Yoga Report » review

10 Great Reasons to Use a Camcorder in Yoga

johan flod — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:10:39 +0000

Professional athletes have done this for years to improve performance.
Make it look graceful. You will see all these small movements you do which takes away from the grace. Trust me it will look better and feel better when you do not wiggle your toes in the lotus pose
You can notice any imbalance in your body and correct it. As long as it is not in the skeleton and than it was good you saw it anyway so you can talk with a doctor
Having a personal trainer costs a lot of money and camcorders are constantly dropping in price and even a webcam will give you some feedback.
You have the possibility to upload to sites like Youtube and get comments from all over the world.
You can very easily go back and see your own progress over time.
It is a chance to accept yourself on how you look and the way your body is.
A cheap way to get an out of body experience
Share your experience with your friends and family
It is fun

Review: Yoga Teacher training in the North of Sweden

johan flod — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 11:57:40 +0000

Satyananda Yoga Sweden offers a 2 years yoga teaching training course. First i think it is misleading to say it is a 2 years course since the amount of teaching is just 2 months roughly.

The price is 80.8 Euro each day you stay in the Ashram ant the total for the course is 4672,364 Euro (58 days at the ashram). Just for the fun of it I made the comparison between the prices in India and in Sweden

Course in Yogic Studies – Four Months in Bihar Yoga Bharati, Munger, India is 1,200 Euro

4 Months at the Satyananda Ashram in Sweden would cost roughly 9720 Euro ( 120 days times 80.8 euro ).

The teacher training started with a week of introduction and we all got together in this big house in Bollnas, Sweden and cooked food together and off course did yoga. We had discussions as part of the schedule and the teaching training was only on theoretical level during this week. No hands on classes where you hold lectures to each other. They were clear to point out that the teaching was not supposed to be curing illness but rather to give relaxation and relieve stress. I felt in general that i was doing postures which would be great if I was 80 years old and had sever problems with my back. I was sitting in the padmasana posture one day and our main teacher told me that this posture is not good for the knees. This was a big suprise to me since I know people in India sit in this posture for months in a row. In general i did not feel that I was learning anything new regarding yoga and regarding the actual teaching part I was very alarmed that we did not actually held any lectures to each other. All of this was a bit alarming since I was paying 484 Euro for this week and I actually lost income because I was away from work. Maybe I am bit hard here but if it is an introduction week you should at least get a taste on how it is to teach to a group of people. We got copies from the Asana, Pranayama, Mudra , Bandha book and in general they were referring to different books by Satyananda. During this week I felt that I was doing practices that maybe are good if you are a total beginner but I for sure missed my daily program which I usually do at home.

The staff were friendly and the course was held in a very nice old swedish building. A lot of friendly people in the group and in general it was a very nice atmosphere in this place.

To sum up I think this is a great course for beginner since they can learn from the classes and they are happy with the level. If you want to go deep with your personal sadhana or want to become a full blown yoga teacher on all levels I think there are much better courses availible.

I do not write a full review of it because I only took part in the introduction week and I never enlisted for the full teaching course.

more info: satyananda yoga sweden (text in Swedish)

Review: The North of India and my sprint for enlightment

johan flod — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 14:29:25 +0000

I had been doing some evening courses with the Scandinavian School of Yoga and I had been fed the western view on yoga. What struck me in India was the strong colours, the smell in the air and the poverty that was so obvious. In all this poverty people were smiling in a friendly way and yoga seemed to be so many different things. I felt like a little ant and I was scared by all the people who tried to get me to stop in the streets and with the lonely planet in my hand I wanted to get to my target and reach enlightenment. Like every swede I wanted the train to be on time and I wanted the toilets to be clean.
My plan was to get to yoga niketan ashram and stay there for a while. Once there the place reminded me more of a prison camp with guards by the entrance and strict discipline all the way through. This was what I thought yoga should be. I struggled with my body and I was wet like from a shower after each session. One day we had ants and a lot of small animals in the bathroom and a women came from the managers house with what looked like an old DDT spraycan . After a little while all the small insects were dead and we did not dare to enter the room that day. For a reason I cannot describe with logic I was not happy with this place and from some other yoga practitioners we heard about a place called sivananda yoga kutir and we decided to give it a try.
The guy who greeted us in an informal and relaxed way at sivananda yoga kutir was the swami and he had a friendly sparkle in his eyes. It felt more like visiting a friend than being in a ashram. We really enjoyed the daily asanas and the walks in the countryside. The singing in the evening were spontaneous and a boy from the village was singing as loud as he could and I felt encouraged to sing and started to like it more and more. I felt like I could be myself in this place and I was really tempted to stay longer when the day to depart to Sweden came closer.

meditation at yoga kutir

Sivananda Kutir, Himalayas

type of yoga : sivananda yoga

pros:

- very clean and tidy place
- the ashram is paying for a doctor to visit the village every sunday.
- they are hiring local people and working with the local community on many levels.
- wonderful surrounding and very friendly staff
- really good place for beginners
- guiding to gangotri was arranged on request and it was extremely nice with a guiding to the local culture and indian tradition

cons:

- people expecting hard postures will be disappointed
- thee and cookies for breakfast

Yoga Teacher training at yoga kutir: