Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z62S4_0yUOs

06-05-2012 02:33 MR BUTTERS WHIPPE WITH EXERCISE SHORTCUTS

See the original post here:
STREET NIZM EXCERCISE SHORTCUTS (REDUX) - Video

Sienna Miller has taken up yoga to help with her pregnancy.

The 'Factory Girl' actress is currently expecting her first child with fianc Tom Sturridge and has recently begun practicing the relaxation and strengthening technique because she hates working out.

She said: 'I have been trying to do some pregnancy yoga as I'm definitely not a gym person.

'My mum started up one of the first yoga schools in London in the 70s, so I should probably utilise her expertise as I have really bad posture. But I think I'd probably kill her if she tried to tell me to sit up straight.'

Sienna thinks her skin looks much better since she got pregnant - though she is unsure whether that is due to her having quit smoking and drinking alcohol.

She added to Marie Claire magazine: 'My skin definitely looks better since I became pregnant - although not smoking or drinking has probably helped with that.

'Body-wise I've been slathering on Dr. Hauschka Blackthorn Body Oil to try to prevent stretch marks, which is gorgeous and certainly seems to have worked so far.'

Read the original:
Sienna Miller takes up yoga

When it comes to laughter yoga, faking it til you make it is just fine.

At least, that's what Vishwa Prakash said at the start of the session that HuffPost's health news editor Amanda Chan and I wandered into recently.

It was one of a few guidelines Prakash offered, as well as keeping our eyes locked on our fellow attendees, some 20 men and women dressed in street clothes and standing in a circle in his textile design company's midtown Manhattan offices.

And with that, we were off.

Prakash traded with other leaders who led us through several "exercises" -- we clapped, we milked imaginary cows, we blew up imaginary balloons, threw them on the ground, and exploded into laughter as we popped them with our feet. In between each set, we walked around clapping and chanting, "Ho Ho Ha Ha Ha!"

"It's bizarre, it's plain weird. Adults do not behave this way," said Sebastien Gendry, who founded the American School of Laughter Yoga, the country's largest laughter yoga training program.

"You laugh, you clap and you breathe," he continued. (You also drive imaginary bumper cars, pretend to be lions and hug perfect strangers.) "Suddenly you find yourself really laughing and you don't know why. It's fun, and you feel good."

The goal of laughter yoga is to breathe and to laugh, not because anyone has cracked a joke, but because laughter is a playful, social, contagious thing. The "yoga" label is a bit of a misnomer. There are no downward dogs or inversions, just people coming together, usually for free, for a short session of laughter. And it has become something of a global phenomenon.

According to Laughter Yoga International, a group led by the founder of Laughter Yoga and Mumbai-based physician Dr. Madan Kataria, there are about 6,000 laughter clubs across the globe. In the past decade, more than 400 have cropped up here in the U.S., and organizers expect a few thousand will celebrate "World Laughter Day" on Sunday.

How and why people find laughter yoga varies. Many come to connect with a community, Gendry said, others come for catharsis or to feel better physically.

Visit link:
Laughter Yoga: Can Happiness Heal?

A California-based research firm last month listed yoga studios as the fourth-fastest-growing industry in the United States.

Yoga (and Pilates) studios, according to IBISWorld, are proving to be recession-proof with 12.1 percent growth per year.

The study attributes the growth to a recent rise in interest in fitness. (Reports that the increasing interest is a result of this column are unconfirmed.)

Clearly yoga is as popular as ever around the South Sound, with dozens of studios offering everything from yoga in 105-degree rooms (hot yoga) to yoga on floating stand-up paddleboards (SUP yoga).

Still, Holly Menzies, who runs Tacomas Ashtanga Yoga studio, says many people still have misconceptions about yoga. These concerns very well could be keeping some people from trying an activity that can help them get fit, increase strength and flexibility and perhaps even alleviate nagging pain.

So, I asked Menzies and a few others to bust some yoga myths.

MYTH: I have to be flexible to do yoga.

I get this all the time, Menzies said. Its just not true. People see these really flexible people doing pretty advanced (poses) and they think I cant do that.

The truth is you do yoga to become more flexible.

MYTH: Yoga is easy.

Read the original:
Area experts attempt to dispel myths about yoga

The way Sonia Jones describes it, discovering the practice of Ashtanga yoga -- a method that, in its most basic form, combines focused breathing with a set sequence of postures -- is a powerful, heady experience.

