Four new YogaFit DVDs that I just ordered!

Here are the 4 DVDs that I just ordered from YogaFit. Order right now until Friday, the 4 DVDs you get approximately 20% off, and free shipping.

NEW!! PilatesFit II

A YogaFit and PilatesFit combo! Powerful YogaFit postures and transitions, plus challenging core exercises integrated seamlessly into the flow. We work the core in a variety of ways, including stabilization as well as abdominal/lower back/postural muscles strengthening and sculpting. Using the YogaFit Core Ball allows deeper activation of certain muscle groups, and adds a balance challenge to some poses. We strenthen, lengthen, stretch and sculpt the entire body in this 75 minute adavanced workout! It’s the perfect combo for YogaFit and PilatesFit fans who want one workout to meet their needs and help them reach their fitness goals.

All fitness levels.

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Full Body Blast: Running time 75 minutes.

Super-sculpt your body from head-to-toe with YogaFit creator Beth Shaw, who shows you the ultimate yoga-inspired moves for chiseling your arms and upper body, flattening your abs and firming the glutes and lower body. Your muscles–and your sexiest curves–will never be the same! Master trainer Lara Anderson joins in for the best-selling lower-body segment. Feel free to perform just one segment, or link all four for the best mind-body tone-up of your life!

Divided into four dynamic segments to address all your trouble zones, the workouts break down:
Full Body Blast (Running time 17 minutes)
Upper Body Buff with Beth Shaw (Running time 18 minutes)
Core Control (Running time 13 minutes)
Lower Body Lift with Lara Anderson (Running time 26 minutes)

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NEW!! YogaFit Basic and Back Health

Level: Beginners

Running Time: 70min

YogaFit Basics gives you all the tools to start your YogaFit practice. Learn safe and effective warm-up, work and cool-down phases as you move through basic postures. Create a strong foundation while getting a workout. This 70 minute, basics DVD prepares you for the more advanced videos. It’s perfect for any age or flexibility level and modifications and options are given on all poses.

Alleviate your back tension with the special segment dedicated to developing a healthy back. Chrys Kub, YogaFit Master Trainer and creator of the YogaFit Therapy program, focuses on flexibility, mobility, and core stability to create a healthy back.

There is also a Total Core bonus segment where Rose Zahn, creator of PilatesFit, addresses the core muscles to help strengthen weak muscles and stretch tight muscles.

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Active Advanced: Intermediate to advanced fitness level.

Running time 75 minutes.

You asked for it, you got it! Amp up your strength, increase flexibility and stoke your stamina with this challenging flow yoga practice guaranteed to take your practice to the next level! With the glorious San Jacinto Mountains as the backdrop for this strong and flowing practice, YogaFit founder Beth Shaw and her master trainers help you gain confidence and build heat and power from the inside out.

Bonus features include:
YogaFit Deep Breathing and also the Safety and Alignment Principles for all yoga practitioners. Finally, experience the mood-altering, deep relaxation that comes after an intensive yoga practice! Includes YogaFit Level 2, Level 3 and Level 4 postures.

BONUS SEGMENT!!! Core Control (13 minutes)

Yoga Giveaway!

Giving away a deck of Yoga cards by Rodney Yee on my other site.

Go check it out!
http://yogawithgaileee.blogspot.com/2009/05/yoga-giveaway-with-yoga-with-gaileee-e.html

Gaileee

Yoga with Gaileee, E-RYT

Discover how to: lose weight, eliminate your stress, increase your flexibility, build your strength using Yoga

• Help you lose weight: Many forms of yoga raise the heart rate into the aerobic range. But you don’t need to exert yourself to lose weight with yoga. Some studies show even gentle yoga and breathing techniques rev up your tired metabolism so you can lose weight.

  A study at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle linked yoga and weight loss. This study of over 15,000 men and women showed people who did yoga lost weight while the control group gained weight.

  Another study presented last year at the America Heart Association found yoga helped overweight high school students lose weight while the control group gained weight.

  And the famed Dr. Dean Ornish encourages his patients to practice yoga to help ensure weight loss. When you do yoga and make it part of your lifestyle, you’ll soon discover it’s power for weight loss.

  Yoga helps you to lose the weight in varied ways. It helps you build muscle mass. When you increase your muscle mass, you boost your resting metabolism — and that makes your body burn more calories. You strengthen your body from tip to toe with a regular practice. The thyroid gland normalizes your weight without you having to be in the gym 4-6 days a week. There are a number of factors involved in the normalizing of the weight. Some of the poses in a practice stimulate sluggish glands to increase their hormonal secretions. The thyroid gland, especially, has a big effect on our weight because it affects body metabolism.Yoga goes even deeper by changing the relationship of mind to body, and eventually to food and eating which can have tremendous impact on weight loss.

