Yoga looks unhealthy to me. Can anyone allay my concerns?

[Teddy]

I have recently been researching yoga, particularly Iyengar to see if I can incorporate it in to my daily practice. However, I have found that Iyengars methods go against a lot of what my Chi Kung teacher Lam Kam Chuen has told me. ...For example... Iyengars 'Mountain pose' says that you should have locked knees -this blocks chi ...and puffed up raised chest like a soldier -this blocks chi ...and also Iyengar says that your feet should be together. To me this pose looks like the way a soldier stands, and for from being like a mountain, it raises your centre of gravity and makes you very easy to knock over.

I have heard so many great things about yoga, and I am really tempted to try it. However, I am put off because of these sort of concerns. Plus, I have heard all sorts of anecdotes about yoga teachers who have damaged themselves by practicing yoga. So, I am hesitant. Can anyone allay my fears and suggest a good form of yoga to practice, because I am genuinly intriged. Thanks.

[adept]

You could try Taoist Yoga, also known as Yin Yoga. Will go well with Lam Kam Chuen's stuff.

Google Paulie Zink or Paul Grilley.

 

[.broken.]

You are right - locking the knees, forcing the chest, etc. all lead to blockage of chi. However, the postures and exercises generally found throughout yoga block the chi circulation to particular areas in order to target other areas.

 

It is possible to damage oneself with yoga, perhaps more so than incorrect chi kung practice. I do not doubt that you have heard some stories about people who had negative experiences.

 

A question you may wish to ask yourself is at to why you are interested in integrating yoga into your routine. Flexibility? Clearing blockages? Because you've heard great things about it?

 

Yours humbly,

James

[Eric23]

I've been doing a morning yoga program for several years now with nice results. My original intent was to get in a nice stretch and loosen up my back for the day ahead. When I first came on this site a couple of years ago someone mentioned yinyoga.com I picked up several new asanas and incorporated the idea of staying in an asana for a longer period of time. I'm an old fart, so listening to my body and not getting into something I can't get out of is part of the drill. I don't bend myself into a pretzel or do any difficult moves, just a nice gentle routine of quiet, intropective stretching. Sould also mention that I start my morning with a Unwinding the Belly self massage (a qi gong in itself IMO) prior to doing yoga. Ending the session with several minutes of the corpse asana is just downright groovy.

 

I do agree that the zhang zhuang standing posture is superior to the mountain pose in that keeping the knees relaxed is easy on the joints. So... when I stand it's ZZ.

 

Was poking around the AYP forum and picked up some nice advice on yoga asanas. A gentle soul there mentioned that one should let the asana work you and not the other way around. Get into the pose, relax, concentrate on the breath and let gravity work.

[Ian]

I have recently been researching yoga, particularly Iyengar to see if I can incorporate it in to my daily practice. However, I have found that Iyengars methods go against a lot of what my Chi Kung teacher Lam Kam Chuen has told me. ...For example... Iyengars 'Mountain pose' says that you should have locked knees -this blocks chi ...and puffed up raised chest like a soldier -this blocks chi ...and also Iyengar says that your feet should be together. To me this pose looks like the way a soldier stands, and for from being like a mountain, it raises your centre of gravity and makes you very easy to knock over.

I have heard so many great things about yoga, and I am really tempted to try it. However, I am put off because of these sort of concerns. Plus, I have heard all sorts of anecdotes about yoga teachers who have damaged themselves by practicing yoga. So, I am hesitant. Can anyone allay my fears and suggest a good form of yoga to practice, because I am genuinly intriged. Thanks.

 

My impression is that you can get great benefits from yoga so long as you can feel a degree of energy flow in your system. That way you only stretch as far as makes things better, and don't go for the kind of over-the-top flexibility that damages your tendons and leaves you floppy rather than integrated. If you go slowly and sink into each position and breathe there you should be ok.

 

Having said that, I'm just passing on received wisdom and don't really know.

 

What country are you in ?

[hagar]

I've been practicing "qiyoga" for some years now, as prep for meditation.

I second what Ian says, and might add that the basic, and essential difference btw DaoYin and Yoga is that all qiyoga is about opening from within, and not without, its not necessarily about breath, and it has to be gentle.

If you push, you create resistance, and it's counterproductive inducing hypertrophy in ligaments and joints, and damages your system in the long run.

 

As far as my limited experience goes, I've had far greater flexibility increase doing this than regular Yoga, and although you do have to push beyond your confortzone sometimes, it's always done with your attention at the lower dan tian, and on a purely energetic level.

