We can use yoga to fundamentally improve our health, prevent disease and control and treat it.
Because yoga physiotherapy needs to develop yoga programs according to the different physical conditions of the practitioners, so the requirements of yoga physiotherapy teachers are very high, and the professionalism should be strong enough.
The above is the classification of yoga, so here comes the question!
We often see some other yoga categories in the market, such as: hot yoga, Pilates, aerial yoga, etc. What are these?
Hot Yoga
Hot Yoga is also called Hot Yoga or Hot Power Yoga. It was founded by Indian yoga master BikramChoudhury and his wife on the basis of Hatha Yoga, which is to do yoga in a high temperature environment of 38℃-40℃.
It consists of 26 kinds of stretching movements, is a flexible exercise, can improve the flexibility of the spine, at the same time, it is through some twisting and bending stretching static movements, direct stimulation of the nerve and muscle system, through sweating can take away the toxins on the surface of the body, purify the nervous system, hot yoga high temperature environment can replace a lot of hard practice, ordinary people go into the sweat, even without any practice, many celebrities rely on hot yoga to lose weight.
Hot yoga for weight loss, detoxification, sculpting the body have very good effect, is a more popular innovative practice method. The muscles and tendons are stiff at room temperature, and in the high temperature environment, you will find that the body flexibility is surprisingly good, thus creating confidence in yourself. This is one of the main features of hot yoga. Long-term practice of hot yoga can not only help you lose weight, but also relieve migraine, back pain, cervical pain and gastrointestinal disorders.
Aerial Yoga
Also known as anti-gravity yoga, is a new type of yoga that combines the three principles of gravity, centripetal force and anti-gravity, using a rope hammock as a pavilion, combining the traditional Hatha yoga asana with Chinese massage techniques, the roundness of Tai Chi, the power of Pilates, the elegance of dance and yoga asana, helping practitioners to complete all the asanas of aerial yoga with half the effort.
Practitioners feel the body weight, deepen the stretching, resistance and orthostatic ability of the asanas, with efficient relaxation, healing, slimming effect, more fun and interactive.
Unlike traditional yoga inversions, the upward movement of the anti-gravity class is done in weightlessness. Because there is zero pressure on the spine, anti-gravity yoga also has excellent medical benefits,” says Kutolo.
Ball Yoga
Ball yoga is a new yoga fitness exercise combining traditional yoga asana and fitness ball, the movements are arranged for the abdomen, back, waist and other major parts, practice with slow, rhythmic breathing to stretch, squeeze and other movements, so that the muscles get an effective massage, relaxation, fat-burning effect, but also a fitness exercise to improve the ability to focus, reduce mental stress, enhance the endurance of limbs and spine, because it is suitable for all kinds of people’s physical exercise, the movements are easy to learn, is a convenient, effective, fun fitness activities.
Pilates
Pilates is a form of exercise and skill named after the German Joseph Hubertus Pilates. Pilates created this unique set of training movements, movement skills called Contrology.
It is mainly to train the body’s deep small muscles, maintain and improve the appearance of normal posture, achieve body balance, create the range of motion and mobility of the trunk and limbs, emphasize the control of the core muscles, strengthen the brain on the limbs and skeletal muscle tissue nerve sensing and domination, and then with the correct breathing method to carry out a coordinated exercise of the whole body.
This course is mainly for the abdominal muscles, hip groups, shoulders, back and other parts of the muscle training. Regular Pilates exercises can correct body posture, relax the waist, neck, solve shoulder problems, tighten the arms, abdominal flaccid muscles. Now many professional athletes also use Pilates exercises to avoid sports injuries.
Speaking of which, you may have noticed that when we talk about Pilates, we only call it a sport, not yoga, because Pilates is not classified as yoga, but it has similarities with yoga, so it is not lacking as a good sport.
Dance Yoga
Dance Yoga is based on Jinju’s modern yoga system, Manju Yoga, which combines more yoga postures and dance elements. It is also a combination of music therapy, function and skill.
In the process of dance rhythm yoga practice, people can deeply feel the vitality and inspiration of life, and can enhance their temperament, shape their bodies and cultivate their emotions on the basis of ensuring a healthy balance. In the process of popularization and promotion, dance rhythm yoga is especially popular among urban white-collar workers, therefore, dance rhythm yoga is also called fashion yoga.
Kundalini Yoga
Kundalini Yoga is also known as the Yoga of the Snake King. Kundalini proves that there are 72,000 chakras around the human body, seven Brahma chakras, one main channel and a holy snake that has not yet awakened and is dormant. By opening the chakras, the life energy awakens the serpent and allows it to pass through all the Brahma chakras and reach the outside of the body, and once the Kundalini serpent emerges from the Brahma chakra at the top of the head, one can attain the supreme samadhi.
Kundalini Yoga is designed for all family members. Allowing the practitioner to enjoy a full family life. It increases the inner capacity to face the stresses of life with grace, while remaining youthful, beautiful and healthy.
Tantra Yoga
Tantra Yoga is also known as Mantra-Yana, Vidya-dhara-yana, Esoteric-yana, Phala-yana, and Vajra-yana. It is the product of a combination of some schools of Hindu Mahayana Buddhism and Brahmanism from the 7th to the 12th century AD.
In the mid to late 8th century, the famous Indian Tantric master, Vajrayana, came to Tibet and helped the Tibetan king, Chiksong Deutsen (755-797), who believed in Buddhism, to “subdue the demons” and defeat the primitive religion in Tibet. At the same time, Lotus brought the Vajrayana tantra of the Indra lineage, which contains the highest stage of the four tantric practices, into Tibet. After the extinction of Buddhism in India in the early 13th century, only Tibetan Buddhism retained the complete form of the four tantric practices. The Tibetan Tantric system was formed.
The physiological basis for the dual practice of the supreme yoga of Tantra, “Lakshmi and Karma”, is the doctrine of the three chakras and seven chakras and the “Juntan Liksha”. The so-called “Lakshmi dual movement” is the teaching and special practice of the Supreme Yoga Tantra. Its theoretical roots are in the Tantric Sutra and the Vajradhara Sutra. The Vajradhara Sutra and the Dhammapada are about the secret state of self-realization of the Buddha.
Tibetan yogas are characterized by complex mandala patterns (Yantra), detailed religious rituals, non-public content, guru empowerment, practice of using sexual energy to draw out life energy, practice of transforming matter, red teachings of great fulfillment, white teachings of great handprints, etc.
In fact, no matter what kind of yoga you are practicing, as long as you follow the most fundamental principles of yoga, and follow the correct method, you will eventually benefit.
Recommended reading:
1 Obstacle to weight loss – Playing on your phone before bed
