Breathing is generally our characteristic of existence, breathing equals living.  It is very close related to vital energy and other functions in the body. So, if we develop our breathing we will create conditions for better functioning of the body, to calm the emotions and to make a purification of the mind. We should aim to do this because the breathing is single automatic process in the body which we can control, speed or to maintain and deepen.

In the recent decades people more and more adopt the ancient knowledge about our body mixed with advanced methods. Under this philosophy, the physical body of the person is only the first level. The second one is the vital body composed of life energy that flows through us by invisible pathways. The third level is our mind, thought and emotions etc.

Each of the yoga techniques has its personal activity, and the aim of these techniques is to learn how to breathe properly, how to develop our breathing control so we can achieve the harmonization of the energy and the mental processes. There are different techniques of breathing, some of them clean the breathing flows and others balance the energy, the third ones create mental calm in the human body.

Moreover, these breathing techniques bring more oxygen to the body which is very important for its health. Also, strengthens the immune system, helps lungs to purify, and improves the concentration and the working ability where breathing becomes deep and calm in everyday life.

Some of the techniques are easier, other require greater breathing control but for some it is important to study under the supervision of an experienced teacher. The basic techniques of breathing, from where every examination begins can be widely explained because it represents a vital part in every human life.

The correct way of breathing can never be completely understood but, anyway we have to respect some rules because if we do not do it right our muscles become weak or chronically stressed. Many of us lost the ability to breathe well. Mental and emotional stress made our breathing incorrectly and that affects our daily mood and our health in a long term.  Chronicle fatigue, respiratory infections and many allergies can be caused by a bad way of breathing.

Therefore, the largest contribution that Yoga can make to our lives and to our health is to bring back to us our natural breathing.

No matter how old you are or what you prefer for your favorite physical activity, you can almost always benefit from developing your balance. Improving your balance may not be number one on your priority list but, maybe it should be. Balance falls into the same category as flexibility, core strength, and mobility. These are all things our bodies need to function efficiently, but many of us do not actually do exercises to improve them.

If you exercise regularly, you already work on your balance without even knowing it. Nowadays many athletes are using balance training as an important part of their overall training programs, both for injury prevention and performance development. One of the ways to improve your balance is using stability balls, also known as balance balls or Swiss balls.

They can be incorporated into Pilates, weight training and many other fitness routines. Here are some exercises which will help you to improve your balance. Ball Balance: Position the ball under your abs and hips, hands on the floor and legs straight and off the floor.  Hold that position, keeping your body in a straight line, abs pulled in.  Working to stay balanced, slowly raise your right arm out to the side, taking care not to roll or allow any part of your body to collapse.

Hold briefly, lower the arm and repeat on the other side.  Repeat for 12-16 reps, alternating arms.  Ball Circles: Sit on the ball and place the hands on the ball for balance or place them behind your head.  Slowly begin to roll the hips in a circle towards the right, making small circles and then, as you get comfortable, larger circles.  Do 10-20 circles then repeat to the left. Hip Extension: Lie on floor with heels propped on ball. 

Keeping abs tight, slowly lift your hips off the floor (squeezing the buttocks) until body is in a straight line.  Hold for a few seconds and lower, repeating 10 to 15 times.  To make it easier, place ball under knees rather than under heels.  To make it harder, cross your arms over your chest.  Back Extension: Position the ball under your hips and lower torso with the knees straight or bent. 

With hands behind the head or behind back, slowly roll down the ball.  Lift your chest off the ball, bringing your shoulders up until your body is in a straight line.  Make sure your body is in alignment (i.e., head, neck, shoulders and back are in a straight line), your abs are pulled in and that do not hyper extend the back. Aim for 12-16 reps.

These exercises are just a small part of the huge variety of exercises with stability balls. Make a research on this workout. Bear it on mind, that you should always consult your doctor and trainer about your workout.

Some people will avoid walking the steps like the plague. Why though? Walking steps is one of the greatest ways to get a quick blast of heart pumping cardio work into your day. I personally try to take the stairs whenever I can at home and at work. At work, I only take the elevator if I’ve already worked out for the day and I’m just tired, or if I have a tons of bags I have to carry up and going up the steps is just too hard on my back.

Stairs are way harder than walking on normal, even ground. This is because your heart has to push blood to all of your major muscles, especially the biggest muscle in your legs, your quadriceps, in order to get them to force your body weight up the steps. This is excellent cardio work. It’s exactly the reason why you see people gasping for breath after even a few flights of stairs. Shoot, sometimes you even see totally healthy workout fiends out of breath after walking a few flights of steps, so you know that it’s a good workout.

