What is Vinyasa Yoga?

What is Vinyasa Yoga? A Short Introduction For Beginners

Vinyasa yoga is a Sanskrit term. It’s one of many types of yoga and can be translated as “to arrange something in a special way”. In Vinyasa, different yoga poses are combined into a continuous flow – also called asana. It’s a dynamic form of yoga, almost like a kind of dance. According to Wikipedia, the term “Vinyāsa” can also be used to reference a style of yoga practiced as one breath, tied to one movement.

Eventually, the goal is to synchronise your movement with your breath, creating a balance between your body and your mind. Because of its dynamic nature, Vinyasa Yoga is also often called Vinyasa Flow, or simply Flow Yoga.

Vinyasa Yoga is one of the most popular types of yoga and comes in many forms. Depending on your yoga teacher, classes might be taught at a faster or slower pace, depending on the particular style and preference of the instructor. That’s why it is important for you to find a yoga instructor that you can connect and feel comfortable with.

The Benefits of Vinyasa Yoga

There are countless health benefits that come with practicing Vinyasa Flow. With a regular practice, you will not only feel your muscles strength increase and your body becoming more flexible, but it will help you cleanse your body by sweating out toxins. On a mental level, you will experience an increased ability to focus, a clearer mind and a significant decrease in stress levels. Vinyasa Yoga has proven to reduce anxiety levels and even heal depression in many people who practice regularly.

Vinyasa yoga is excellent for beginners, but offers many pathways for advanced yogis as well. It might take a number of classes to get used to synchronising your breath and your movement; but don’t let that discourage you from continuing. Eventually, you will manage to take your mind off the breathing, as your body starts to take care of it for you, and focus more on getting deeper into the yoga poses to amplify the benefits.

 

Vinyasa Yoga Sequence

An example of a Vinyasa Yoga Sequence (Asana).

 

Get Started with Vinyasa Yoga

You don’t have to be overly flexible to get started with yoga either, as you might think. The entire reason we do yoga is to become more flexible and to strengthen our bodies. In time, you will be able to practice more complex sequences that focus on different parts of your body. If your ever feel like you can’t keep up with certain poses, a good yoga instructor will guide you and provide you with variations that are suitable for your particular level, age and body size.

If you don’t have your own yoga mat when you first start out, don’t worry. Most yoga studios, like here at Love Life. Love Yoga. we always have spare mats that you are welcome to borrow at any time.

Curious? Come practice with us!

Our Bundaberg yoga studio is located at Level 1, 161 Bourbong Street, right in the heart of Bundaberg CBD.

 

Are you experiencing pain in your neck, shoulders or back?

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Watch how yoga has helped these Bundaberg locals improve their lives

 

Bali Bliss Yoga Retreat – Discovering blissful Ubud with LLLY

Bali Bliss Yoga Retreat 2017

Ever wondered what it’s like to come along to one of our luxury yoga retreats? Listen to some of our members who share their experience at our recent Bali Bliss yoga retreat in Ubud.

Visiting Bali

Lapped the warm waters of the Indian Ocean, Bali is but one of 17,500 islands in the Indonesian archipelago, yet even among its colourful neighbours, it stands alone in its lushness and incomparable beauty. Considered Bali’s cultural hub, the hilltop town of Ubud has long served as a home to yoga enthusiasts and artisans. It’s known for ancient temples, serene palaces and adventurous wild jungles. The island’s mysticism and its spiritual and eclectic culture are sure to get you hooked when you travel to Bali.

Bali Bliss Yoga Retreat

Surrounded by rice paddies in the village of Pengosekan, the award-winning resort is located only a short walking distance to Ubud – the cultural capital of Bali. The famous Monkey Forest is a ten-minute walk and Ubud market is fifteen minutes away. Each garden villa comes with a private pool to make your stay truly blissful.

The retreat experience provides a wonderful balance of customised retreat activities, including two yoga sessions per day, a fully equipped fitness centre and you will have lots of me-time!

The Lonely Planet about Bali

“The mere mention of Bali evokes thoughts of a paradise. It’s more than a place; it’s a mood, an aspiration, a tropical state of mind. Ubud is the heart of Bali, a place where the spirit and culture of the island are most accessible. It shares the island’s most beautiful rice fields and ancient monuments with east and west Bali.” ~ Lonely Planet

Despite what some people think about Bali, it’s a beautiful island and absolutely safe to visit. If this is your first time travelling to South East Asia and you would like to do a little more research on travelling to Bali, we recommend you visit the Ubud Travel Forum on TripAdvisor.com.

For upcoming workshops & retreats, visit: https://bundyyoga.com.au/yoga-retreats/

Bundaberg Yoga Studio Now Using Artificial Intelligence To Help Its Members Reach Nirvana

From the ‘NOW’ into the future: A local Bundaberg yoga studio (Love Life Live Yoga) has started using artificial intelligence to help its customers find the answers to all their questions about yoga. AVA is the name of the intelligent ChatBot that has taken over the business’s Facebook Page messenger, dealing with close to a hundred enquiries just in the past month alone. Whether customers are looking for pricing, class times or seek advice on which class to take, AVA is able to provide answers in real-time.

Bundaberg Yoga Studio - Yoga ChatBot AVA

ChatBot AVA answering all questions about yoga

Chat to AVA now, at m.me/lovellifeliveyoga

With big brands like Domino’s, Boost Juice and Virgin Australia moving into the ChatBot business, the Bundaberg yoga studio is wanting to stay ahead of time and ‘prepare for the future’ with its Siri-like virtual assistant.

