Actually, HATHA YOGA is also known as the RIGHT HANDED PATH OF TANTRA. Are you really practising ASHTANGA YOGA or is it SAPTANGA YOGA ? HATHA YOGA = the RIGHT PATH OF TANTRA)? Here is a link to a great chat on these topics I just had with James Gopala on his podcast Gopala Yoga There are TWO SIDES OF …
Can you inhale 1 minute then exhale for 1 minute?
“It is only if you can somehow reduce your resting minute ventilation to less that one full breath per minute (or ideally one full breath every two or more minutes) that the benefits of this type of practice really begin to show up.” Simon Borg-Olivier. My regular morning breath-control sequence for the last few years is to very slowly breathe …
Control your tongue!
* I love doing tongue exercises. They are beneficial for you in so many ways. * The tongue is like the diaphragm in a special way. It is a ‘bridge’ between conscious and unconscious. * The tongue is also the end of the acupuncture meridians for the kidney. * It is often said that your ‘breathing’ can be a link …
My best meditation ever – Simon Borg-Olivier
SCIENCE EXPERIMENT: My best meditation ever after first holding my breath in for 6 minutes: My breathing was scientifically tested in a laboratory at RMIT University. I was hooked up to a calorimeter with a gas mask to measure energy use in terms of the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels In my expired air. THE EXPERIMENT: 1. Breathe more than …
Hillary is doing yoga!
Hillary is doing yoga! What I said to the SMH about this: I was just interviewed for the Sydney Morning Herald by excellent Journalist Sarah Berry about the story that Hillary Clinton has been doing alternate nostril breathing to calm her. She made a lot of claims about the supposed benefits and a few people have also asked me what …
RE POST: Breathing (Part 1): How to breathe to help your spine, internal organs and energy levels
In this blog I will be discussing the the physical and physiological effects of breathing. There are two main reasons we breathe. The main reason is the physiological reason of getting oxygen into our cells. Perhaps surprisingly to many people the best way to achieve this is to safely breathe as little as possible (hypoventilation) to stimulate the Bohr effect …
Moving Actively into Postures Can give Strength and Flexibility Without Tension or Stretching
by Simon Borg-Olivier Active movements are the more traditional way to come into hatha yoga postures. These are movements that are done by the muscles that would be used to enter a posture without the assistance of external forces such as gravity, momentum, or one limb pulling on another limb. These movements can give you most of the purported benefits …
Are you doing your yoga for now, or are you doing exercise, so you can do yoga later?
By Simon Borg-Olivier MSc BAppSc (Physiotherapy) Most people in the world of modern yoga are not actually doing yoga while they are engaged in the activities of posture, movement, and breathing, but instead, they are doing exercise or having a workout, which is often painful, or at least uncomfortable, and after which they are often tired, and hungry. This is …
Don’t Lock Your Core … Move From Your Core
Be firm but calm. Move from your ‘core’. Breathe from your ‘core’. Open your ‘heart’ from your ‘core’. In this blog we discuss how to move towards advanced postures safely and effectively. More importantly, we discuss how, if you learn to move in the way described here, you don’t need to do advanced postures to get the main benefits of yoga on …
Breathing (Part 2): Passive Seated Pranayama: Generate Internal Energy by Doing Less than Nothing
With a good understanding of the anatomy and physiology of breathing, it is possible to create energy by doing less than nothing. That is to say that if you think doing nothing means simply lying down and relaxing then you can actually do less than nothing by breathing less than you would normally do in that situation. According to popular …