Fit & Fun

The Northwest Yoga Conference, from Friday, March 7, to Sunday, March 9, at the Lynnwood Convention Center, aims to offer something for everyone from beginners to those seeking to evolve their practice.

Organizers say the three-day event will feature more than 30 international yoga teachers and demonstrations such as the yoga trance dance.

But it also will offer several free classes for children, teenagers, beginners and seniors with the goal of encouraging more people to try and learn yogas benefits.

People are typically surprised to find out that yoga is truly accessible to everyone, not just the yogis who can stand on their heads, says conference director Melissa Hagedorn.

A day pass costs $149, a two-day pass $299, or a three-day pass $399. Find complete lineup and registration at http://www.nwyogaconference.com.

Fit & Fun is a weekly notice about active recreational opportunities in the Greater Seattle area. To suggest a future item, contact Richard Seven: rseven@seattletimes.com

Follow this link:
All levels welcome at yoga conference

In March of 2012, Yoga by Numbers founder Elizabeth Morrow found herself in a similar position to Arthur recovering from a partially collapsed lung & blood clots, she was prescribed yoga for recovery but found getting to a class to be nearly impossible when juggling the logistics of doctors appointments and the limitations of studio schedules. If she was able to make it to a class, Morrow found that the physical pain and fatigue made sticking it out for the entire session nearly impossible and was frustrated by nearly every "introductory" yoga DVD that seemed to assume she already knew the basic fundamentals of yoga.

"I wanted a way to learn yoga from scratch and in the privacy of my own home, and when I couldnt find it, I wanted to create it," Morrow said. "As I got healthier, I set my sights on becoming a certified yoga teacher and working with people who were also managing health conditions the more I practiced and learned, the clearer the idea became until one day the mat design [for Yoga by Numbers] popped into my head."

Photo: The Grommet

Morrow completed her 200-hour teacher training with David Vendetti at South Boston Yoga, a yoga instructor for more than 20 years and an advisor on the Yoga by Numbers product. Morrow then worked with her mom, an artist, to design the first Yoga by Numbers design in PowerPoint and silk screen it onto a standard yoga mat.

By using a grid and graph pattern, Yoga by Numbers "teaches people to teach themselves by starting with common cues and fundamental poses, and helps them determine how they should be positioned and aligned according to their own proportions and flexibility," Morrow said. "We show you how to establish where your feet should be when the instructor says to stand with your feet 'hips-distance apart,' for instance, which may seem obvious but when you watch a class you see everyone interprets that differently."

Much like a Paint by Numbers guide for budding artists, Morrow compares her mat to the experience of taking a yoga class or at-home yoga DVD like this: "If I give you a blank piece of paper and a piece of graph paper and ask you to draw a perfect square on each, which version comes out better?"

Morrow is currently manufacturing Yoga by Numbers mats in Pennsylvania of environmentally sustainable natural rubber & phthalate-free ink, offering them for sale through Somerville-based online marketplace TheGrommet.com. If her Kickstarter campaign is successful, Morrow will build an additional library of content and a companion website, adding to her initial instructional DVD (which includes the basic mechanics of 30 yoga poses) with podcasts, videos, and online classes.

The Yoga by Numbers starter package including the patented mat, DVD, and carrying strap retails for $120, though in the future Morrow hopes to offer a discount to non-profit organizations and community groups helping her target demographic: people who want to practice yoga for better health but find that cost, logistics, or medical issues prevent them from getting to a studio yoga class and who find it easier to practice at home.

"We are a values-driven benefit corporation, and anticipate some of our early adopters will be values-driven customers, along with people who relate on a practical level," Morrow said. "Yoga by Numbers is firmly committed to the idea that when healthy activities and products are more accessible, people's lives will be better. Our health as a nation is directly related to every individual's health. Yoga by Numbers will strive every day to be inclusive, to think of new ways to increase universal access to healthy activities, and to make yoga simple and convenient. We are on a mission."

If you want to be a part of that mission, or just want to learn more about Yoga by Numbers, check out Morrow's Kickstarter campaign (video below), which ends on February 26th, 2014.

