What is "Asana"?

Asana is the "yoga" of American yoga: the physical poses. Some forms of yoga don't even have a physical practice, but they aren't the forms you find at the gym or parks and rec.

Asana is a valuable part of yoga, but not because it burns calories (although it does) or because it makes you more physically flexible (although it does), or even because it builds strength (although it does). Asana is useful in regulating mood, healing discomfort, and correcting physical problems caused by a busy life.Snap at the kids? Back hurt from hunching over a computer? Worried about what your body will look like in 10, 20, 30 years? Asana helps.

HOWEVER, the real value of asana for the Type A practitioner is being in the pose. Learning how to let go of who you are and what you have to do and just existing in the present moment is priceless. Many of us spend all day curled up in the recesses of our brains, but asana allows us to take ourselves into the body. For one brief moment,all of the emotional and intellectual storms inside and the storms outside just disappear.

Type A: Ahimsa, Asteya and Aparigraha

Type A personalities are competitive and driven. They push themselves through life, always striving to get ahead. Often, however, they don't stop to realize they already are ahead, or take the time to appreciate what they have. Three "A" yoga principles can go a long way towards helping shift a Type A person's perspective on the world:

Yoga for the Holidays: 2010

The holidays are a stressful time for anyone. Firstly, how do you manage your time when everyone wants a piece? Then how do you balance the desire to give the perfect gift with the sinking feeling you're perpetuating an exploitative commercialism and/or materialism? The weather outside is frightful, and your exercise regimen has left the building. Managing your money in these uneasy economic times is pretty stressful as well, but perhaps the most stressful is knowing you have a number of social events coming up that you may dread.

Welcome to Type A Yoga!

You are probably wondering what the deal with "Type A Yoga" is. I am the owner of the business and founded it based on my personal experience and "type a" personality.

I began practicing yoga in 2003. I was in a career transition from being a self-taught network engineer in the dot com boom toward being a comparative literature student specializing in Roman influence on British literature. As one might guess, I am a very "in my head" sort of person, and I lean more towards analytic than artsy or athletic. I am skeptical and cynical, and my humor tends to be a bit dry. I came to yoga, this practice which has so drastically changed my life, because I needed a unit of PE and it sounded like an easy enough class.

I offer this not because this is all about me, but as an example of how transformative practicing yoga can be for ANYONE. I would try to get people to go to class with me and they'd say that yoga was for hippy-dippy types, or strict vegans who own bio-diesel VWs, or that they don't believe in crystals and astrology. Other people wouldn't go because they weren't "fit enough," or "flexible enough," or they were "too stressed out" to add another activity.

(By the way, saying you're too stressed out and not healthy enough for yoga is like saying you're too thirsty to pour yourself a glass of water.)

Yoga isn't really for enlightened, peaceful, flexible, healthy, skinny people. It just seems that way because some of the people who have been doing it for a long time have become that way, but they started out as people in pain or in need like the rest of us.

Yoga is for the people who are anxious, depressed, physically unfit, inflexible (mentally and physically), intellectual, sarcastic, bitter, angry, competitive, miserable people who walk around this earth every day. Most of them just don't know it yet.