• Eliminate your stress: Yoga reduces the physical effects of stress on the body. By encouraging relaxation, you help on lowering your levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol is the chemical that is linked to increased belly fat. Big bellies are linked to insulin resistance-a precursor to Type 2 (adult-onset) diabetes – and heart disease. By combating stress, yoga helps to normalize cortisol levels and keep belly fat to a minimum.

  Related benefits include lowering blood pressure and heart rate, improving digestion and boosting the immune system as well as easing symptoms of conditions such as anxiety, depression, fatigue, asthma and insomnia. Your lung capacity will improve, and so will the quality and depth of the breath. People who practice on a regular basis, will notice that they will have less upper respiratory infections, this is thought to be because of the quality of your breath one practices in a yoga practice.

• Improve your flexibility: Yoga helps to improve flexibility and mobility, increasing range of movement and reducing aches and pains. Many people can’t touch their toes during their first yoga class. Gradually they begin to use the correct muscles. Over time, the ligaments, tendons and muscles lengthen, increasing elasticity, making more poses possible. Yoga also helps to improve body alignment resulting in and helping to relieve back, neck, joint and muscle problems. Many people think that they need to be flexible or need to be able to touch their toes to do yoga. Not so! You come to yoga with however your body is at the moment, and with working through your practice, work towards a more flexible body!

• Build your strength: Yoga postures use every muscle in the body, helping to increase strength literally from head to toe. When I restarting taking yoga about 8 years ago, I could only do one pushup. After being in a regular practice for three months, I could at the end of those three months do 19 pushups! I was truely amazed at this feat, and was hooked on yoga from that point on.

  While the different poses in a practice can strengthen the body, they also provide an additional benefit of helping to relieve muscular tension. Lots of people have upper body tension, due to being at a desk or car or at the computer for a lot of the day. Coming to a session, helps to build the upper body strength, and to relieve tension being held in the body, so you get benefit of increasing strength and easing body tension.

• Remember, you don’t have to be flexible, or in shape to do yoga. If you can breathe you can do some form of yoga. The more out of shape that you are, the more you’ll see immediate results in a regular practice.

  Please join me in a gentle beginning yoga class. What happens in a class is for the first time, you’ll register and sign in, I’ll discuss with you any body issues that you may have (back, carpel tunnel syndrome, balance, surgeries, high blood pressure, etc.), Class is typically 60 minutes in length. Each class will begin with warm-up and stretching. The warm-up is then followed by focused breathing, then a series of poses that gently work the entire body. After the exercises there is a period of physical and mental relaxation and reflection.

  Participants do not need any prior experience (I love beginners!!) to attend. All skill levels are welcomed. You may borrow a yoga mat, but I encourage you to purchase a yoga mat of your own. Blankets, blocks, straps are provided for you to use during your practice.

  Where? At Wesley United Methodist Church in 3515 Helena Avenue, Nederland, Texas on Monday nights at 7:00 p.m. and childcare is provided with 24 hour notice.  (You’ll need to call me initially to get this setup, 24 hours in advance.) More questions? Please email YogaWithGaileee@gmail.com or call at 409.727.3177. http://www.yogawithgaileee.com/

Conditions Improved By Yoga, Self Reported – from “Yoga As Medicine” Book by Timothy McCall, M.D.

As I am getting deeper and deeper into one of the books that we are to read for the YogaFit Therapy course, I am amazed at all the benefits of a regular yoga practice can do for folks. And I’m a yoga teacher. (The more you teach yoga, it seems the more you want to know….and need to know!)

Please read on for more information about “Yoga as Medicine” book (excellent!)by Timothy McCall, M.D. http://www.drmccall.com/ ~Gaileee

Yoga appears to be effective in the treatment of a wide variety of health conditions. In Timothy McCall, M.D. Book, “Yoga As Medicine”, he goes on to say: We’ll be reviewing the scientific evidence later but, for now, let’s see what people who’ve tried therapeutic yoga have to say. In 1983 – 84, the London-based Yoga Biomedical Trust, run by Robin Monro, PhD, surveyed twenty-seven hundred(2,700) people, most between the ages of thirty-one and sixty, who used yoga therapeutically. To be included, participants had to have practiced yoga for at least two hours a week for a year or longer. Though the number of people with some of the conditions in question was small, the results (see the table below, and in Dr. McCall’s book, Table 1.1) were impressive:

* 98 percent of back-pain sufferers found yoga helpful

* 90 percent of cancer patients

* 82 percent of people with insomnia

* and 100 percent of alcoholics

The lowest success rate in the survey was for women with “menstrual problems,” two out of three of whom found that yoga helped.

