South Boulder Recreation Center, 1360 Gillaspie Drive, Boulder, 303-579-9722, yinyangboulder.com

Instructor: Karen Nicholson Cobble, of Boulder, has been practicing yoga for more than 25 years and teaching since 2009. She specializes in Yin Yoga and yoga for kids.

She is a certified yoga instructor through Core Power Yoga, and she also has a master's in counseling psychology.

What is the workout? Yin Yoga is a series of postures that you hold for extended periods of time (like three minutes), designed to stretch the connective tissue of our joints.

"The class offers time to be with yourself, to activate your parasympathetic nervous system so your body and mind get a rest, while rehabilitating your connective tissue (yin tissue) system, consisting of fascia and joints among other things," Cobble writes.

What's different? Yin Yoga focuses on the fascia and joints instead of the muscles. In fact, you need to let go of your muscles and not engage them to sink into the poses.

There is no flow from one posture to the next as there is in traditional Vinyasa yoga, so the class is much slower but that does not mean it is necessarily easier. It's just different.

"We bring ourselves into poses that are uncomfortable and there can be a sense of discomfort, and we practice staying with it," Cobble says.

By practicing how to respond differently to discomfort on the mat, Cobble says, students learn how to also react differently to discomfort and problems off the mat. In that, Yin Yoga can change behaviors and habits.

"It's our habit typically to run away from that," she says. "And all the issues get stored in our tissues."

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Workout of the Week: Yin Yoga

Santa Barbara, California (PRWEB) May 20, 2014

A growing group of experienced teachers and hot yoga studio owners are coming together to offer a true alternative to Bikram's yoga teacher training. TheHotTT is an 8 week, 500 hour Hot Yoga Teacher Training where students will learn to teach the Primary Hot Yoga Series (26+2), in an intense, challenging and inspiring training environment, without the associated attachments.

This is about unifying studios and teachers, and continuing the series with greater attention to training than Bikram has ever provided. It is a collective offering from a branch of the yoga community that often finds itself divided. Experienced, like minded, trainers will come and go within the 8 week period, teaching and leading discourses to a group of around 50 trainees.

With Bikram - for the first time in his training history - not running a fall teacher training in North America, it is the perfect opportunity for studio owners to send their teaching prospects to an alternative hot yoga teacher training experience in Santa Barbara.

"We are all on the same side here. And we can make it better - maybe we have a responsibility to step outside our individual boxes and give it a try." Cassie Aitken - Director, Global Hot Yoga

Owners are ready for a steady stream of rock star teachers to pull from, without having to kill themselves running their own trainings or send students to a training they no longer trust. And individual trainers see no conflict for themselves or their training businesses; some have even acknowledged a selfish motive in that they want a better stream of teachers available to make life easier at their studios.

The Primary Hot Yoga Series of 26+2 postures was originally defined by Bikram Choudhury. It is an ideal set of asanas for the beginner hatha yoga student and a complete method for teaching a group of students in a single class. This class is simply one of the best doorways into a yoga practice, and a conscious life, that has been defined during our lifetimes. In order to take the practice to the next level, TheHotTT teachers - many of whom either served as senior contributing teachers at Bikram's training, or have practiced his method for more than 20 years - believe these physical postures should be taught with more of a focus on alignment, meditation and breathing; so they have evolved the way teachers will learn how to pass on their knowledge, without changing the postures themselves.

The first course from TheHotTT will be hosted in Santa Barbara, California from September 29 to November 23, 2014. Places are limited to 50 students and there will be a minimum of 12 expert teachers. The course offers intimate, hands on teaching clinics, and lectures in mechanics, anatomy and philosophy. Trainees will also receive complimentary three day workshops for meditation, partner yoga and kids yoga.

Students and teachers can apply to be a part of this new wave of hot yoga by emailing teach@thehottt.com or visiting the website http://www.TheHotTT.com

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Essential gear for your yoga practice

This time of year, yoga seems to be everywhere. There are Groupon deals aplenty and yoga sessions held all over the city in parks and even museums. In fact, if you find yourself at the Museum of Modern Art Thursday evening, hundreds of yogis will be taking over the atrium and garden for Lol's "White Tour" session, where all participants will be decked out in the requisite white, to symbolize peace.

And though the practice has been around in some form for thousands of years, it's "just seeping into the mainstream," says Jason Wachob, founder of the health and wellness website MindBodyGreen and a practicing yogi for five years. "Yoga's become this thing that isn't taboo and something a lot of people use to supplement other practices."

If you've been thinking about dipping your toes into the yoga waters, here are some tips from teachers and practitioners alike to get your on your way. Come on in, the water's fine.

Try a lot of different classes

From more traditional practices like hatha and vinyasa flow to newer and more unconventional (think aerial or even nude yoga), there are many types of yoga classes out there, and it may take some experimenting to find the one that suits you.

"I tried many different styles of yoga, but nothing ever spoke to me or worked for me the way Baptiste Yoga does," says Bethany Lyons, founder of Lyons Den Power Yoga in TriBeCa, which teaches a form of hot yoga called Baptiste Power Vinyasa Yoga.

