Im und außerhalb des Yogastudios

It is really not so easy anymore to find a yoga teacher training program that suits your needs and will support you on a journey of self-development and transformation. 

As the heat and excitement of summer winds down and an evening chill enters the air, we often find ourselves with that nostalgic “back to school” feeling. Fall can feel like a time of new beginnings and with it comes the desire to start the next chapter in our personal or professional lives. 

Our body is a mini world made of five elements, Agni (Fire), Vayu (Air), Akasha (Aether), Bhumi (Earth) and Jala (Water); and when there is disturbance in these elements, it can lead to an imbalanced mind and cause our body to suffer from diseases. 

You’re a new yoga instructor who has just finished your yoga teacher training. You’re in front of a bunch of students feeling quite nervous. For the very first time, you’re the one person the class is looking at. How do you cope with that?  

Here’s a fact: Exercising outdoors is way more beneficial than doing it indoors.

After many years of teaching yoga, I found out that these are the 4 most common injuries related to bad habits on the mat.

The holiday season is fast approaching and there are several people you care about who you want to get gifts for. But if you need to buy a gift for a yogi or a yoga teacher, you may be a little stuck on ideas. Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. 

Have you been thinking about becoming a yoga teacher? 

If you are looking for a source to understand what’s happening in the global yoga community, this is the place for you. You’ll find an array of yoga tips and tricks that are useful for everyone no matter if you are a teacher or student. 

Yoga can do wonders for your body. The fact that you have made the decision to start learning this form of exercise is a wonderful step in the right direction. Yoga does not only provide many health benefits, flexibility, and control, it may even help with weight loss.​

Practicing yoga has the ability to go far beyond a 90-minute workout session, that is, if you let it. In fact, the fundamental principles of yoga are designed to infiltrate how we live our lives.

We often hear our students asking if there is any way to prevent injuries in yoga. In this post, I’m going to explain how to prevent the most common injuries and to avoid pain in your yoga practice.

I have to be honest. One of the primary reasons for starting my yoga practice was this one intention – to heal my body.

If you want to visit a place where nature and serenity work hand in hand, away from the bustling sound of any busy city, then Mount Koya is definitely the place for you.

Looking for a good yoga read? Well, you’ve found one of the top-ranked yoga books this year! Yoga Wisdom: Warrior Tales Inspiring You On and Off Your Mat is an excellent work by Stephanie Spence that will lift your spirit and motivate your practice well beyond the asanas.

Tripaneer, the global travel company behind BookYogaTeacherTraining.com, is proudly sponsoring the Inner Peace Conference 2018 to be held on October 6th & 7th in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Like many yoga students, you have likely toyed with the idea of deepening your yoga practice through intense study or perhaps becoming a yoga teacher yourself. But are you ready? Do you have what it takes?

Any passionate practitioner of yoga knows that a yoga class is only as good as its instructor. So, why not bring better yoga to the world and become a teacher yourself? Not only is it a rewarding profession, bringing physical fitness and mental well-being to students, it may also have the best career training in the world.

If you’ve noticed an influx of seniors taking up yoga lately, there’s a good reason. Actually, there are dozens of reasons with the bottom line being better health, improved range of motion along with less stress, pain and stiffness.

Looking for an original way to keep your students present during Savasana? Here’s a poem I wrote inspired by my yoga practice. I hope your class likes it too and that my words help you to find mindfulness.

So, you’re getting ready for your first yoga teacher training? When the student is ready, the teacher appears!

Yoga is beneficial for every age group, especially for the kids. After all, today’s kids are as stressed as their elders. They have to go through a lot of pressure to stay competitive in school and other extra activities. In addition, unhealthy food choices, like fast food, have become a big part of their lifestyle.

Getting into a fitness routine to contour your waist can be daunting at first. There could even be instances when you would want to quit. However, with the right amount of energy and passion, you can get the desired body shape with yoga!

Choosing a suitable career for yourself is a difficult task, mainly because so much depends on a single decision. For many people, it’s difficult to find where their interests lie and then determine if that can make for a stable career.