Table 1.1 Conditions Improved by Yoga, Self-Reported

Medical Condition     Number of               Percentage Helped
People Reporting       By Yoga

Alcoholism               24                          100%
Anxiety                 838                           94%
Arthritis &
Rheumatic Disorders     589                           90%
Asthma or Bronchitis    226                           88%
Back Disorders        1,142                           98%
Cancer                   29                           90%
Diabetes                 10                           80%
Duodenal Ulcers          40                           90%
Heart Disease            50                           94%
Hemorrhoids             391                           88%
High Blood Pressure     150                           84%
Insomnia                542                           82%
Menopausal Disorders    247                           83%
Menstrual Problems      317                           68%
Migraine                464                           80%
Neurological &
Neuromuscular Diseases  112                           96%
Obesity                 240                           74%
Premenstrual Syndrome   848                           77%
Smoking                 219                           74%

Source: The Yoga Biomedical Trust, London

Imagine how much you’d be hearing about a new drug that could accomplish even a fraction of this. Nevertheless, (it is Dr. Timothy McCall’s)it’s my experience that few in the medical community or the general public have any conception of what yoga has to offer. Part of the problem, (Dr. McCall) I’m convinced, is that many people who could benefit from yoga shy away due to misconceptions about what it is and isn’t, or who can do it and who shouldn’t.

Those subjects to be addressed in a different post.

Yoga As Medicine, book by Timothy McCall, M.D.

In the book Yoga as Medicine, the Yogic Prescription for Health and Healing, Timothy McCall, M.D., makes the following statement in his book.

As someone who has been an MD for over twenty years, I can tell you that yoga is quite simply the most powerful system of overall health and well-being I have ever seen. Even if you are currently among what might be called the temporarily healthy, as preventive medicine, yoga is as close to one-stop shopping as you can find. This single comprehensive system can reduce stress, increase flexibility, improve balance, promote strength, heighten cardiovascular conditioning, lower blood pressure, reduce overweight, strengthen bones, prevent injuries, lift mood, improve immune function, increase the oxygen supply to the tissues, heighten sexual functioning and fulfillment, foster psychological equanimity, and promote spiritual well-being….and that’s only a partical list.

For continuing my education in my yoga studies, this is one of the books that we are to read, to get ready for YogaFit Therapy course. As I delved into this book and the others, I’ll be posting a bit of what I’m learning.

For more information on Dr. McCall’s book, visit his site at
Yoga As Medicine – A Yoga Journal Book by Timothy McCall, M.D.

My Yoga booth at the health fair.

So here is what my booth looked like at the Health Fair. I stood out in front of the booth, in the yoga mat area and talked to folks about yoga, gave out information, had people enter the yoga giveaways, get a snack (very popular), and demonstrated poses.

It worked out very well. I used some of my materials from my scrapbook days (sizzlets alphabets), and corner rounders for the photos.

Had my students write up testimonials and showed a vinyasa of easing upper and lower back pain from RestoraFlow Yoga creator, Sara Varona.

Passed out information from YogaFit too! Additionally, I took my YogaFit Kids cards, and displayed a Sun Salutation, as I thought that people might ask about kids yoga that way (yeah, they did).

I did giveaways for yoga mats, private lessons, free classes and a 3 month family membership to the local YMCA (thanks Port Arthur YMCA!!).

Stiff Achy Neck? Try Sewing Yoga!

On SewNews January 2007 issue, they described the Yoga for Sewers series.

Now in looking at the poses that Kat presents, you could use these poses to help you in the office environment too!

Here is a little snippit from the SewNews site:

YOGA MEANS “UNION” IN SANSKRIT. When yoga is practiced, movement and breath are united to create a relaxed body and a clear mind. Yoga’s deep breathing and gentle stretches relieve tense shoulders, a stiff neck and an aching lower back, and help circulation in the legs.

“Sewing Yoga” is a series of yoga postures combined with deep breathing designed to target the aches and pains associated with sewing. The postures are gentle enough that even the most novice yogi can do them. The entire program can be completed in a half hour and many of the postures can be done while sitting at your sewing chair.