Read the original:
Teach yourself yoga basics at home with Yoga by Numbers

Orlando, Florida (PRWEB) March 03, 2014

A weekend of Kirtan concerts and afternoon singing workshops will be offered by Jim Gelcer (Siva). Students will learn the words and melodies of the Sivananda daily chants and more, while providing translations and explanations in this fun and informative workshop. Together with accompanying musicians he will offer participatory kirtan concerts focusing on the beautiful chants of the Sivananda tradition.

For more information, please visit: http://sivanandabahamas.org/course.php?course_id=3989

Jim Gelcer (Siva) is a Sivananda Yoga Teacher and a Kirtan leader. He infuses new life and spirit into the ancient heartfelt chants that influence todays Kirtan movement. With a voice filled with depth and emotion, and impeccable musicianship, he tastefully blends flavors of modern and ancient melodies and the celebratory essence of Kirtan.

Located across the bay from Nassau, on one of the finest beaches in the world, the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Retreat is an island paradise with a tropical garden, crystal clear water and pure white sands - a true sanctuary of peace and natural beauty. Recognized among world Yoga Retreats, the ashram offers year-round programs presented by world renowned speakers, as well as certification courses on various yoga related topics through which you can expand your knowledge, gain a new skill and get certified while enjoying a joyous yoga practice and blissful relaxation. The Yoga retreat center also offers year-round Yoga teacher training programs, Ayurvedic Yoga Therapy Courses, Yoga for beginners, Yoga vacations and many other courses.

For more information, please visit http://www.sivanandabahamas.org.

Read more here:
Yoga Kirtan Course (The Joy of Sivananda Kirtan) Offered in June 2014 in the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Retreat

In the preface to Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1998), Richard Dawkins, then Oxfords Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, recounted two incidents that in part prompted him to write his new book. One concerned an unnamed foreign publisher who had told him that, after reading his first book The Selfish Gene (1976), he could not sleep for three nights, so troubled was he by its cold, bleak message. The other story concerned a teacher from a distant country who had written to him reproachfully that a pupil had come to him in tears after reading the same book because it had persuaded her that life was empty and purposeless. He advised her not to show the book to any of her friends, for fear of contaminating them withthe same nihilistic pessimism.

Dawkins then went on to quote from his colleague Peter Atkinss book The Second Law (1984) [i.e., of thermodynamics]: We are the children of chaos, and the deep structure of change is decay. At root, there is only corruption, and the unstemmable tide of chaos. Gone is purpose; all that is left is direction. This is the bleakness we have to accept as we peer deeply and dispassionately into the heart of the Universe.

Dawkins comments: [S]uch very proper purging of saccharine false purpose; such laudable tough-mindedness in the debunking of cosmic sentimentality must not be confused with the loss of personal hope. Presumably there is indeed no purpose in the ultimate fate of the cosmos, butdo any of us really tie our lifes hopes to the ultimate fate of the cosmos anyway? Of course we dont; not if we are sane. Our lives are ruled by all sorts of closer, warmer, human ambitions and perceptions. To accuse science of robbing life of the warmth that makes it worth living is so preposterously mistaken, so diametrically opposite to my own feelings and those of most working scientists, I am almost driven to the despair of which I am wrongly suspected. On the contrary, he wanted to convey the sense of awed wonder that science can give us and which makes it one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable.

The title of Dawkinss book comes from a poem by Keats, who believed that Isaac Newton had destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to the prismatic colors. Dawkins did not accept this argument. He insisted that scientists and scientifically literate people everywhere who can read Keats as well as Newton have two ways of experiencing and understanding rainbows, not one, and that must be an advance.

He then set about demonstrating his own wonder at the natural world and the cosmos, ranging from bacteria, insect ears, birdsong, the rings in the trunks of sequoias, cuckoos and their habits with eggs, to snail polymorphism and much else. Along the way he dismissed paranormal activities, astrology, all forms of superstition and gullibility. He peppered his text with poemssome good, some indifferentin a fulsome attempt to show that an appreciation of science in no way compromises enjoyment of poetry, not least because [s]cience allows mystery but not magic. That, in fact, an awareness of scientific inaccuracies in literature was and is another form of poetic appreciation.