At the age of 33 years old, the best basketball player on the planet, LeBron James, is mocking Father Time, by soaring higher, sprinting faster, and playing better in his 15th season. The way James is playing, it is safe to surmise that the man known as The King will be ballin’ at an unbelievably high level for at least three more years and may even stay productive until he turns 40. By then, the 4-time MVP would likely be standing on top of the league’s all-time scoring ladder, supplanting the legendary Kareem Abdul-Jabbar along the way.

Lifestyle diseases have tremendously increased over the past several years. Today, more and more people become ill because of unhealthy life choices. Thankfully, a trend has started in an attempt to counter these lifestyle diseases. People have started to pay more attention to their health and are striving for better nutrition and physical activity.

Yoga retreats can be a profitable way to earn side-income for seasoned teachers while creating unforgettable experiences for your students.

“Half an hour’s meditation every day is essential, except when you are busy. Then a full hour is needed.” - Saint Francis de Salles (erstwhile Bishop of Geneva).

Yoga may not be a type of cardio workout, but it is similar to some exercise routines in a way that it involves lots of turning and twisting. Because of this, you may experience stomachache, gas, and cramping if you don’t properly choose the foods that you eat before a yoga session.

To all the yoga teachers planning to add some extra activities to their retreats, holidaymakers, yogis, and skiers, this article might be helpful when planning to try out the combination of these two!

We love yoga, as it is a beautiful practice that helps to relax, improve health, and fine-tune the mind and body. Chances are you’ve been practicing yoga for some time, but have you started your own yoga diary, or a journal?

The ancient time-tested practice of yoga has been proven to help sustain healthy and dynamic relationships. How? For starters, yoga helps us to use our limbs better during intimacy. But that’s just the beginning, the philosophy of yoga advocates integrity and takes an ethical approach to life, both on and off the mat.

Yoga has been taught, practiced and developed for over 5,000 years, so it’s only natural that it has many different ways of practicing it. However, there are most certainly do’s and don’ts when it comes to teaching it.

Life can be stressful! Busy schedules, waking up early for work, handling family issues, etc. Every day, too many factors add to our stress and that is something we can’t entirely avoid. However, this lifestyle can affect you physically, mentally and emotionally and can negatively impact everything from sleep, mood, digestion and even your relationships.

Traveling can present a whole host of amazing opportunities for yoga students. If you combine it with your practice on the mat, it can provide you with experiences that you just can’t get in a yoga studio.

While present-day fitness experts and gurus have developed countless exercises for leading a healthy lifestyle, yoga remains one of the most effective and powerful practices that impact our physical, mental and spiritual health. 

‘I can’t seem to concentrate. There are too many thoughts,’ a number of us make this statement every now and then. Our mind is meant to think. It fills our lives with near-constant thoughts, emotions, feelings, and judgments. But there are times when our thoughts run amock, swinging from one branch to another, leaving us feeling frazzled and disorganized.

An interesting facet of yoga that many have often overlooked is the practice of karma yoga, where practitioners make an effort to detach from the material world and choose instead to focus on the deeds they perform. When practiced right, karma yoga can be liberating.

When speaking about the benefits of yoga, most of us discuss the advantages from an adult’s point of view. With kids being quite bubbly, energetic and always on the move, it might seem like yoga would be the last thing they would be interested in doing.

Often times, we feel aches in our body ranging from dull pain to severe ones that affect our day to day life. Many of us attribute these pains to the natural aging process. However, more often than not, the cause of aches in our body stems from an incorrect posture. 

Maybe you have been talking to yourself or thought of joining yoga teacher training but negative attitudes and thoughts have kept drawing you back. The truth is that you have been being held back from introducing yourself into something extraordinary. 

I’ve been interested in yoga for as long as I can remember. I was in primary school when I first came across yoga. My best friend’s dad had filled her room with wallpapers of mantras and yantras, and her shelves with cassettes and DVDs about meditation and yoga classes.

If you are a runner, you may already know that many runners face a number of strength and flexibility issues. But did you know that yoga, when done as a part of your regular routine, may just be the antidote you need to resolve these adverse effects of running?