"It's like when you first fall in love and want to go back and see your first love again -- it was like that," Jones said. "It wasn't just like going to the gym and taking a yoga class."

Last month, Jones opened Jois Yoga in Greenwich, the most recent of three studios she manages in conjunction with Salima Ruffin, an entrepreneur in San Diego, and the family members of Sri Krishna Pattabhi Jois, the founder of the Ashtanga yoga method. Since 2008, Jois Yoga has opened studios in Sydney, Australia, and Encinitas, Calif., specializing in the traditional practice of Ashtanga -- meaning "eight-limbed" in Sanskrit -- yoga.

For Jones, an Australian-born former model, Greenwich resident and wife of billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones II, that initial love for Ashtanga grew out of pain: a blown disk in her back that left her numb from the waist down. Friends urged her to try yoga as a method of healing.

"I said, `Oh, I don't have time and it's so annoying to take the time to stop and do yoga,' and all those misconceptions," Jones said.

Jones, like many traditional Ashtanga practitioners, traveled to Mysore, India, to study with Pattabhi Jois, known to his followers as Guruji. Jois died in 2009.

Ashtanga yoga consists of "set sequences of yoga asanas, or postures, that are coordinated with the inhaling and exhaling breath," according to Valerie Schneiderman, the Ashtanga practitioner and owner/director of the Yoga Shala in Ridgefield. The poses follow six series of increasing difficulty, and students progress through the positions at their own pace. They don't move on to new poses until they have mastered the preceding ones.

"You could characterize the practice as being a practice where every movement is coordinated with an inhaling and exhaling breath," Schneiderman said. "The beautiful thing of a practice like this is that it's very grounding."

Jones' first leap into teaching and entrepreneurship grew organically, and the latest extension of Jois Yoga emerged when the group of practitioners she recruited locally became too large to practice comfortably in her Greenwich home.

"I wanted to take the myth away that Ashtanga is for very fit, strong people," Jones said. "You learn for your ability."

Originally posted here:
Jois: Yoga's latest extension

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvWaVkQjlI0

04-05-2012 10:34 MysterEy1 & (subscribe) present this real account - take it w/ a grain of salt. Life coaching is a well-known tradition, which helps many people seeking better lives. But this story will alert you to the darker side of Life Coaching. Beware! All Life Coaches are not the same. Some are harmful, some are wolves in sheep's clothing! I am a guru in real-life and a guru on youtubia. So I do know the dangers and temptations of this student-teacher arrangement. Be good and seek the highest Truth always!!

See the original post:
Life-Coach Warning: story of Joanna, San Francisco (twisted life-coaching) - Video

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXbF_MsoRjA

05-05-2012 13:37 Something I'm learning through my coaching sessions: sometimes people are only one conversation away from making progress. Also, two things that are cheering me up right now. 🙂

Go here to see the original:
Life coach in India, part 4 - Video

Reynaud Alexander has dedicated his life to teaching young black women to run fast. So, it should come as no surprise that Alexander, a 72-year-old retired track and field coach, refuses to slow down.

He plans to attend the Southwestern Athletic Conference Track and Field Championships at Tad Gormley Stadium this weekend, and he surely wont resist the temptation to impart a bit of coaching wisdom on the competitors.

I tell my athletes that the key to success is about balancing intensity and volume, said Alexander, who was born and reared in New Orleans. You dont want to burn out too early.

And judging by a lifetime of accomplishments as a coach, teacher and civil rights activist, Alexander has maintained a strict adherence to this credo.

He is an exceptionally giving person, and he cares about everybody, said his wife, Loretta Alexander. I have to fight for time because he is always so giving of himself to everyone else.

Alexander has been coaching for more than 50 years and said he routinely receives calls from parents wanting him to mentor their daughters. He ran track at Southern, served as head coach at McDonogh High School from 1980 to 1991 and as an assistant coach at Mississippi State from 1991 to 2002 before retiring.

During the past year, Alexander has stepped away from his role as volunteer coach at Higgins High School and New Era (AAU) Track and Field Club, focusing instead on his family. He now bides his time coaching grandsons Donovan Carraby, 11, and Niles Cosey, 8.

Hes always so busy, said Carraby, an aspiring baseball star. It means a lot to me that my grandfather can help me with my speed.

Glynn Alexander, who was a defensive back at Grambling State and with the Buffalo Bills, said coaching is in his older brothers DNA.

Its in his nature, Glynn Alexander said. Hes always been involved in coaching.