The goal is always the same: get the body out of the way

 

h

[Teddy]

Thanks for all of your replys.

 

Adept -I will check out yin yoga. Is this the same as Taoist yoga and Qi-yoga? ...or are these three different things?

 

James -I am interested in yoga partly because I find the obsessive zeal of yoga fans very intriguing (there must be something good about it), but mainly because I have never seen a fat yogi. ...I could really do with losing some fat, but I dont want to use the kind of exercise that depletes chi ie, getting out of breath etc. I have managed to lose a bit of wieght since starting daily ba duan jin roughly three months ago. However, there is still a long way to go. Can anyone suggest any qigong type exercises that are good for weight loss?

 

Ian -I am in England, near London :-) Good to see another Brit in here!

 

Thanks also to Eric and Hagar. This is all great information! What a wonderful site. Im so happy I discovered it.

[.broken.]

James -I am interested in yoga partly because I find the obsessive zeal of yoga fans very intriguing (there must be something good about it), but mainly because I have never seen a fat yogi. ...I could really do with losing some fat, but I dont want to use the kind of exercise that depletes chi ie, getting out of breath etc. I have managed to lose a bit of wieght since starting daily ba duan jin roughly three months ago. However, there is still a long way to go. Can anyone suggest any qigong type exercises that are good for weight loss?

 

Fat yogis exist Fat martial artists exist too.

 

If weight loss is what you wish to achieve, and yoga is the path you wish to take, then I might suggest you take private tuition from a yoga trainer to come up with a series of practices to help lose weight..

 

However, I would advise that you first look at how many calories you take in and how many you work off. If you take in more calories then you work off, you are likely to gain weight. Do not solely ignore cardio vascular exercises due to the loss of chi that occurs. They are quite effective at burning off excess fat.

 

Look at you eating habits: how many meals you have a day, how many snacks, how much you drink (and take a note of what you drink), do you drink with meals, do you eat until you are full, what is your intake of refined sugars, how good are you at eating over 5 fruit 'n' veg per day...

 

These are just some of the basics to be mindful of in order to eat well. I, and I am sure others on this forum, can offer advise on what to eat, how to eat, when to eat, what to drink, how much, etc. Please note, however, that I am no nutritionist and it's always best to seek advice from a number of sources. If I remember rightly, Christopher Hansard (who runs a alternative health centre in Soho, London) writes some good advice in his book The Tibetan Art of Living. If you have the cash it may be worth visiting his centre.

 

Any type of chi kung should do the trick of teaching you how to relax your body, enabling you to listen to your body more carefully. You will instinctively know what is best for you body after some time - how much to fill your stomach, what to eat... and the rest.

 

I hope this is an acceptible answer.

 

Yours humbly,

James

(former resident of Ealing, London)

[emily]

hey teddy!

 

fellow brit here too...from cardiff myself.

 

i was intrigued by yoga for the same reasons as yourself...there has to be something in that enthusiasm! i also started at a time when i wanted to lose a few pounds, so here are my experiences which you may find helpful.

 

first of all as James mentioned diet is a crucial part of weight loss. i have had fantastic results with the ph diet-not a temporary diet more of a new way of eating to adopt, based upon eating foods that are alkalising to the body. its a bit extreme for some, but as always you can apply it to whatever degree that you wish. www.energiseforlife.com have some resources and supplements to get you started. also google robert young who is the founder. anthony robbins is a big advocate of the diet too, love him or hate him he has some nlp methods that are successful in helping people stick to eating the right foods too.

 

yoga wise nothing beats ashtanga yoga for me...it REALLY energises you, detoxes and is fantastic to lose weight. said to bet the best yoga for fitness and weight loss. if you haven't tried it i thoroughly recommend you do, it is the most enjoyable form of exercise i have ever done. and you sweat buckets but without getting breathless so it doesn't drain you but provides a nice aerobic workout. a lot of the movements flow so there isn't too much locking or holding of postures for very long.

 

hope this helps, emily

[AugustLeo]

.

[Taiji Bum]

Yeah, yoga is horrible! Do tai chi instead!

[mantis]

if you want to lose weight lift weights; what you'd lose doing yoga for a year you could lose easily in half that time going to the gym. "losing chi" give me a break.

[Taomeow]

The only objection that can be raised against yoga is that you can't kick anyone's ass with it.