A couple of weeks ago, a yoga friend and yoga teacher got in touch with me to tell me that she will be stopping by Kyiv the next morning. Just coming back from a yoga retreat, she had proposed to meet at a vegetarian cafe in the city center. While surfing the net for a suitable vegetarian cafe, I stumbled upon an Ayurvedic center that houses both a yoga studio and a vegetarian cafe, serving fresh and tasty vegetarian food. 

The modern day yogi is inundated with class options. As seen on gym class schedules, “yoga” has quickly become a loose term that encompasses a type of workout with a focus on physical and mental strength, flexibility, mindfulness, and relaxation. 

Yoga’s health benefits are not just myths. Several scientific studies confirmed how beneficial yoga could be to anyone’s health. Yoga can help you get rid of back pains, ease anxiety and tension, and even increase your lifespan. And the best news yet is this – you can do yoga anywhere you are.  If it’s too inconvenient, you can even do the poses without a mat!

Confident people have a way of radiating their warmth and trust wherever they go. One who is perfectly comfortable in her own skin and more affirmative in their stances rather than doubtful always finds love and acceptance, given any environment. 

Yoga is one of the most effective health boosters. Together with normalizing weight, regulating blood circulation and improving posture, it also brings positive psychological changes, such as better sleep and mood improvement. 

Every once in a while, we experience pain and health problems. These can be caused by stress, inflammation, bad posture, or even muscle spasms. And although there are over-the-counter remedies for these problems, almost each one of them has a side effect that may have a negative impact on our wellbeing. A good solution to this may well be essential oils. 

Prenatal yoga can be very useful since it not only helps to keep your body in shape, but also helps the body to deal with stress, making it a popular practice among expecting mothers. 

I must confess that in all the years that I’ve practiced yoga, this year will be the first time I am actually aware of International Yoga Day. First observed in 2015, the International Yoga Day is celebrated each year on the 21st of June by yogis all over the world. Come Wednesday, 21st June, I’ll be on my mat early in the morning, practicing 108 Sun Salutations to commemorate the day. 

Now that you have been hit by the yoga wave, your only desire is to be an integral part of the yoga community. Not just as a member, but as someone who intensely participates in ‘spreading the word’. You do not just wish to practice yoga, but you also want to promote the magical essence of yoga by teaching this wonderful art form to others. 

The meaning of the word “yoga” has become synonymous with the “physical discipline of being fit.” Despite this common conception, yoga’s primordial philosophical and spiritual concepts are still being practiced today through the different yoga poses.

In 1970, there were approximately half the people in the world as there are today. Ever since we crawled out of our lumpy primordial soup, humanity’s intellect, ingenuity and inventiveness have enabled a greater proportion of us to stay alive for longer. Well done to us!

My first introduction to arm balance was this lovely pose right here – the crow pose. As I watched my teacher walk the class through the process of moving weight towards the arms and then lift off, I was in awe. It looked simple enough. So I tried. But instead of “lifting off”, I stumbled and fell flat on my face. And it wasn’t a pretty sight.

Maintaining your overall health and well being is a holistic process involving physical practice such as yoga, mental practice such as meditation as well as good eating habits. 

I am never a fan of long-haul travels particularly because it leaves my body aching and my hair in a mess. After years of flying, I’ve come to discover that a short yoga stretch just before takeoff is what I need to counter the effects of being stuck the seat on the plane for hours on end. 

Over a month ago, we ran a giveaway, promising the chance to win a yoga retreat or a yoga teacher training of a lifetime by simply sharing with us why and where you’d like to go.

I recall, many years ago, having attended a yoga class where the yoga teacher spoke in great detail about chakras. “What on earth is she going on about?” I thought to myself, getting more confused by the minute as the teacher mentioned Sanskrit terms, one after another. 

While we’re all familiar with the different yoga styles like Hatha yoga, Bikram yoga or even Tantra yoga, a few other, slightly peculiar styles have crept up over the years causing a stir within the yoga community. These new yoga styles have certainly given new meaning to the term “new age” – a term that’s frequently been used to describe the practice – and have us wondering whether or not we should take them seriously. 