I like having steps in my home anyways. It offers my husband and I a little more space from one another, and to feel more like we can get away into our own areas of our home when we are at eachothers throats or just feel like we need our own personal space. I personally would hate to have a one level home now that I’m so used to having two!

I remember when I was in high school Track, how we used to run the bleachers. I dreaded it because it was the hardest type of working out that our coach made us do. Even back then, in probably the best shape because of my age and my young heart, it made me feel like I was going to pass out from the exertion.

Stairs are hard because they don’t stop. You keep going, and your body is being pushed to propel you up, defying gravity, which is very difficult for your body to do. It’s using all these muscles in unison, which requires a lot more oxygen, and a lot more blood to be available to the muscles that supply the oomph behind movement. Steps are one of the best workouts you can have!

I’ve probably talked at nauseum about the benefits of interval, or circuit training. Why? Because I truly believe you get the exact same benefits out of intense, shorter workouts that you get for an hour to an hour and a half just going through the motions at the gym or at home on you treadmill or elliptical machine. I’ve seen the benefits of interval training for myself many times, both in helping me to shed weight quickly, and to help me get on the path to a more toned and less body fatted physique.

Here’s why interval training is so great. You get the heart rate way up, then you follow it with these sort of little “rest” periods, but you’re not really resting, you’re just moving slower or moving at a less intense rate than you were before. The key is, you’re still moving, keeping that heart rate up, and preparing for your next intense set of jumps, plyometrics, or whatever else it is that you’re doing that’s pounding that heart rate up higher and higher.

Some exercise specialists even say that interval training is up to twice as effective as regular exercise. So, you may be getting significant more impact for that intense thirty minute interval session than you were getting out of a whole hour or more of moderate, ho hum, chugging along on the hamster wheel exercise in other words. I still wholeheartedly believe in these machines too though, and you can even incorporate them into an intense circuit training routine.

What do I mean by that? Well, you can alternate short bursts of highly energized running on the treadmill with some pushups or something like that. As a matter of fact, pushups are a great interval training exercise, because they get the upper body moving and the heart pumping really fast.

Why is this form of training so effective at cutting body fat and building muscle so effectively, and so quickly? Because your body actually requires short bursts of extremely taxing activity to effectively build muscle. I see this principle at work in my own body. I know that when I start my really tough interval training, that’s when my arm muscles actually get built up better, and I start to see the fat come right off my body very quickly, revealing more muscle.

When I’m just doing my average workout without the bursts of hard activity, I don’t notice this stripping off of fat and the building of muscle quickly happening, it takes more time, or it doesn’t happen at all and I just maintain somewhat of a tone, but not that “cut”.

I came across an interesting method of exercise, believe it or not, through a promotional ad that I got through my email. I was going to delete it, but I figured I’d open it up and see what it was all about and if it was worth any investment of time or even money if it sounded like something I might want to try. I have to admit, I’m very curious about it since it involves something that I’ve come to believe has been incredibly effective for me changing my body composition, and that is short, intense bursts of exercise.

I told you before that my husband lost around 30 pounds and I lost around 15 pounds when we started doing the short bursts of activity that were extremely intense in nature but never lasted more than 25 minutes or so, rather than slogging away at the gym for an hour or more, and what really clinched it for me was the fact that the short bursts of intense exercise that lasted about 20-25 minutes really didn’t seem to put my appetite into overdrive, like long bouts of cardio can sometimes do to me.

I remember leaving the gym at work after long periods of cardio on the elliptical (40 minutes or more) and feeling totally famished, and wanting to eat a house. Of course, I still believe that the elliptical is an amazingly effective piece of equipment, but with this new theory, you can switch between the elliptical and other intense movements for less time and still burn tons of fat.

I guess that the PACE method is very similar in thought process to this, and research has shown that people who use this PACE method of working out actually burned more fat off their bodies than those who did long cardio. Although an important point is that the long cardio group burned more calories, but not as much fat. I think the fat burning piece is more important personally, because you can always replace calories, but fat is harder to burn off.

The PACE method is never supposed to last more than 20 minutes per day, and can supposedly be as short as 12 minutes with amazing results. Does it really work? I don’t know, I haven’t tried it, but I do believe the basic theory behind it because I have seen this similar theory at work in my own experience.

