About yoga and stuff

I've been practicing yoga on and off for quite some years now (don't say exactly how many, today it's my birthday and I have some sensitivity with the subject ;).

The Sanskrit word yoga means “union”. Through yoga, union is first created between body and breath, then breath and mind, and finally between mind and spirit. When union is achieved, we are able to maintain a healthy, peaceful, balanced state regardless of external circumstances.

If you never tried it, give it a chance next time you have an opportunity. If you tried and you discarded it because of being too slow, give it a second chance. Try to find a vinyasa yoga practice. Its flow is faster if gym and sweat are synonymous for you, but it still has the "spiritual" connection and stretching and relaxing properties.

After all this time I'd like to summarize some tips and stuff about yoga:

1. How do you know if you're doing your yoga/meditation practice well? I heard the best answer right from a yoga swami years ago: "You know because of the changes and results you experience in your life". I was very impressed by this answer as it's a self answering system and it's a strong affirmation of what yoga can give you in your life.

2. How do you know if your yoga poses are right? The answer is simple again, you know because it feels right. Each pose has a specific stretch that you need to feel. Knowing this, when you're on your practice instead of looking at the teacher you can evaluate your body feeling and once you feel the stretch you just take it one more notch in that direction. Then you can feel the deep stretch and you know your pose is right, you got it!

3. What's the best place to practice yoga? Any place could be suitable for a yoga class. I had the opportunity to practice yoga in the beach while living in Chicago (during summer obviously). It was very nice. My most exotic yoga class, I found by pure chance, was in the San Francisco's south coast, on the first floor of a light house with lots of big windows where the water was hitting the rocks.

4. How to rate your yoga teacher? You'll know mostly because of two things: symmetry and flow. Yoga needs to be symmetric. You do a pose and you do the counter-pose. You do things on the left side and you do them on the right, etc. Symmetry is something you just expect. The second thing is flow. I found the best teachers to be those that propose a set of poses in which the flow from one pose to another goes easily and gracefully with the least amount of movements.
Creativity is a plus so you never know what to expect on your next class and no class is the same as the previous one.