Anusara Yoga – Everything You Need to Know
If you are a recent yoga enthusiast, you are most likely overwhelmed by the various different types of yoga styles. This article is dedicated to reviewing, explaining and informing you about Anusara Yoga.
This is a modern Hatha yoga system founded by the American John Friend. Anusara generally translates to “Go with the flow”, “Follow your heart” and “Flow with grace”. It is based on the Tantric philosophical system with principles of arrangement. It is one of the fastest growing and popular styles in the modern world. The main focus of this style is to experience joy in your daily life within the yoga practice.
Origin, Philosophy, and Principles of Anusara Yoga
Originally found by John Friend in 1997, this style focuses on life as a gift, and its goal is to make us remember and celebrate that fact through the yoga practice.
The base philosophy Anusara’s Yoga roots stand in is the assumption that all human beings are inherently good. The “Universal Principles of Arrangement” stand as a core in its practice and give guidelines on how to align your heart, body, mind and soul in such a way that it integrates a circulation within you which optimizes your strength, health, and general well-being. Finding the most important tools and using those principles stand as the most important factors of its practice.
How to Practice Anusara Yoga
Most common practices taught by Anusara teachers are the holding of a particular, specific key-pose for a longer period of time. The Vinyasa flow helps your breathing and teaches you new breathing methods which guide you to your asana practice. This helps to warm your body up and enables you to express yourself physically and release yourself from negative forces. While this might sound hard to grasp as a concept at first, the Anusara style is built in such a manner that actually benefits the beginner students the most as instructors and yoga teachers will mostly not try and physically fix the student’s pose, but give them the guidelines on how to properly use the principles of alignment. There are no actual “fixed poses” due to the nature of the style guiding the expression. Classes are usually finished with meditation to help relax the body and the mind.
What Are the Pros to a Regular Anusara Yoga Practice?
As in most types of yoga, this will also help you strengthen your body and mind, but also make it more flexible, help both physical and emotional injuries be healed faster, fix imbalances of any type that were previously naturally adopted by your body such as the wrong posture due to various reasons such as not sitting properly and so on. The main idea is to practice with awareness, intention, and emotion. Following these simple guidelines will help you improve tremendously, but the main benefit is your mind and heart being helped evolve to a new level of spirituality and balance.