Yoga has become a very popular healthcare tool in today's world. People practice yoga to experience its real benefits and have even begun turning it into a career, as they want to deepen their practice and help the body find proper alignment. 

Over the weekend, I initiated a yoga session with my fellow yogi friends in a setting that was different to the one that we’ve been used to – the beach. It was a nice day to go out and seeing how close we all lived to the beach, it would have been silly not to take advantage of Mother Nature and get a dose of vitamin Sea.

In all the years that I’ve practiced yoga in a class setting, I’ve noticed the jarring absence or, at the most, the minimal presence of men in the class. Women dominated the room, and while there were a few men who came to practice, they were either extreme beginners or extremely advanced.

Why do you practice yoga? Is it to achieve that toned physique that you see on Hollywood celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Adam Levine? Or is it to build strength and flexibility? Perhaps it is to calm the mind or relieve stress.

In fitness, there will come a point where you will reach a state of plateau – typically after you’ve experienced fast-paced progress. Suddenly you find yourself in a lull. You’re maintaining your pace, if not more, but you seem to see no progress. 

Over the past week, I witnessed an influx of students at my teacher’s yoga classes. It was a lovely sight to see so many people from all walks of life being drawn to practice yoga. These newcomers, I happily noted, came back day after day to class, motivated and pumped to learn more.

Win a yoga retreat OR a yoga teacher training of a lifetime! It’s on us! 

All you have to do is share with us and all your friends & family why and where you'd like to go!

The first time I walked into my teacher’s yoga shala, I was taken aback. This wasn’t a typical yoga studio. For starters, the most jarring difference between this place and a yoga studio was its lack of mirrors. 

Yoga consists of many styles so that everyone who is searching for the evolution of the body and mind can find the best and most suitable one to practice. 

Whether you believe it or not, the food you consume makes up an important part of your yoga practice. The very basis of yoga is the principle of ahimsa, which means non-violence. This is the reason why so many yogis are also vegetarians and vegans.

As a yoga teacher, I have always believed that yoga is beneficial for everyone including children. This is why I have started introducing yoga to my toddler. Though he doesn’t quite understand it, he absolutely enjoys the time spent with mama on the mat.

If you were lucky enough to catch it, the intense tennis match between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal that happened during this past weekend is set to go down in history as the most spectacular match ever played.

The past weekend, Chinese community all around the world welcomed the year of the Rooster with great excitement and fervor. The Rooster, according to the Lunar New Year calendar, is the 10th animal in the cycle and will only reappear in 2029. 

As a yoga teacher, there may come times where you would use Sanskrit terms during class, whether you like it or not. This is because it is often the case where most Sanskrit words don’t have an English equivalent that fully explains the meaning of the terms.

Back pain is among the most common ailments felt by people today, due largely to our tendency to spend most of our waking hours sitting down and developing incorrect postures.

The beginning of the year signals a beginning of a yoga practice for many. As a yoga teacher, our job is to help these individuals find their practice and give them assurance where needed.

With 2016 soon coming to an end, I, like many of you, have started thinking of my New Year resolutions for 2017. Among the few resolutions that come up every year is to keep to a daily yoga practice.

Over the course of a year as a yoga teacher, I have stumbled and tripped in my classes. As a teacher, I have had my highs, but also equally many lows. In this reflection, I share with the BookYogaTeacherTraining.com’s yoga community three of the most important lessons that I’ve learned. I hope you will find it useful as well!

“Isn’t yoga only for hippies?” I’ve heard that question asked a million times over by yoga skeptics and dissidents alike. Say what you will about the practice, but the fact of the matter is, that millions worldwide practice it. 

With the holiday season coming up, many of us have made travel plans. Be it over the weekend, a week-long retreat or even a month-long vacation, we’re sure you’ve got your bags packed and your travel list checked.

The benefits of yoga are aplenty, and one of them is its ability to help you find your footing in times of change and difficulty. Yoga helps you ground yourself. It helps you heal and it helps you get back up when it’s time.

In the years that I’ve practiced yoga, I can safely say that it has evolved in so many ways. I have evolved from a beginner to somewhat of an intermediate, though there is still so much more to learn. 