At the end, he made a claim for what he calls poetic science: the notion that a Keats and a Newton, listening to each other, might hear the galaxies sing. Thanks to language, which separates us from the other animals, [w]e can get outside the universe in the sense of putting a model of the universe inside our skulls. Not a superstitious, small-minded, parochial model filled with spirits and hobgoblins, astrology and magic, glittering with fake crocks of gold where the rainbow ends. A big model, worthy of the reality that regulates, updates and tempers it; a model of stars and great distances, where Einsteins noble spacetime curve upstages the curve of Yahwehs covenantal bow and cuts it down to size. The spotlightpasses but, exhilaratingly, before it does so it gives us time to comprehend something of this place in which we fleetingly find ourselves and the reason that we do so. We are alone among the animals in foreseeing our end. We are also alone among animals in being able to say before we die: Yes, this is why it was worth coming to life in the first place.

In the past few decades, both evolutionary biologists like Dawkins and cosmologistsphysicists and astronomershave mounted a spirited attack on the basic dimensions of religion, in particular the main monotheisms, and in doing so have tried hard to reshape whatfor the sake of a better phrasewe may call our spiritual predicament.

The collective achievements of these two sciences have been threefold. First, they have sought to show that religions are themselves entirely natural phenomena; they have evolved, like so much else, and from this it follows that our moral life is also a natural (evolved) phenomenon, not rooted in any divine realm or mind. In this sense, the details of evolution teach us how to live together without any reference to God. Nothing is put in his place, because nothing is needed. Second, science has discovered or reconfiguredsome new aspects of the human condition, which provide us with principles for arranging our affairs for the greater benefit of the greatest number. Again, there is no need of God. Third, evolutionary biology and cosmology have given us some radically new ideas about the organizing principle(s) underpinning the universe. Some have gone so far as to call these new principles divine in themselves, but many others see them as entirely natural features of the world.

Some of these innovations are controversial, some are fantastical (part of their point being to gain our attention) and some are contradictory. They bring us up to date.

THE CONCEPT OF CULTURAL HEALTH

See the original post here:
Atheisms radical new heroes: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and an evolving new moral view

Written by: Jazmin Gelista on January 26, 2009.

Latin dance moves and spicy music make Zumba the newest fitness trend

Latin dance moves and spicy music make Zumba the newest fitness trend. Photo by: Steven Lawton

Movement, rhythm and sexiness adrenaline rushes through the body as dance takes over the feet and the excitement of aerobics are seen in the hips.

Imagine an exotic place where you can work out, feel sexy and forget about daily routines. Escape to Zumba, a new kind of cardio exercise sweeping the nation.

Richard Kislan, the author of several musical theater books, once said, I move; therefore I am. By moving, one knows they are alive especially when you feel your blood pumping within your body by the Zumba rhythms infringing upon every inch of your living cells.

Its always good to workout occasionally to relieve stress and feel better.

According to about.com, Zumba comes from a Columbian word that means to move fast and have fun, which is how explorative gym-goers describe the routine. Combining upbeat Latin music with an intense cardiovascular exercise, Zumba is aerobic dancing that is amusing and easy to learn.

Traci Smith, Zumba instructor at the Student Recreation and Wellness Center, said the exercise can be described as, a fusion of all the different styles of Latin dance and a way to forget that youre working out.

Zumba incorporates different styles of Latin dance such as salsa, cumbia, merengue, zumba, bachata, flamenco, bellydancing and reggeaton. By integrating an interval workout with fast and slow dance moves and resistance training, Zumba not only sheds the pounds, but sculpts the body. Smith added that students attend the class to get an entirely different experience, rather than an everyday treadmill workout. Men seem to shy away from sensual Latin dances as apparent in classes dominated by ladies.

Read the original:
New groove in aerobics