100 Benefits of Zazen Meditation

Yoga Journal. The popular yoga magazine, located at , has a host of useful resources for yoga practitioners, both students and teachers.

Moving Into Stillness. This is a wonderful discussion board for anyone interested in the world of yoga. This link, , will take you to yoga expert Erich Shiffman’s website, full of useful resources, and from there you can click on the link “Join Our Discussion!” to enter the discussion forum.

Resources for Yoga and Climbing

• Yoga for Climbers DVD, with Andria Baldovin. 
• The Self-Coached Climber, by Dan Hague and Douglass Hunter
• Conditioning for Climbers, by Eric Horst
• : A yoga website with a yoga & rock climbing blog. Not too many recent entries but the older entries are definitely worth a look.
• : A cool website all about yoga and climbing (and about yoga generally). Good articles and features.

Resources for Yoga and Mental Health

: A innovative approach to yoga developed by Bo Forbes, based in the greater Boston area. Bo offers regular trainings in therapeutic yoga, with a particular emphasis on using yoga to address anxiety, depression, and psychological trauma.

: Sarah Powers’ unique blend of yin and yang yoga, Buddhism, and western psychology. Sarah has a wonderful way of giving people helpful tools for healing mind, body, and heart through her wonderful approach to yoga.

: Iyengar places a great emphasis on posture and alignment. One of the oldest schools of Hatha yoga, Iyengar teachers make considerable use of props in their classes to help students achieve correct alignment within each asana.

:  Karma yoga, with its roots in the , is an approach to yoga which emphasizes selfless action, that is, service to others. It may be service to God, or to other people, but it should be ego-free, without attachment to outcome, reward, or recognition. Practitioners of other types of yoga may also follow the path of Karma Yoga by incorporating service to others into their lives. Although some studios have adopted the name “Karma Yoga”, they generally offer asana (posture-based) yoga; historically, Karma Yoga was about a life of service, not the physicality of yoga poses.

: Kripalu is both a form of Hatha yoga and a beautiful yoga retreat center in western Massachusetts (see ). Kripalu yoga emphasizes breathwork (pranayama), traditional yoga asanas, and meditation. Within the approach of Kripalu, less emphasis is placed on attaining some idealized form of a pose, with teachers instead more interested in helping each student explore how to make each pose work most effectively given the strengths and vulnerabilities of each person’s body.

: Kundalini yoga emphasizes spiritual, psychological, and physical development. Aims include fostering greater self-awareness and spiritual enlightenment, in large part by awakening kundalini energy or life force (prana) and moving it from the base of the spine up through the chakras to the crown of the head. Kundalini Yoga makes extensive use of breath work (pranayama), as well as meditation, asana, and other techniques.

: Vinyasa Flow is an eclectic approach to yoga that emphasizes smooth, flowing movements into and out of asanas, along with the coordination of breath and movement. Vinyasa Flow classes often have a rhythmic quality, and (as in some other approaches) many teachers make use of music to help generate energy and flow in their classes. As in other approaches, many Vinyasa Flow teachers also utilize meditation, chanting, and pranayama in their classes. However, many other teachers omit these more spiritual and psychological elements, focusing instead on the physical experience of the asana practice.

: This approach entails holding poses for several minutes in order to gradually stretch the connective tissue (ligaments and fascia), in order to create greater flexibility, and within a Chinese medicine framework, facilitate greater flow of chi through the body’s meridians.  Yin Yoga practice is slow paced, but by no means easy. See the work of , , and to learn more about Yin Yoga.