As a yoga teacher, I see a lot of my students face the same problems – stiff neck, hunched back, and chronic lower back pain. These problems are extremely common today as we spend much of our day staring at a computer screen, often sitting in a position that is harmful to our body. Even as we log off our computers, we pick up another gadget that requires us to slouch – our phones. 

Yoga is extremely beneficial in so many ways. It helps you meditate, make you happier, as well as give your confidence a boost. But yoga also can help you lose inches off your waist! 

The recent Harry Potter yoga class took the Internet by storm, with participants pictured holding a wand as they practiced different yoga poses. They also had a sorting hat and got to listen to a reading of the passage from the Deathly Hallows! 

So you’ve taken yoga classes for a while now and it’s become apparent that teaching yoga is the next step for you. You are now looking for suitable yoga teacher training courses that can help you deepen your practice. 

Something magical happens when you chose to leave your day-to-day life behind and immerse yourself in an intensive yoga training in a foreign country. Not only is a space for deep transformation, but you have the added benefit of exploring another culture while exploring the depths of the self.

When I first started practicing yoga, it was meant to be a form of exercise. It helped tone my muscles, increase my flexibility and built strength. But as I progressed further, it became so much more than just exercise. 

The Downward Dog or Adho Mukha Svanasana is perhaps the most commonly seen pose but also the most understated pose in yoga. It features in Sun Salutations, is commonly used as a transition in flows and Vinyasa yoga, as well as a preparatory pose to inversions. 

On this page you can find useful links to our yoga community.

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If you feel there is a link missing from this page that would be useful for other readers, please send us an email with the website address and a short description of why the website is a useful resource.

The Samahita Retreat team in Koh Samui recently shared their insights based on decades of combined experience practicing and traveling. Their stories are each different yet all reflect one thing: Making a steady state of mind and centeredness a priority. 

I have travelled to places near and far, and will continue to wanderlust around the globe but here are 8 reasons why I think you should consider It’s Yoga Teacher Training in Nicaragua:

The journey to become a yoga teacher is different for every instructor. Sometimes it takes you through only one studio in which you learn to master all the necessary knowledge from one experienced teacher; other times, the path is defined by several tutors in various places who mold the teaching style with different perspectives; and in some other occasions, the journey takes you all over the world before you find the right atmosphere to transmit your passion for yoga in a class.  

First time we went to a yoga class, we probably fell in love with the poses and with the magic created by our teacher trough movement and voice. Especially the voice, used as an instrument to embrace, enfold, enrapture us.

Let’s admit that it can be fairly intimidating to start doing yoga, especially when you’re stiff as a board. We do realize that not everyone’s born with the flexibility of a pretzel dough, but everything seems impossible until it’s done. The key is to start with the simplest pose and sort of build your way up to a more complex position. While you’re getting comfortable with your Shavasana, we have compiled the top 5 most ‘impossibly possible’ yoga poses you could ever strike (under the guidance of a suitably qualified yoga teacher of course) to stimulate your mind and get your yogi dreams all set!

As a yoga teacher, you will have to unpack and deconstruct your student-teacher relationship to understand it more effectively. 

If you are seeking to become a good yoga teacher. You should first seek out a good teacher – one who you can aspire to become. A good yoga teacher should ideally be someone who inspires you to practice yoga as it truly is, that is, as an art to help guide you to becoming healthier and more peaceful. He or she should also be someone who guides you to improve yourself as a human being. Practicing yoga is all about bringing peace to yourself and the teacher’s guidance should encourage this in you.

A few days ago, a student came to us at Himalaya Tapovanam and asked me what she should do if she wanted to be a yoga teacher. The first question that came in to my mind was: do you want to be a yoga teacher, or just a mere yoga trainer?

“Yoga is the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind”, (Sage Patanjali, the Yoga Sutras - I.2). The word Yoga comes from Sanskrit and means ‘union’. Yoga is a spiritual science of self-realisation that has been developed in India thousands of years ago. Through Yoga we learn to master our body and mind to cultivate inner stillness and an ever growing realization of the innermost essence (soul).