 

It is exceptionally healthy to do -- asanas in any event, I would add many caveats to all internal yoga practices though --

 

and exceptionally safe compared to many other things you can do if you want to take your body out of the couch potato range of motion into something a bit more challenging. There's no such thing as one hundred percent safe motion, by the way, people get hurt in their bathroom about ten times more often than in the gym I'm told (probably older folks but still...) A friend of mine who, like me, came to taiji from a yoga background and, like me, still does it on the side, showed me a horrible scar on his leg that he got from doing yoga. (He was standing on his head in his living-room, lost his balance, crashed into a glass coffee table... ouch.) Accidents happen, poor judgment happens (and that's when people overstretch their ligaments and so on), but heart attacks happen when people just sit there doing nothing... whatcha gonna do, we're none of us invincible no matter what we practice, or fail to practice.

 

I am a big fan of yoga, and find it helpful in anything else I do. If I don't do it for a while I start losing the effortless flexibility it generates which, when I do maintain even a very short but regular yoga routine, adds to a sense of well-being under many circumstances. Just feels good. Try it and your body will tell you whether it's healthy for you.

 

And for a bit of inspiration... This is not exactly yoga, but a nice illustration of human flexibility's true potential... Behold Chaikovsky in Chinese:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOqxSaW05p4

Edited May 31, 2008 by Taomeow

[Taiji Bum]

Taijiquan is based on the sacred geometric patterns found in nature that guide how everything from plants to crystals grow, whereas yoga is not. When we do these patterns and forms we resonate with the souce of all life and our body, mind and spirit grow in communion with all life everywhere whereas yoga is not.

 

Different animals have different ways of defending themselves and it is my opinion that taijiquans gentle way of redirecting and yielding is humanities natural defense system.

 

In regards to weight loss I lost 60lbs in 2005 with just walking, taijiquan and diet. Taiji returns us to our original nature and also our perfect body....... if you practice it enough.

[Teddy]

Taijiquan is based on the sacred geometric patterns found in nature that guide how everything from plants to crystals grow, whereas yoga is not. When we do these patterns and forms we resonate with the souce of all life and our body, mind and spirit grow in communion with all life everywhere whereas yoga is not.

 

Different animals have different ways of defending themselves and it is my opinion that taijiquans gentle way of redirecting and yielding is humanities natural defense system.

 

In regards to weight loss I lost 60lbs in 2005 with just walking, taijiquan and diet. Taiji returns us to our original nature and also our perfect body....... if you practice it enough.

 

...so How come there are so many big fat internal martial artists? Like Bruce Frantzis etc? I agree with all the other stuff you said. Chinese internal martial arts are by far the best form of excercise that I have ever experienced. But it is an unavoidable fact that a lot of 'masters' are big fatsos.

[Taiji Bum]

...so How come there are so many big fat internal martial artists? Like Bruce Frantzis etc? I agree with all the other stuff you said. Chinese internal martial arts are by far the best form of excercise that I have ever experienced. But it is an unavoidable fact that a lot of 'masters' are big fatsos.

A lot of them rest on their laurels, eat crap and get fatter as they get older. Even the greatest ones like Invincible Yang Lu Chan got really fat in his old age. The same thing happens in judo I am noticing. Once you have the techniques down it doesn't matter that much if your fat.

Edited June 3, 2008 by DarinHamel

[Spectrum]

Taijiquan is based on the sacred geometric patterns found in nature that guide how everything from plants to crystals grow, whereas yoga is not.

 

You talk of smackness. Lets start with basic postures, leaving the philosophical parallels with the movements aside for the time being.... off the top of my head Single Whip hips are identical internally to triangle, revolved triangle, and extended side angle poses.... also if you look around here a bit you'll find the "field plowing" sequences which speak for themselves...

 

When we do these patterns and forms we resonate with the souce of all life and our body, mind and spirit grow in communion with all life everywhere whereas yoga is not.

 

Lets build some bridges here.

 

Different animals have different ways of defending themselves and it is my opinion that taijiquans gentle way of redirecting and yielding is humanities natural defense system.

 

There are many "patterns" interwoven here.

 

In regards to weight loss I lost 60lbs in 2005 with just walking, taijiquan and diet. Taiji returns us to our original nature and also our perfect body....... if you practice it enough.

 

Awesome testimony.

Edited June 3, 2008 by Spectrum

[shontonga]

A lot of them rest on their laurels, eat crap and get fatter as they get older. Even the greatest ones like Invincible Yang Lu Chan got really fat in his old age. The same thing happens in judo I am noticing. Once you have the techniques down it doesn't matter that much if your fat.