“In a time where people want their questions answered in real-time, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with the large number of enquiries we’re receiving each day. AVA is a fantastic addition to our customer service team and our customers seem to be having a lot of fun chatting with her. AVA learns through her interaction with people and will get even better over time, even though she has already impressed us quite a bit” said David Lee-Schneider, marketing director & co-founder of Love Life. Live Yoga.

In the last decade, consumers have come to expect timely and relevant interactions with their preferred businesses. Facebook Messenger has quickly become the fastest growing messaging platform with over 1.2 billion users worldwide. Just since last year, the number of chatbots on Messenger has grown to over 100.000 with still only a small percentage of companies taking advantage of this new technology.

It is thought that chatbots like Apple’s Siri will quickly become the new standard for how we interact with devices and brands.

Boost Juice’s Facebook chatbot has shocked some people with its sometimes rude and obscene language. “We have programmed some manners into AVA to ensure she stays friendly and polite,” says the 33-year-old marketing strategist.

David Lee-Schneider is responsible for assisting a number of well-known Bundaberg businesses with their marketing, like the popular café Alowishus Delicious. “David is ‘the brain’ behind all our marketing and we will be introducing our own chatbot in the coming weeks,” said Tracey McPhee, the founder of Alowishus. When asked what the Alowishus chatbot will be called, she said: “we are still open for suggestions.”

To speak to AVA the ChatBot, simply message her on Facebook at m.me/lovellifeliveyoga.

Eat, Pray, Love & my dream of going to Bali

Since watching this beautiful movie, I have been wanting to follow Julia Roberts’ foot steps and visit Bali. In March I’m finally making this dream reality with our upcoming yoga retreat.

Come and join me at the Love Live Live Yoga Retreat 2017 in Ubud, Bali, where for a total of 8 days and 7 nights we will be staying at one of Ubud’s most serene 5-star luxury resorts, located just minutes away from the famous monkey forest and down town Ubud. And with two yoga sessions each day, you are sure to escape your daily routine and find inner peace and balance.

If you would like to find out more about our upcoming retreat, click here: https://bundyyoga.com.au/product/ubud/

What was your favourite part of the movie? Let me know in the comments below :)

 

If you haven’t seen the movie, be sure to check it out! Here is the plot…

Eat Pray Love

Liz Gilbert (Julia Roberts) is a modern woman on a quest to marvel at and travel the world while rediscovering and reconnecting with her true inner self in Eat Pray Love. At a crossroads after a divorce, Gilbert takes a year-long sabbatical from her job and steps uncharacteristically out of her comfort zone, risking everything to change her life. In her wondrous and exotic travels, she experiences the simple pleasure of nourishment by eating in Italy; the power of prayer in India, and, finally and unexpectedly, the inner peace and balance of love in Bali. Based on an inspiring true story, Eat Pray Love proves that there really is more than one way to let yourself go and see the world.

Community Beach Yoga Session at Moore Park Beach – Video by Pluggas

Video Credit: Pluggas.com

 

Sabby & Fisch from Pluggas came along to capture this beautiful community yoga session at Moore Park Beach, Austalia. Yoga enthusiasts and people who have never done yoga before from Bundaberg, Bargara, Childers and surroundings all got together for the love of yoga.

Keen to try a yoga class at our Bundaberg Yoga Studio? Click below to claim your free $25 yoga gift card to use at any of our yoga classes, workshops and retreats!

 

YOGA GAZE

“Learning to apply the mind to the gaze helps release stress, by allowing you to focus on things that are helpful and healthy,” says Annie Carpenter from SmartFlow Yoga.

A drishti (view or gaze) is a specific focal point that is employed during meditation or while holding a yoga posture. The ancient yogis discovered that where our gaze is directed our attention naturally follows, and that the quality of our gazing is directly reflected in the quality of our mental thoughts. When the gaze is fixed on a single point the mind is diminished from being stimulated by all other external objects. And when the gaze is fixed on a single point within the body, our awareness draws inwards and the mind remains undisturbed by external stimuli. Thus, the use of a drishti allows the mind to focus and move into a deep state of concentration. And the constant application of drishti develops ekagraha, single-pointed focus, an essential yogic technique used to still the mind.
In yoga postures, a drishti is used to deepen the primary movement of the pose, as well as to keep the mind engaged and focused. To use a drishti while in a yoga pose, simply select the point where your gaze is naturally directed by the alignment of the posture. The use of drishtis in yoga postures is to be developed slowly over time. First one must develop and focus on the alignment of pose, then the breath, and then finally the drishti. Using a drishti is especially helpful if you are holding a posture for an extended period of time, and will be enormously helpful while practicing balancing poses.
The benefits of building that stamina, however, are huge. Cultivating drishti doesn’t just help in class; it has profound effects off the mat as well. Learning to apply the mind to the gaze helps release stress, by allowing you to focus on things that are helpful and healthy, says Annie Carpenter. “It lets us penetrate through delusion and begin to understand the nature of reality and who we are.”

Drishti Tips

As with many spiritual techniques, with drishti there is a danger of mistaking the technique for the goal. You should dedicate your use of the body (including the eyes) to transcending your identification with it. So when you look at an object during your practice, don’t focus on it with a hard gaze. Instead, use a soft gaze, looking through it toward a vision of cosmic unity. Soften your focus to send your attention beyond outer appearance to inner essence.

You should never force yourself to gaze in a way that strains your eyes, brain, or body. In many seated forward bends, for example, the gazing point may be the big toes. But many practitioners, at certain stages in their development, must take care not to create such an intense contraction of the back of the neck that this discomfort overwhelms all other awareness. Rather than forcing the gaze prematurely, you should allow it to develop naturally over time.