I’m so thankful that I have a gym to work out at where I work. I’ve grown accustomed to it and have gotten spoiled. And I really got out of the habit of having to work out when I got home from work because I would usually try to get a workout in at work. It was perfect. I would work out on my lunch hour (and fifteen minutes to be exact), and then I wouldn’t even have to worry about venturing downstairs in to our little mini gym we have down there, or doing DVD’s, although I would occasionally throw one in and do a half hour if I didn’t work out at my job.

However, what’s really thrown me off (and about five thousand other gym members) is that they closed it down starting in November. I guess they figured the holidays would be a perfect time to do it since everyone slack off working out around the holidays, but it’s been rough not being able to work out in the facility because I’ve kind of let my five to four day a week workout routine slip and now am only working out 2-3 days during the week as opposed to those 2-3 more I was getting when the gym was open.

However, the gym is going to open back up in January, so I’m sure that everyone will be crowding in there, especially considering that they are going to have to contend with the New Years resolution people who crowd the gym in addition to the ones that were already going there and had to take a break forcibly because the gym closed.

It closed for renovations to the bathrooms and the locker rooms and showers, so hopefully it will look pretty nice and we’ll have nice new accommodations, but mostly I’m just excited to be able to work out again during my work day and blow off steam. It’s much needed now too, we are so busy at work because of increased work loads, and everyone is stressed out, so I’m sure the gym will be overcrowded for a while, but I don’t even care, I just want to get back in the swing!

I’m really glad that I’m addicted to working out, otherwise I wonder how active I’d be.

Well, adults know that there are many benefits to taking up the practice of yoga for them. From relaxation to improved immunity, focus and concentration, the practice of yoga has been a boon for many adults, helping them to transform their lives into a more peaceful haven and simultaneously tone their bodies, making them more able to get around, have better posture, and be better able to perform physical duties.  I know the benefits of yoga myself, having done it several times over the past few years, but still not able to incorporate it into my weekly exercise regimen as much as I’d like to.

Now, yoga is showing that it can have great benefits for kids too.  Parents of children who have enrolled in special yoga classes with cute catch phrases and a different curriculum have marveled at how much calmer their children seem to be, and how much yoga has helped some hyperactive young children to really channel that energy into something positive, and allowed them to be calmer and more focused on their schoolwork and other things they need to be focusing on more in their youth.

Many children, some as young as three and five years old, can find it therapeutic to do the yoga poses for an hour or so, and although some of them may get a bit restless, it’s amazing that they can stay in some of the poses for as long as they can.  Yoga definitely helps to focus the mind and calm the inner chatter that goes along with both anxiety and hyper activity in children, so it’s no wonder that this has been found to be a successful therapy for young kids.

With the popularity increasing in larger cities, this may soon find it’s way into the real mainstream, with smaller towns perhaps picking it up and running with it, or even schools perhaps adding yoga to their curriculum in gym class so that kids can be constantly moving in their day during this important time, instead of learning some sport that won’t teach them anything or exercise their bodies.  It could really help kids get through their school day better if they did that.

Of course you know that strength training helps give you a great body with lean, tone lines; great definition; and low body fat…but the benefits of strength training for women go far beyond just looking good. I am pretty confident that what I am about to reveal will motivate you even more to keep up with your workouts once you see how much you’re helping your body every time you pick up a weight.

Building happiness. Research shows that weight training can help reduce signs and symptoms of depression more effectively that conventional counseling. For many women working out is their main stress reliever. Aside from getting out pent up energy any frustrations working out also increases your “happy stuff” endorphins and dopamine.

Wear a milk mustache. Millions of women deal with weakening bones that later leads to osteopenia or even the more advanced diagnosis of osteoporosis. I don’t know about you but the idea of falling one day and ending up with a broken hip doesn’t sound appealing. That’s why you can start strengthening your bones today. Strength training for women has been proven to be effective at increasing bone density.

This isn’t the same with cardio workouts. It’s because of the weight bearing exercises that take place. The stress that you add to your body screams for the need to thicken your bones. Which helps you stay on top of your fitness game today
and years down the line.

Just how much help can you get? In just 6 months you can increase your bone density by 13%! That’s a huge difference. Lean mean calorie burning machine. There’s a big difference between fat and muscle… and its not that fat is gross and muscle is sexy. To up keep fat it doesn’t need much. It’s pretty happy just sticking to your butt, thighs, belly…. well you get it. But muscle needs energy to build, repair and maintain.

