Simple Yoga Tips

Improving Your Yoga Practice

Previously, in the series Clever Yoga Tips for Busy People, I gave some handy tips on how to incorporate some useful yoga techniques into your everyday life.  These included doing the wonderful Kapalbhati Pranayama for Weight Loss and Health while walking or driving, and doing Toe Touches (Padahast Asana) while in the shower.  But, today I want to share with your some very good tips which you can easily integrate right into your yoga routine, in order to get a whole lot more out of it.  After all, you are doing your practice anyway, might as well get the most out of the time you spend on the mat.

These simple yoga tips will help you awaken your Third Eye, release stress, increase the vibration of you energy, heal better, improve concentration and also help you develop the great yogic mind or witnessing consciousness.  So let’s get started…

5 Simple Yoga Tips to Enhance Your Yoga Practice:

Yoga Tip #1.

Practicing Mula Bandha – Root Lock:

Apply root lock at the end of any exercise(s).  To apply root lock, once you are done with your exercise, sit up straight, inhale deeply, then exhale completely and holding your breath out pull your rectum, sex organ and lower navel muscles up and in.  Hold these three muscles up and in as tight as you are comfortable doing with your breath held out.  When you need to, release this lock and inhale.  Then repeat two more times for maximum benefit.

Mula Bandha or Root Lock is excellent for activating the three lower chakras (root, sex and navel chakras), and it has the added benefit of redirecting energy generated by the previous exercise(s) back into the spine for further use by the body.  I strongly suggest using this tip to help raise the level of your energy and level of your practice.

Yoga Tip #2.  

Adding Relaxation Periods:

After doing a few exercises (and now after applying Mula Bandha ), take a minute or so to relax.  This relaxation period, whether done on your back, sitting or even standing is very important to give the body a chance to assimilate the energy that is now circulating as a result of the previous work.

During this relaxation period, the body rejuvenates, heals and charges itself, especially in the regions that were targeted by the previous poses and postures.  When doing this relaxation on your back, use yoga corpse pose and if doing it while sitting try to keep your back straight.  In addition, just do long deep slow breathing during this relaxation time, which helps deepen the level of relaxation.  This practice is also excellent for stress and anxiety relief.

Yoga Tip #3:

Practicing Shambhavi Mudra:

As you start to sprinkle the relaxation periods into your workouts, you can enhance their value further by adding the following aspect to it, Shambhavi Mudra.  This is to turn your eyes upwards, while closed and look through the center of your forehead.  This is called Shambhavi Mudra, and it helps stimulate and activate the Third Eye or Ajna Chakra.

The Third Eye is the seat of intuition and awakening this center is a key aspect of making progress in yoga and kundalini awakening.  Shambhavi Mudra is a very useful technique in this regard.  One important caution with regard to applying this mudra, is to apply it for only as long as comfortable and releasing it when you feel you need to (and applying it again when ready).  In other words, don’t over strain your eyes when practicing this mudra.

One final note with regard to this tip, is that you can use Shambhavi Mudra during the active portions of your practice as well, whenever the opportunity presents itself.  So when holding certain postures or during certain movement, apply the mudra as best as you can.  If applying the mudra is difficult, then you can just bring your attention to the Third Eye region, without the mudra, as that too will help stimulate the activate this important center.

Yoga Tip #4:

Practicing SAT NAM Mantra:

Another excellent way to enhance the relaxation period more and use it to develop your concentration and spiritual energy is to mentally chant a mantra while in relaxation.  This is also perfectly compatible with practicing Shambhavi Mudra and therefore can be done in conjunction with that mudra in place as well.

Mantras of the nature of SAT NAM work very well during these periods, where you think the sound SAT as you inhale slowly and think the sound NAM as you exhale.  SAT NAM is a fundamental mantra which means True Identity or True Self, and practicing it helps you journey back to your infinite, divine nature.

Again, if during the active portions of your practice, the opportunity is there to do mantra work, you can integrate it in and thus get more out of the session.

Yoga Tip #5:

Developing Witnessing Consciousness – Yogic Mind:

This is not just a tip, but I feel should be an essential part of your practice and I although I have included in the important Beginner’s Guide to Yoga Practice, I would like to remind everyone of this very important aspect of yoga practice here, which is that you should do your entire practice with full awareness.  The purpose of yoga is to develop your witnessing consciousness or Yogic Mind, and the best way to develop this mind is by constant awareness of the here and now.

So watch your mind, body, breath and feelings with as much awareness as you can muster right though your session.  Then your yoga pracitce will actually become meditation in motion.  When this witnessing aspect matures, there will no doer, just doing taking place.  This is why when people would watch masters like J. Krishnamurti do yoga, they would say that it is like there is no personality there, just yoga being done.  So aspire for that level of awareness, where it is so complete, that the thoughts required to assert the sense of separate identity do not have the opportunity to rise.  This is then real yoga.  This is Unity.

More Meditation & Yoga Tips:

For more meditation and yoga tips you can head over to the following articles:  Essential Tips and Tools for Daily Meditation Practice, Meditation Help & Tips for Beginners and 3 Simple Tips to Invite Enlightenment.