Gone are the days when leotard clad women turned up in droves ready to start practicing their yoga class, today’s yoga enthusiasts are much more stylish since the advent of yoga pants and cropped or fitted tops.
Yoga followers have a fashion all of their own, and the styles are comfortable but attractive to look at. It is not essential for the yoga student to spend out on a variety of clothing specifically for yoga, as comfort is the most important criteria and allowing for the wide range of movements incorporated in any yoga session.
Yoga pants should be loose fitting with plenty of stretch within the fabric, the wearer must feel comfortable at all times, which means that the yoga pants should fit snugly but have plenty of room for movement. Many styles are now made out of a good quality cotton and they come in a wide range of colors to suit everybody’s height, build, weight and mood.
The importance of investing in yoga pants and specifically designed yoga tops is that it can help set the right feeling for practice. Yoga is all about concentrating, about focusing on the individual postures, being one with the movement and relaxing into the pose, and waiting for tension which may be stored up within the muscles to relax and release. This would be difficult to do if the yoga practitioner had concerns about their clothing and felt they were too tight, uncomfortable or they pinched.
Yoga pants especially should be well-fitted around the waist, be careful not to choose those which have the type of elastic waistbands which could curl or ruche up around the middle, similarly allow for freedom of movement when purchasing your outfit, as they should be loose enough to move without restriction.
Color is important as well, different colors can signal different moods and can help you to identify with how you are feeling, it will allow others in the class to intuitively sense how you are during the practice and it can make a statement about you as well.
Whatever clothes you are planning to purchase for your yoga session, remember that they have to feel comfortable on you. Yoga is all about individual progress and style and that must include the clothes you wear to practice in. It isn’t a competition with the postures and neither is it a competition as to who can wear the coveted designer yoga pants.
Having yoga clothes style is about feeling confident, being focused and feeling relaxed and best of all, they don’t just have to be worn for yoga.
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In today’s modern and fast-paced society, there appears to be no escape from experiencing the negative aspects of stress. Although some stress is important and does help us to survive or react to potentially threatening situations, the stress we experience mainly these days, is different to when we had to fight for food or react instinctively to save our lives, our stress comes from having too little money, too much work, being overloaded with daily demands, or a combination of all of these.
For those who study the gentle discipline of yoga, stress can be greatly reduced as health improves, our minds becomes clearer and more focused, there is less fatigue and vitality returns. Feeling good inwardly can and does help to counteract the problems we face in life. As we progress within our own individual practices, we become more confident and positive in our approach to life although there are additional means of improving our abilities to cope with stress still further.
Why not create a yoga journal and track every aspect of your daily practice? Buy a book which has blank pages so that you can capture your progress every day. When you are purchasing this book, choose one which appeals to your senses, make it a joy to write in as then you are more likely to keep this up. List the postures you have done that day, make notes how the practice went. Pinpoint areas of difficulty or areas where you have excelled.
Write down any thoughts, feelings including negative thoughts, concerns and behaviors such as:
• Checked bank account and realized I had overspent. Could feel myself panicking. Why did I just buy that new outfit?
• Someone left the lid off the juice at home and it got knocked over. I felt really fed up and angry. No one else ever bothers to clean up.
• Feels like everybody is demanding too much of me at work and at home. I feel tearful and unappreciated.
Charting these types of feelings or occurrences can help to identify stress triggers or hot spots, which will create feelings of frustration or negativity. Once a pattern forms within the yoga journal, it is easier to realize and acknowledge the sometimes seemingly trivial areas of your life, which typically seem to curb your potential to develop further.
A yoga journal should be an extension of your practice and will help you to improve mind body and spirit in a natural and yet productive way. Make your yoga journal available to others as well, this will help those around you to see how you are really feeling, understand what is important to you and perhaps be a little more sympathetic when they see what your triggers are especially if they are the culprits.
This yoga journal highlighting your yogic experiences will also allow you to look back and see clearly how far you have progressed on your journey to self-discovery and enlightenment.
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