• Overview

• Seated Poses

• Standing Poses

• Lying Down Poses

The program takes about 30 minutes…Sew if you’ve got a achy back, go ahead and try this program!
Gaileee, E-RYT

Free Day of Yoga, Sat, Jan 24th, 2009, Wesley United Methodist Church in Nederland Texas

Free Yoga Class on January 24th, Saturday from 10 am to 11:15 am. Registered Yoga Teachers through Yoga Alliance come to give a free or low cost yoga class to our communities.

This class will be formatted in such a way to help eliviate low and upper back pain, plus the aches and pains from sleeping. Come and take a gentle beginning restorative yoga class with Gaileee, at Wesley United Methodist Church, in Nederland Texas.

Questions? call  Gail at 409-727-3177.

Yoga Giveaway

Click on over to my original yoga blog for some yoga giveaways.

http://yogawithgaileee.blogspot.com/2008/10/yoga-giveaway-yoga-deck-cards-or.html

Deadline, Nov. 1st, 9 a.m. Central Time….

Sucessfull Stress Management Techniques by Beth Shaw

Beth is the founder and President of YogaFit International Training Systems, Inc. YogaFit is where I received my Yoga teacher training.

Successful Stress Management Techniques
by Beth Shaw

Stress Management means basically, learning how to manage stress, by witnessing it, and releasing it. Stress management, is simply, a daily process of letting go ( letting go of tension stored in the body / mind. Without this letting go process, we become candidates for ulcers, heart attacks, migraines and premature aging. All known to be caused by stress. Stress Management techniques, allow us to discover and experience, how, we hold emotions, thoughts and experiences in out bodies. Exercises will offer us the opportunity, to tune into different moods, feelings, attitudes, and states of consciousness beside the low-grade stress levels, most people in our society, operate under. In our busy information society, we are constantly bombarded by external stimuli. A good stress management program, can help tune out the exterior world, and allow the participant to drop inside their bodies, and find a place of stillness. Some techniques that aid in this process, are deep breathing, extended stretching, and body scanning – all done in a quiet, warm room, with soft music playing, or simply, the relaxing sound of one’s own, deep breathing. We learn to increase the probability of desired moods, and feelings through our heightened self – awareness, while simultaneously decreasing negative states of anxiety. Excess of stress can also result in an extended period “flight or fight syndrome” which over time can drain the adrenal glands. Participants in a stress management program gain a powerful awareness of how to positively influence health, reactions, feelings and response. A good mind/body class can give clients the tools they can use for the rest of their lives.

Yoga is the 6,000 year old secret to health and vitality. Yoga can be considered technology for getting back in touch with our true essence and ourselves. It is a way of remembering the health and wholeness that is our natural state of being. Yoga, when broken down to its most simple form is breathing and feeling. Through this breathing and feeling we learn to control our reactions to events and people. It is not the events and people in our lives that give us stress but the way we react to them. What makes yoga unique in terms of stress reduction is in its multifaceted approach. By working at the physical and psychological levels concurrently, yoga reduces stress at each level and this reduction in stress is supported by the work done at other levels. Yoga postures combined with deep breathing facilitate deep relaxation that combats stress.

Physically – Yoga massages the skeletal system which supports bone mass and growth while taking the stress away from the supporting muscles and tendons. Yoga mechanically removes tension from the muscles through stretching. The steady even yoga breathing reduces stress levels in the body. Stress response, is accompanied by rapid, shallow breathing., Yoga encouraged deep diaphragmatic breathing activating a relaxation response. Yoga also massages the internal organs reducing high blood pressure, stress in the cardiovascular system at the level of the heart, arteries and blood. The nerves are massaged and stretched through yoga, conducting messages; throughout the body.

Emotionally the body believes what the mind believes. Affirmations about peace, calm, and tranquility, along with positive imagery are conveyed to the nervous system. Yoga brings greater relationship with others, life, and us. As we begin to explore these relationships more, we see which interactions genuinely support us in moving towards calmness. As we become more relaxed through yoga and stress management classes, we release addictive behaviors, which are often used to relieve stress. Yoga brings awareness to the emotional blocks that limit our experience of life. Our perception of life has been conditioned by our experiences and sometimes we close ourselves off from feelings and emotions. Through yoga we learn to bring awareness to all parts of ourselves with the understanding that through integration, we come to a natural place of balance. Many of our stressful habit patterns are conditioned. Yoga teaches a whole set of patterns which are helpful in reducing stress.