STANDING DEEP BREATHING:

Pranayama series 

Benefits:

-Yoga is the only exercise that expands the lungs and rib cage. This deep breathing teaches you to use your full lung capacity. It increases circulation to the whole body, preparing the muscles for action. Also helpful for relieving mental stress and irritability. 

Benefits:

-Helps lower-back pain, constipation, obesity of the stomach, bronchial distress and scoliotic and frozen shoulders.

-Works the deltoid, trapezius and pectorals major muscles, and the hamstrings.

-As you stretch in this pose, your body traces the smooth arc of a half moon.

Benefits:

-Helps counteract damage of bad posture.

-Relieves back pain, bronchial distress, scoliotic deformities, tennis elbow, frozen shoulder.

-Realigns the spine.

-Promotes proper kidney function.

-Helps with digestive function, eliminating constipation and flatulence.

-Understanding why and how back-bending is beneficial for the spine is a challenge for many yoga students. For many, back-bending is an emotionally charged, challenging and often uncomfortable part of practice. However despite its discomforts back-bending can be one of the most therapeutic parts of a yoga practice.

-The Hands to Feet Pose increases the flexibility of the spine and the sciatic nerves and of most of the tendons and ligaments of the legs. It strengthens the biceps of the thighs and calves. 

-It also greatly improves the blood circulation in the legs and to the brain, and strengthens the rectus abdominus, gluteus maximus, oblique, deltoid, and trapezius muscles. It firms the waist, hips, abdomen, buttocks, and thighs.

-Helps to align the entire skeletal system, opens the pelvic area, relieves joint pain, sciatica and arthritis of the knees.

-Strengthens and shapes the lower body, improves flexibility in the toes and ankles. Works the quadriceps and deltoids.

-Improves mobility in the pelvic gridle and all 12 major joints. Increases body alignment and function of the central nervous system.

-Stimulates sexual energies and energizes the body

-The eagle symbolizes the triumph of the spirit over intellect. When you find your balance in this pose, it will bring you great strength of focus.

 Benefits:

-Improves concentration and balances mood swings. Stretches the sciatic nerve. Reduces diabetes. Strengthens the back muscles and nerves. Works the muscular, skeletal, reproductive and digestive systems.

-Balance to focus. All balancing postures cultivate concentration. 

If you're steady on your feet, you are more likely to maintain a focused mind.

Benefits: 

-Increase circulation to the heart and lungs. Improves elasticity of the spine. Helps lower-back pain. Opens the diaphragm and lungs. Tones the arms and legs. Relieves cramps and gives the body grace.

-Meditate in a balance. To hold a balance such as Standing bow with poise and focus, try simply to "be" in the moment: do nothing but watch your breathing.

 Benefits:

-Bikram calls this "heart attack prevention". Increases blood flow over the entire body. Clears the arteries. Strengthens the heart, lungs, kidney and spleen. Stretches the spine. Builds the leg muscles. Good for varicose veins. Clear deposits of fat and burns calories.

Benefits:

-Helps constipation, abdominal obesity, and hyperacidity. Increases circulation to the brain and the adrenal gland. Improves function of the abdominal organs. Helps to relieve depression.

-Holding forward bends for longer than usual and emphasizing the exhalation aids digestion and detoxification. It also induces calm at the end of a long day, switching on the destressing parasympathetic nervous system, which aids elimination.

Benefits:

-Helps chemical imbalances in the system, colitis, constipation, hip and back pain, spondylitis, general mobility and menstrual disorder. Good for the heart and kidneys. Cuts calories, stabilizes metabolism. Slims the hips, helps to improve cellulite and chronic obesity.

-This pose bends your body to resemble a triangle, opening up your entire front side and thus encouraging a harmonious flow of prana.

-Emphasis on physical balance, a feeling of poise, quick movements 

such as jumping into the next phase, and correct focus.

Benefits:

-Profoundly balances the thyroids. Supports the sciatic nerve. Works the endocrine, reproductive and digestive systems. Works the endocrine, illiosoas, helps migraines.

Benefits:

-Returns blood circulation to normal and teaches complete relaxation.

-Relax to let go..

Stress causes the body's sympathetic nervous system to trigger a "fight or flight" response, diverting energy away from your internal organs to allow you to either fight or run away. This negativity affects your body's digestive and excretory functions.

-Asanas and meditation switch on the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps these systems to function smoothly.

Benefits:

-Cures and prevents flatulence. Improves flexibility of the hip joints and firms the abdomen, thigh and hips.

-The energy of elimination. Yogis teach that Apana vayu, the body's downward-moving energy of expulsion, is located in your pelvis, legs and feet, and by enhancing this energy, you detox the body.

-By massaging your internal organs, this pose stimulates digestion and elimination. 

Benefits:

-Maintains the body in perfect condition. Increases spinal strength and flexibility. Helps backache, lumbago, rheumatism and arthritis. Strengthens deltoids, trapezius and triceps.

-Like a snake, the spine should be moved from end to end. When the head moves, the movements is transmitted to the tail.

Benefits:

-Maintains the body in perfect condition. Increases spinal strength and flexibility. Helps backache, gout, slipped disc, sciatica, lumbago, rheumatism and arthritis. Firms buttocks and hips. Helps tennis elbow.

Benefits:

-Maintains the body in perfect condition. Increases spinal strength and flexibility. Helps straighten rounded spines. Helps intestines, liver, kidneys and spleen. Relieves backache.

Benefits:

-Strengthens and improves flexibility of the lower spine, knees and ankle joints. Helps to cure sciatica, gout, varicose veins, and rheumatism in the legs. Helps to cure and prevent hernias.

Benefits:

-Cures digestion and stretches the lower part of the lungs, increasing blood circulation to the brain. Firms the abdomen and thighs. Increases the flexibly of the hip joints, scapula, deltoids, triceps and latissimus dorsi muscles.

Benefits:

-Strengthen muscles in the back and shoulders. Produces maximum compression of the spine, stimulating the nervous system. Improves flexibility of the neck and spine. Slims the abdomen and waistline. Relieves backache.

Emotional Release:

-To restore your zest for life when you feel worn down, practice camel pose. This backward bend intensely stretches the front of the body, releasing the negative emotions we store there- a cleansing that frees up space for renewed energy.

Benefits:

-Stretches the spine. Helps maintain mobility and elasticity of the spine and back muscles. Nurtures the nervous system and brain. Helps cure depression, diabetes, colds, sinus problems, chronic tonsillitis, sore throats and strep throat. Good for the thyroid, parathyroid and larynx.

Benefits:

Helps to balance the blood sugar level, especially good for diabetes. Good for the immune system stimulates the thymus, circulation to the liver, spleen, pancreas, thyroid, thymus and intestines. Relieves chronic diarrhea.

-Do Janushirasasana to nourish your mind. Sit on the floor, exhaling, fold over your leg and reach to your feet. Do both sides.

Benefits:

-Increases circulation and nutrition to spinal nerves, veins, and tissues. Help to cure lumbago and rheumatism of the spine, improves digestion, removes flatulence from the intestines, and firms the abdomen, thighs, and buttocks.

 -According to Hindu legend, Matsyendra, an ancient yoga teacher, performed a version of this pose for the deity, Shiva. It releases tension in the spine while balancing the left and right sides of the body.

-A flexible mind and an inflexible spine can rarely be found together. If the body is tied in a knot, so are the mind and emotions. However, with sufficient depth of insight it can be recognized that what has been twisted can also be untwisted.

FINAL BREATHING: 

Kapalbhati