Wachob recommends trying different styles, as well as teachers, to find one that you like.

"There's tons of different styles," says Wachob. "It's important to experiment and find what works."

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Thinking about starting yoga? Read this first

Announced and detailed at the companys recent press event in New York, the Surface Pro 3 is Microsofts answer to Apples MacBook Air. TheSurface Pro 3 isa sleek device designed to offer the functionality and feature set of both a laptop and tablet in a single device.

The Surface Pro 3 is thinner and more powerful than its predecessor, equipped with a robust display resolution, and is bundled with a pressure-sensitive pen. It packs Windows 8.1 Pro, along with two 5MP cameras, and the ability to shoot 1080p video using either one as well.

But how does the companys new andexpensive offering compare with the Lenovo Yoga 2 13? Here, we stackup both with aside-by-side comparison of their specs and features, offering you, the consumer, a closer look at the two.

Also, check out our Microsoft Surface Pro 3 and Apple MacBook Pro comparison,and our Surface Pro 3, Surface Pro 2, and Surface Pro comparisonto see how Microsofts new devicecompares with bothits predecessors, and Apples flagship laptop as well.

Surface Pro 3

Lenovo Yoga 2 13-inch

Though the Surface Pro 3offers tablet-like functionality, Microsoft wasnt shy about touting the devices capabilities as a fully-featured laptop. This particular version is equipped with an Intel Core i5 processor and 4GB of RAM, just like the Lenovo Yoga 2 13.

However, the Surface Pro 3 lacks the storage capacity of the Yoga 2 128GB compared to 500GB. On the other hand, the Surface Pro 3s hard drive is likely to be much faster than the Yogas, which consists of a solid state hybrid drive paired with a 16GB SSD.

Bothoffer an Intel HD Graphics 4400 GPU,an SD card slot, andWi-Fi connectivity, though the Surface Pro 3 supports the faster 802.11ac standard.

Theres no denying thatthe design of the Surface Pro 3 and Yoga 2are the biggest differences between the two devices. Its clear that Microsoft stressed portability when it made the Surface Pro 3, creating something thats far lighter and thinner than nearly every competing device.

Read more from the original source:
Surface Pro 3 vs. Lenovo Yoga 2 13: Specs, prices and features compared

Now, thats the sort of knife-edge humour that makes any self-help pill easier to swallow. But alongside the one-liners The trouble with the gene pool is that theres no life guard and Remember, some small children are frightened by fireworks; another great way to scare them is ghost stories there are glittering gems of advice.

You only have to Be Brilliant for four minutes at a time for other people to tune into your brilliance, say the authors. If you convey a sense of happiness, positivity and passion, then those around you will have almost no choice, physiologically and psychologically, but to be positive, too.

Now, even the most miserable among us can surely manage four minutes of being fantastic the theory being that the feedback is so affirmative, and the endorphin rush so delightful, that well do it again and again, until being upbeat becomes a habit that reaps its own rewards.

The book, which follows on from The Art of Being Brilliant, has been written by a couple of home-grown happiness experts, who travel the country giving pep talks to blue-chip companies such as DHL, Waitrose, IKEA and Hewlett-Packard, as well as the pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, recently wooed in a take-over bid by Pfizer.

Were not trying to be the bloody Waltons here, sighs joint author Andy Whittaker. You cant turn negatives into positives, but you can try to go about dealing with setbacks in a positive way.

Whittaker, 40, is a former army mechanic turned holiday rep turned salesman, who turned his back on soul-sapping corporate life to do stand-up comedy and study mindfulness, spirituality and neuro-linguistic programming. Divorced with a teenage daughter, he asks, inscrutably deadpan: Can you put in that Im single, please? That would help me a lot. Dont worry about fielding the responses Im happy to take a load of phone calls from nutters just to find The One.

His co-author is Andy Cope, 47, from a small village in Derbyshire, whose bon-mots include: If I miss the bus there wont be another one until next Tuesday. Theres a life lesson in staying on top of things. Married with two children, Cope is an academic and childrens author, who has now passed volume 20 of his best-selling Spy Dog and Spy Cat series.

Cope provides the academic input, Whittaker brings in the laughs, making them strong contenders for being crowned the Morecambe and Wise of personal development, if there were such a title.

Im supposed to be the clever one because I got a degree in psychology, says Cope. But it was all about symptoms and syndromes and dwelling on the negatives. After university, I went into retail management and then adult education, but something drew me back to psychology, but of a more positive sort. He is currently completing a PhD at Loughborough University, looking at happiness in this country and investigating what he calls the two percenters, people who are genuinely happy, today and every day. Its a blessing, but also a skill that can be learnt.

We spend our lives deferring happiness, says Cope. When I pass my exams, Ill be happy, when I get my degree, Ill be happy; when I get my first job and buy a huge flat-screen telly, Ill be happy. But maybe being your Best Version of Yourself is what will make you happy?

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A very British way to get happy