 

HaHaHa! YES!

This Is The Art For Me!!!

I Want to be Old and Fat and Have Technique!

YES!

 

I don't quiet know if i have any laurels though???

... don't think i want that!!!

I Hope that's not part of the Prerequisite!

 

Have noticed that a lot though?

Folks that do "hard" martial arts or did as a child,

I can "see" it right away usually.

Same with a lot of yoga folks.

but tai chi ... i can't tell that That delapatated old man

could easily kick my tail in half a heart beat

if i just so much as bump him wrong!

It worried me when i first started that so many looked so

??? how to say this nicely???

BAD!

 

Then i realized some already look bad (like me!

... well,hey? I'm not That bad?...Yet!)

when they start and that's part of why they start.

Have seen some totally change

from doing tai chi.

Wouldn't almost believe that they were the same person!

Seem like a whole new entity!

amazingly strange!

 

Sweet dreams all!

 

Shon

[Ian]

 

Ian -I am in England, near London :-) Good to see another Brit in here!

 

Thanks also to Eric and Hagar. This is all great information! What a wonderful site. Im so happy I discovered it.

 

Welcome! In that case you could check out qi yoga with Hagar's master, Zhixing Wang.... Teaches in London and Henley, I believe.

[rain]

HaHaHa! YES!

This Is The Art For Me!!!

I Want to be Old and Fat and Have Technique!

YES!

 

-------------------------------

 

my how I love your reply!

 

I see the buddha!

 

 

 

ART IS BAD!

 

haha.

Edited June 3, 2008 by rain

[minkus]

if you want to lose weight lift weights; what you'd lose doing yoga for a year you could lose easily in half that time going to the gym. "losing chi" give me a break.

 

In the gym ideal to loose weight is running, cycling, aerobics etc. You get a stronger and more solid body with BBB and pilates.

 

For weightloss you need aerobic training, you need oxygen to burn fat.

 

You can lift weights and do bench presses etc. but 9 outta 10 it will only make you bigger ok its muscles but you still wont fit in your older pants Powertraining is mostly anaerobic exercises.

 

Again if you wonna have the best of all: do taiji

 

Im biased towards Chen style taiji

 

Cheers !

[Taiji Bum]

 

 

Again if you wonna have the best of all: do taiji

 

Im biased towards Chen style taiji

 

Cheers !

I agree..... (except for the Chen part).

Go Yang!

[Taomeow]

I agree..... (except for the Chen part).

Go Yang!

sure, if there's no Chen place to go where you are...

 

BTW, Darin, I've studied sacred geometry and I submit your assertion that yoga isn't based on it holds no water. It most certainly is.

[Spectrum]

Thought on this momentarily during practice today. A horn honked, a dog barked, a man coughed, the wind variations made practice rooted yet feather light, finger tip to heel eddies.

 

These arts point the ways to traverse space through unconventional paths. Taiji offers an upright method to cycle fluid through micro-circulations that normally take a longer cycle to complete. The stepping and hand methods circulate through normally unconventional pathways, yet accessable through attention to connectivity and flow of movement, the journey between destinations.

 

Yoga works actively to apply these principles along static routes/lines, internally stretching from the inside out through the breath once the static form is reached. Vinyasa forms flow between static forms using transitions that align postures between each "form" accomplishing a similar goal of reversing inertias effects on your state of being as Taiji.

 

Tajiquan method transitions around internal and external obstacles standing up...Yoga on the ground. Apples and Oranges, Tomato, Toe Ma Toe.

[rain]

Thought on this momentarily during practice today. A horn honked, a dog barked, a man coughed, the wind variations made practice rooted yet feather light, finger tip to heel eddies.

 

These arts point the ways to traverse space through unconventional paths. Taiji offers an upright method to cycle fluid through micro-circulations that normally take a longer cycle to complete. The stepping and hand methods circulate through normally unconventional pathways, yet accessable through attention to connectivity and flow of movement, the journey between destinations.

 

Yoga works actively to apply these principles along static routes/lines, internally stretching from the inside out through the breath once the static form is reached. Vinyasa forms flow between static forms using transitions that align postures between each "form" accomplishing a similar goal of reversing inertias effects on your state of being as Taiji.

 

Tajiquan method transitions around internal and external obstacles standing up...Yoga on the ground. Apples and Oranges, Tomato, Toe Ma Toe.

 

 

qigong may very well be done lying down as yoga can be done in vertical position.

but of course you are aware of this.

Edited June 4, 2008 by rain