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Kripalu Yoga

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A Guide to Practice On and Off the Mat

For about 6 months, I kept looking for a yoga path that felt right. Then I found this book, called Kripalu Yoga. As I read the book, I recognized a tone within the book that encourages people to trust their own inner wisdom and learn from their own experiences.

From my own experience, this tone is uncommon within self-help books.

By encouraging us to listen to our own body wisdom, we learn how to love and nurture our body. At the same time, we learn to approach life with a sense of relaxation, self-acceptance, strength, courage, and openness to change.

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Quick Links

What is Kripalu Yoga?
Kripalu Yoga's Distinguishing Features
Being Present With Yoga

What's Inside Kripalu Yoga - The Book
Yoga Photos
Selected Articles from Kripalu Yoga Center

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What is Kripalu Yoga?

Kripalu (Krih-PAW-loo) is Sanskrit for "being compassionate." Kripalu Yoga is named after Swami Kripalu, a renowned yoga master from India, known for his compassion and intensity of practice.

Kripalu Yoga is actually an adaptation of Swami Kripalu's teachings created by Yogi Amrit Desai. Desai honored his guru, Swami Kripalu, by naming his creation after him.

This is a nice quote from Swami Kripalu that appears on the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health website:
While based in yoga, the Kripalu tradition is decidedly not a fundamentalist mindset. It is a nondogmatic and nonsectarian approach to life that celebrates diversity and recognizes that all approaches are valuable and venerable, all practitioners worthy of respect, and that truth is freely available to members of every nationality, race, and religion.

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Kripalu Yoga

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Kripalu Yoga: A Guide to Practice On and Off the Mat

by: Richard Faulds, Senior Teaching Staff of Kripalu Center

Amazon Price: $12.48 (as of 06/01/2012)

Learning yoga from a book instead of a video works better for me. Instead of trying to keep up with the yoga routine in the video, I can focus on my body and pay attention to what I am doing. I think it enhances my experience of listening to my own body wisdom.

It's also nice to do a yoga class now and then to get some feedback about the way I am doing the postures.

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What are the Distinguishing Features of Kripalu Yoga?

You can read more details about these attributes of Kripalu Yoga.
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1Yoga can help you learn to love and nurture your body, instead of trying to whip it into shape.
2You are encouraged to choose a level of physical intensity based on listening to your own body, in the present moment. Not based on comparing how well you did yesterday, or what your classmates are doing.
3It recognizes that every body is different. Postures are adapted to meet your individual needs and flexibility, instead of trying to force yourself into postures prematurely. The postures are tools to increase self-awareness and improve the body's condition.
4It activates the internal life force called Prana.
5It considers each person's body the ultimate authority on what promotes health, and teaches you how to access this body wisdom to live a more vital, happy life.
6By adopting the principles you learn on the yoga mat to everyday life, you can learn to approach life with a sense of relaxation, self-acceptance, strength, courage, and openness to change.
7The principles learned in Kripalu Yoga lay the groundwork for creating psychological and spiritual growth.
8Kripalu yoga acknowledges that regular yoga practice is designed to initiate a process of personal growth and transformation.

Yoga and You

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Being Present with Yoga

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Kripalu Yoga and Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health both support the experiential model of education that empowers the learner to discover what is true based on his or her own direct experience. When you are well connected with your body, it helps you be more aware of your own direct experience. Through yoga, you learn to tune into your own body.

This is an important benefit of being present. If you are not present, it's much more difficult to learn from your own experiences!

This is a nice list of aspects for being present.

*Breathe Let your breath flow freely in and out.
*Relax Soften your muscles, let go of mental tension.
*Feel Open to the sensations and emotions moving through you in this moment.
*Watch Observe your experience closely, neither grasping what is pleasant nor pushing away what is painful.
*Allow Accept yourself and your experience exactly as it is, dropping the need to change it in any way.

The concept of accepting myself and my experience the way it is seemed a bit unrealistic at first. But then I remembered that this is about being in the present.

From my point of view, it's not about accepting the way things are for the rest of your life. It's about accepting things the way they are for the one split second happening right now.

When that passes, I can go back to the struggle and stress of life.

There is a nice exercise about being present in Chapter 1 The Practice of Being Present. You can read it for free with Amazon's preview feature.

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What's Inside Kripalu Yoga - The Book

Here's a quick summary of what's in Kripalu Yoga, but don't forget, you can also Preview The Book For Free with Amazon's preview feature.

The book Kripalu Yoga is divided into four parts:

Part 1: Body and Breath Awareness

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Focuses on awareness of your breath and of your body during postures. There are several nice short exercises called guided experiences that help you experience examples of what they are talking about.

Part 2: The Practice Sessions

Presents two balanced yoga sessions called the Sun Series and the Moon Series. These two series of yoga postures will cover many of the classic yoga postures taught in many traditions.

Part 3: Health Benefits of Yoga

Discusses the ways Yoga can benefit your health and helps you make your practice more informed and meaningful.

Part 4: Psychological and Spiritual Growth

Presents awareness-focusing and energy-awakening techniques that make your yoga practice an effective vehicle for growth and change.

Part 5: Evolving Your Practice

Discusses what makes a good yoga routine and provides many additional postures to help you create a yoga routine based on your own body wisdom.