Read more here:
Trailblazer Reynaud Alexander has a legacy in local track & field

A volleyball coach investigated for sexual harassment in Texas is the top choice to take over the prestigious volleyball program at Pojoaque Valley High School.

Michael Littlejohn, the Elkettes' coach-in-waiting, said in a phone interview Friday that he engaged in behavior and made comments to Borger High School employees that could be interpreted as sexual harassment, but denied more serious allegations made by six accusers.

According to a 2011 Borger internal investigation, accusers said Littlejohn, 56, made inappropriate comments, improperly interacted with minors, indecently touched an assistant coach's breast and sent her illicit text messages. He was placed on paid administrative leave at the school on Sept. 15 while the investigation was ongoing. He resigned Feb. 9.

The allegations, made by a former assistant coach and five current district employees, cover a two-year span.

At Borger, 50 miles northeast of Amarillo in the Texas panhandle, Littlejohn admitted making inappropriate jokes and touching some of his players during workouts, but disputed sending his former assistant coach illicit text messages or touching her breast.

"I didn't think it was sexual harassment," Littlejohn said.

Littlejohn said he disclosed the allegations to Pojoaque athletic director Matt Martinez, but refused to say when.

Martinez said last week that Littlejohn, the former Texico volleyball coach who retired after being reassigned following 29 years with the program, was recommended by the Pojoaque coaching search committee and is waiting for a teaching opening.

Martinez, who is on the coaching search committee, said Friday he was aware of the allegations, but didn't say to what extent. When asked if Pojoaque planned to move forward with hiring Littlejohn, Martinez said, "That's a personnel issue. I'm not going to answer that. You're going to have to ask somebody else about that."

Then he hung up the phone.

Read the original:
Pojoaque coaching prospect accused of sexual harassment at previous job

Seven BCS-level jobs in college basketball opened this offseason for reasons that spanned from terminations (Illinois) to retirements (Mississippi State). But they're all filled now. And what we were reminded once again from this annual carousel is that convincing a safe and content BCS coach to voluntarily leave one school for another is among the sport's most difficult tasks.

It almost never happens.

The proof is in the numbers.

Just one power-conference school was able to hire a power-conference head coach this offseason, and the only reason it happened is because said power-conference head coach, Frank Martin, decided he'd rather take what is a historically bad SEC job and try to compete with John Calipari and Billy Donovan than work at Kansas State another day under athletic director John Currie. I realize Martin has denied this in the sense that he's claimed there was never a real rift between him and his old boss. But that's just Martin taking the high road. The truth is that he and Currie went together about as well as Amar'e Stoudemire and glass. So while it's true that moving from Manhattan (Kansas) to Columbia (South Carolina) gets Martin and his wife closer to their East Coast roots, it's also true that Martin would still likely be KSU's coach if he didn't spend the past year frustrated by his buttoned-up AD.

But whatever.

I'm not here to write about Frank Martin.

I'm here to once and for all convince ADs and fans that the key to your school not looking silly during a coaching search is to set reasonable sights on one of these three things:

1. Coaches who are out of coaching 2. BCS assistants 3. Non-BCS head coaches not named Mark Few, Brad Stevens or Shaka Smart.

If you're not shopping for a coach on one of those aisles you're almost certainly shopping on the wrong aisle and wasting time. For proof consider that just five of the 32 BCS-level jobs that have opened over the past three years were filled with BCS-level head coaches, and that none of them was filled by Few, Stevens or Smart. The only BCS-level head coaches who have voluntarily changed jobs over the past three offseasons are Martin (KSU to South Carolina), Mike Anderson (Missouri to Arkansas), Oliver Purnell (Clemson to DePaul), Frank Haith (Miami to Missouri) and Mark Turgeon (Texas A&M to Maryland), and Turgeon is the lone person of the group who left purely for basketball reasons.

Martin hated his boss. Anderson wanted to move back to Arkansas. Haith probably only had one year left at Miami. And Purnell, well, he just decided to take a big check and the city of Chicago rather than remain in South Carolina, and, with all due respect to South Carolina, who could blame him? Chicago is a great place to live. A big check makes it better. And at DePaul these days, nobody cares if you lose in the NCAA tournament (or if you even make it). Pressure is nonexistent, which must be nice for a man approaching 60 years old. OP is living the good life. We should all be so lucky.

Go here to see the original:
Hokies' hire a reminder that ADs need to be realistic with coaching search