Gone are the days when yogis seemed to us to be withered, wiry Hindus in a turban, sitting on nails. Nowadays the yogi is a person who keeps up to date, twice a week heading with a fashionable yoga mat in a large fitness center: to be educated on schedule after work or at lunch.
“Let yoga come into your life, as it was once television and the Internet” – reads the announcement on one of the websites describing the next “school of yoga. ”For the past few years, yoga has been booming and is indeed becoming an important part of the fashionable life-style. Where to search for harmony, spiritual and physical perfection – in large fitness clubs or specialized yoga centers, the SHE correspondent learned, after having tried the dog’s pose in a fitness and spiritual format.
Editorial SHE sent a correspondent to the fitness club and yoga school to seek harmony and distinction
Reference:Yoga – a set of spiritual and physical practices aimed at controlling the psyche and psychophysiology, and ideally – spiritual and physical perfection. Includes a complex of asanas and pranayama. Asana is an exercise in which the management of energy and physiological processes in the body is carried out through the redistribution of tension, contractions and stresses in the body. Pranayama (translated from sancrita: control of prana – vital energy) is a system of breathing exercises aimed at conscious control of breathing.
Training with the name yoga is in almost every major and not very fitness center. Sometimes teachers are taught there from yoga centers, sometimes just fitness instructors who have undergone additional training. DoubleGIS reports that in Novosibirsk there are eight specialized places where you can join yoga with a spiritual component. On hearing – “Studio Yoga +”, the center of yoga “Namaste” and yoga club “Snow Lotus” (where Vladimir Kalabin, the most rasporated yogi of Novosibirsk, teaches). For comparative field experiments, “Remix Drive” was chosen – 450 rubles. for “day at the club” and “Studio Yoga +” – 300 rubles. for a one-time workout.
Indications:problems with the spine, including osteochondrosis, scoliosis, lordosis, kyphosis, herniated intervertebral discs;chronic fatigue syndrome;insomnia;psychosomatic consequences of long-term stress;vegeto-vascular dystonia, etc. – it is believed that yoga is shown to everyone and can cure many diseases – but only under the guidance of an experienced instructor.
Contraindications:contraindications are only serious diseases, in which physical activity is contraindicated in principle – organic heart damage, blood diseases, mental disorders, malignant neoplasms, body temperature above 37 and below 36. 2 degrees, full stomach, stay in a steam room or sauna is acceptable not earlier than 6-8 hours after the practice of asanas or 4 hours before it.
Fitness Yoga
Process:In the fitness centers, the traditional hatha yoga is taken as the basis of the training. If you look globally, then hatha yoga – the preparation of the body for complex meditations, however, fitness centers do not build any meditative plans, just this yoga is closer to other areas of fitness. Trainer in fitness and yoga Galina Andronova says that her training is characterized by dynamic technique – about 15 asanas are performed per hour, up to 5-7 respiratory cycles each. Each asana Galina with knowledge of the matter, but quietly, as if only for himself, calls in Sanskrit: parsvakonasana, papipuna matsyendrasana, etc. , so that you hear only the rustling of the last syllables.
Approximately half of the asanas are given very easily, when performing a third of the exercises, the SHE correspondent was forced to take respites, while the others continued to maintain a static position, and only two instructors performed the asanas, the rest did not even dare to repeat the weight holding on one palm, for example. The main difference between fitness yoga and high-grade, Galina Andronova believes, is limited in time: training is reduced by pranayama and shavasana (relaxation) – only asanas remain.
Feel:In a spacious hall with a window in the wall, under relaxing music and leisurely movements, the thoughts calm themselves. During the training you enter a state of calm and detachment. After training, there is lightness in the back, and the next day it hurts, as after exercising exercise therapy for the spine.
Yoga in the center
Process:The lesson lasts 2 hours – an hour and a half asana, half an hour pranayama. Yoga-yenengar is distinguished by a heightened attention to the correct position of the body in the asanas and the use of additional supports (bolsters, folded blankets, “bricks”, tows) for the best possible performance of asanas from the first workout. Worn more meditative. At first, sitting down, everyone sings “Om” three times (Sanskrit – sacral sound, the original mantra), then the teacher Olga Savchenko advises in a melodic voice to relax one by one in all parts of the body, to free the mind.
Then the asanas begin – even simple seemingly poses, which can often be found at various training sessions in fitness clubs, are performed so carefully that you are amazed how wrong you’ve done them before.
During the retention of the pose, Olga tried to approach everyone and literally build the asana correctly, propping up, where necessary, “bricks”. At the end of the training, as it should be in yoga, followed by shavasana – a 10-minute relaxation lying on the back. After that, they stayed on pranayama. Actually, it was rather a preparation for real pranayama, which, in theory, is performed while sitting. But very few people can sit still for half an hour without proper preparation, and therefore in “Yoga +” preparatory pranayama is practiced: controlled breaths and exhalations, lying with the blankets put under the back and head for maximum opening of the lungs.
Unlike Remix Drive, where only women were in the class, there was one very advanced and apparently long-time man in Yoga +. Olga Savchenko complained that men in yoga classes are really rare, despite the fact that there are many yoga teachers in the West.
Feel:A good proper stretching is always pleasant to the body, and after half an hour of pranayama, even if it is preparatory, there is a feeling that you have really been filled with energy – a feeling like after many hours of meditation, usually after such practices it is advised to even try not to talk so that the stored energy at once is not used up in empty chatter . Here such advice was not given, but the desire to be silent arose instinctively. The next day only the leg muscles ached, and the SHE correspondent had enough energy for the whole night of work by the club observer.
Summary:Of course, comparing yoga in a fitness club with a real one is like correspondence with interjections in ICQ with a confession from a priest. The main differences: in the fitness format, training is reduced due to pranayama and shavasana – and without this, the meaning of yoga for the accumulation of energy is simply lost. The absence of meditative elements in fitness yoga equates it with ordinary stretching.