That means you burn more calories during the day by simply adding some sexy lean muscle. Just how many calories? For every pound of muscle you have you can burn up to 50 extra calories per day! Anif you’re not increasing your food intake that is extremely helpful for burning off those extra pounds of fat.

On and On…
I could go on and on with this list. The benefits of women’s strength training are practically endless. So I won’t stop yet…
-Increased libido
-Decreased risk of cancers (colon, breast)
-Decreased back pain
-Increased energy
-Better Sleep

See just how much you are helping your body? If you’re not strength training yet definitely start… these results aren’t the same if you’re running on a treadmill or basing the majority of your workout on cardio workouts. As a matter of fact, you can find out how cardio can actually be making you fat here!

Our guest writer today, Taylor Ryan is a NASM CPT, figure competitor and the co-owner of the women’s online training site The Art Of Weight Lifting. For more tips and fitness news visit her women’s workout blog LiftingRevolution.com

Winter is quickly approaching, and I’m already finding that for me, I’m already missing my weekend jogs outdoors.  It’s just been a really rainy, cold fall season for us so far here in Ohio, and those rainy, yucky days always seem to land on Fridays and on weekends, which is the only time I actually get a chance to get outside to jog instead of doing something a little more monotonous inside, like the elliptical machine or recumbent bike.  Don’t get me wrong, those are both great exercise machines, however they get old, and the smells and sights of the outdoors just really stimulate you and make you feel great, adding a great experience to your cardio workout.

So, now I’m trying to find ways to spice things up a bit indoors, and certainly I will still get outdoors whenever the weather allows me to. Hey, we should still have an indian summer coming along sometime, or so I’m told!  Oh, and it’s supposedly going to be a very cold winter here in Ohio, that’s what folks are saying, so time will tell, but it looks like we’ll all be really ready to stretch our legs and get some sun after this looong season!

Here’s what I’m doing now to help keep me from getting bored, and still getting a great, diversified and intense workout that will keep my muscles guessing and therefore help me to burn calories and build muscle more efficiently while also burning fat.  I’m essentially switching my workout every day that I do hit the gym.  At work, where we have a gym, I’m doing the recumbent bike or elliptical, then following it up with a floor routine where I alternate different types of squats, arm weights and other resistance types of exercises to keep it challenging.

At home, I’m alternating different shows on Fit TV which are always different and work your body in different ways, so that’s challenging me and keeping it fresh as well.  I’m also still alternating this with DVD’s that I’ve had that were collecting dust all summer long since I was doing other things and getting outside more.  Just doing this helps to keep your body revved up, your metabolism going strong, and your body challenged enough so you don’t get sluggish and gain weight in the winter.

Plyometrics seem to be becoming all the rage when it comes to really kicking your fitness to the next level.  If you’ve done any of the shorter, more intense workout DVD’s, then you’ve probably noticed that they include some form of plyometric exercise.  Why? Because these are the best way to really blast away the calories and get the heart pumping fast. They’re hard, plain and simple, because they are short, focused bursts of energy that require a lot of muscle power.

Not only do they build muscle quickly by forcing your body out of it’s comfort zone in short bursts, but they also burn the calories like no one’s business, and that’s why they are so useful in the new crop of shorter, but  more intense workouts that have come up on DVD that really give you the best workout in the shortest amount of time.  Gilad and Jillian have used these principles in their latest DVD’s to help women build that muscle and also to burn the calories they want to so they can downsize.

It works like a charm for men as well to blast away fat, however, men still also have to do a little weight lifting if they want to really pump up their arms and their chests as well.  The only complaint that I have as a woman, and this is because this area of my body bulks up incredibly fast on me individually anyways, is that they do tend to inflate the quads, but this is because the short, powerful bursts of activity usually utilize this, one of the largest muscles on your body, to launch you into the air, and so that muscle burns fat like crazy because you are using so much energy to get yourself off the ground, and this muscle has to form all kinds of complex contractions to launch you like that.

All in all, plyometrics are a great way to work in mega calorie burning moves into your workout, and keep things hard, especially when they are done intermittently in your workout to get that heart rate up high for a few minutes, and then bring it down a little with some cardio or simple muscle moves.  It’s a great way to really challenge your body, and if you’re trying to lose weight, it’s a great method to blast away additional calories – sometimes up to double depending on the intensity and the amount you do.