Using every muscle in their bodies, 20 people struck poses such as the downward dog and the dragonfly in the 2013 Utah Regional USA Yoga Asana Championship. The Wildcat Theater was packed with 200 spectators as the WSU African Drumming Club welcomed the yogis and yoginis, male and female yoga professionals.

The competition featured poses from Asana yoga style. Yogis and yoginis from Utah and Wyoming competed head to head on Saturday morning and into the afternoon.

There are five compulsory postures and two optional postures, said Marlon McGann, the head judge. And in the five compulsory, they are five from the basic class, and the two optional are advance postures (that the yogi chooses).

Each yogi had to perform five poses, the standing head-to-knee pose, standing bow pulling pose, bow pose, rabbit pose and stretching pose.

You have to have normal breathing. It cant be labor breath, said McGann about judging the contestants. The person should be calm and serene. It just seems effortless. People should be in awe and want to perform it themselves.

Jacob Schanzer judged not only the Utah regional championship, but will also go to New York to judge the nationals at Hudson Theater.

We are looking for strength, flexibility, calmness, grace and balance, Schanzer said.

Each posture was scored on a scale of 1-10.

Most people are not trying to win something, McGann said. They are just trying to work on themselves.

This will be first year the regional championship is held at Weber State, said Michael Larson, director of the Bikram Yoga Ogden Studio. It is the eighth year it will be held in Utah. Every other championship was held in Salt Lake City.

The rest is here:
Yoga competitors find zen at Weber State

NEW YORK - Pairing indoor cycling's intense, calorie-busting cardio workout with yoga, the mind-body practice of stretching into inner peace, may seem like a mismatch but fitness experts say it works.

Whether it is called Yoga Ride, Spin to Ride or Cycle Yoga, the two very different activities complement each other to improve fitness and flexibility.

Cycle Yoga classes at The Spinning Yogi studio in Lakewood, Colorado, follow the typical format: first spin, then stretch, according to owner and instructor Patsy Juarez.

"Cycling is so cardio-vascular intense," said Juarez. "We do that for a half hour then change gears, stretching out the things we tightened up."

One 60-minute class, she added, incorporates cardio, flexibility and strengthening elements.

"The first (part) gets your heart rate going so you can jump into yoga quicker," she said. "It feels like a full body workout in an hour's time."

And the transition to yoga is quick and involves moving to a different room and easing into an easy yoga pose.

At Crunch, the national chain of fitness centers, New York City-based instructor Taj Harris said slowing down music in the yoga room smoothes the transition for its Yoga Ride classes.

"Because spinning is so one direction, muscles get overused and tight," Harris explained, adding that yoga poses ease the muscles and improve strength.

And the combination class is suitable for cyclers who may be unfamiliar with yoga.

Originally posted here:
Fitness class combines spinning and yoga

As I was quickly reminded during our first morning, this doesn't mean that Simon's yoga is not physically demanding, but that its challenges sneak up on you from behind. It is a kind of stealth yoga, deceptive in its ease, but powerful in its impact. Particularly alluring is the way he draws from other disciplines such as qi gong and t'ai qi.

Thus the flow of yoga postures is ornamented by beautiful hand flourishes or arm twists, or an occasional left-field posture such as my particular favourite the so-called 'karate kid'. The class ranged from complete beginner to teacher-level, but everyone felt catered for.

Breakfast was on a beautiful vine-draped terrace and was delicious. Apart from the usual offerings there was a 'Turkish breakfast' superb moist feta, richly ripe tomatoes and olives, beautiful bread, local honey, figs from the trees around the yurts, and a delicious mixture of tahini and mulberry molasses.

After a few hours by the pool (around which Fifty Shades of Grey was being read in three different languages) it was somewhat indecently time for lunch. This consisted of a wonderful daily vegetarian buffet, with so many different variations of vegetable, deftly prepared with a wide range of herbs and spices, that I never missed meat once.

After more poolside sunbathing, it was then back to the yoga shala a pavilion with open sides wreathed in more vines through which the sun shone softly for our yin practice.

Each afternoon Simon focused on a particular aspect of our body, adapting and intensifying well-known yoga postures to increase their efficacy.

The most memorable session was halfway through the week when we focused on hip-openers. Simon warned us that some of us might feel cross, because it is in our hips that we often store this emotion. Sure enough, after three hours of carefully yet doggedly working on opening up our hips a number of us, myself included, felt mysteriously bad-tempered. One woman was still disgruntled at breakfast the following day.

It is this kind of bodily discovery that makes a week with Simon Low so fascinating. You learn about the way your body works how it twists and tightens and becomes unbalanced in the course of our daily lives. And you learn how you can work with your body to untwist, unravel, liberate and get your positive energy flowing like never before.

What's more, in contrast to other yoga retreats I have been on, at no point does your body become weary or ache; Simon's restorative practice is exactly that.

Of course at some point your brain wants a rest from yoga, even if your body doesn't, and a few days in at Huzur Vadisi there is a boat trip from the nearest coastal town of Gcek. At first glimpse this seemed a pretty humble place, but once out on the water I realised it was anything but. We were sailing in a traditional wooden craft but many of the other boats were vast state-of-the-art superyachts.

Original post:
Yoga in Turkey: At one with a wonderful world