A toolkit of “no mat” yoga strategies for you and your clients. Drawing on her study of multiple traditions and lineages—from ancient yoga practices to current neuroscientific research on yoga benefits and contraindications—Weintraub presents a compendium of guided breathing exercises, meditations, self-inquiry practices, relaxation exercises, and simple postural adjustments that can readily accompany and complement psychotherapy—no mat or difficult postures required! Therapists learn exactly how to introduce these simple practices into a session, all within the comfort of their therapy room, no prior yoga training or experience necessary. Weintraub shows therapists how to introduce and apply a full range of yogic approaches: targeted breathing practices called pranayama that meet the present mood and bring it into balance; healing hand gestures called mudras; special sounds and tones called mantras; guided imagery and affirmation; yogic self-inquiry, and much more. Clinical stories and anecdotes explore how these yoga-based interventions, rooted in a firm, evidence-based foundation, can be used as effective treatments for a particular mood or mental state. With over 50 photographs that clearly illustrate the practices and gestures, detailed, step-by-step instructions, and scripts for guided relaxation and meditations, Yoga Skills for Therapists is a practical, hands-on guide that teaches the power of basic yoga techniques to bring great self-awareness, balance, and lasting well-being to you and your clients.

This book is part memoir and part manual for finding your way out of the darkness of constrictions. LifeForce Yoga is a method of accessible yoga that reconnects with your wholeness. You are a radiant being, filled with wisdom and inner peace - your constrictions are what tell you that you are not good enough. This book will guide you through the foundations of yoga, self-exploration, self-inquiry questions, meditations, hand gestures, breathing practices, and movements to help you expel what is no longer serving you while making room for your Inner Radiance. You will develop the yoga practice that is meant for you, all without ever stepping on a yoga mat.

“A brilliant illumination of how the ancient wisdom of the yogic tradition can penetrate the often-intractable challenges of depression.”—Phil Catalfo, Yoga Journal Take the natural path to mental wellness. More than twenty-five million Americans are treated with antidepressants each year, at a cost in excess of $50 billion. But the side effects of popular prescription drugs may seem nearly as depressing as the symptoms they’re meant to treat. Veteran yoga instructor Amy Weintraub offers a better solution—one that taps the scientifically proven link between yoga and emotional well-being as well as the beauty of ancient approaches to inner peace. Addressing a range of diagnoses, including dysthymia, anxiety-based depression, and bipolar disorder, Yoga for Depression reveals why specific postures, breathing practices, and meditation techniques can ease suffering and release life’s traumas and losses. Weintraub also reflects on her own experience with severe depression, from which she recovered through immersing herself in a daily yoga routine. Yoga for Depression is the first yoga book devoted exclusively to the treatment of these debilitating conditions. Amy Weintraub will help readers see their suffering and themselves in a vibrant new light.

The practice of Tantra Yoga is considered to be the highest and most rapid path to enlightenment. Master teacher Mukunda Stiles offers 18 lessons in Tantra Yoga, a practice of transformational self-healing in which we can deepen awareness of our bodies, their energy forces, and the connections to the natural world around you and those you love. While many movements today describe tantra as a sexual practice promising longer and better orgasms, increased stamina, and ecstasy, the real Tantra aims to awaken Kundalini, the dormant potential force in the human personality. The Tantra tradition includes a vast range of practical teachings leading to the expansion of human consciousness and the liberation of primal energy. By heightening their awareness to this connective energy, readers will learn to embrace and develop a higher level of intimacy, the heart of tantra. Stiles explains this intimate and life-changing practice with grace, structure, and clarity--an easy-to-follow Tantra Yoga workshop in book form. Tantra Yoga Secrets will empower readers to overcome emotions, gain new knowledge, and live a more fulfilling spiritual lifestyle.

It's no secret that yoga increases muscular flexibility and strength, but you may not know that yoga is a proven treatment for back pain, knee pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, and other chronic pain conditions. Yoga also helps to ease the stress, anxiety, and depression that can create and reinforce pain, making you feel more comfortable in both your mind and your body. Written by a yoga instructor and former chronic pain sufferer, Yoga for Pain Relief is packed with gentle postures and practical strategies for ending pain. This complete mind-body tool kit for healing also includes deep relaxation practices drawn from the yogic tradition and psychological techniques for helping you make peace with your body and dissolve pain. As the ancient practice of yoga releases the hold that chronic pain has over your life, you will begin to feel more like yourself again.

The gateways to wonder and delight are flung open wide for all to enter. At once a beautiful love song and an encyclopedia of yogic techniques, the cherished text known as the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra shimmers with new effulgence in Lorin Roche's The Radiance Sutras. Lorin brings us his unique perspective on each of 112 Sanskrit teachings, along with his one-of-a-kind guidance in how to meditate with, embody, and practice them—what he describes as "answering the call of the sutras you love." Here is an invitation to experience directly the ecstatic depths of yoga as revealed by the divine partners Shiva and Shakti, through an intimate exploration of: The divinity that is permeating your body at this very moment • The alchemical power of Sanskrit • Yoga meditation—harmonizing all the elements and levels of your being • The depths of your connection to the energies of life Taken as a whole, this teaching is startling in its breadth and the huge range of human experience that it encompasses. This is a book to savor one phrase at a time, over a period of days or years or a lifetime. With The Radiance Sutras, yoga and meditation students everywhere can nurture their own relationship with these living wisdom teachings.

The yoga teacher’s guide to planning and sequencing yoga classes—with over 2,000 instructional photos and 67 yoga pose sequences for students of all skill levels. Also features additional resources, including yoga class planning worksheets, comprehensive glossaries, and much more! Addressing one of the most popular topics in the yoga profession, this book offers 67 model sequences of yoga poses (asanas) that cover the broad range of yoga student experience. Inside, established and aspiring yoga teachers will find: • Over 2,000 instructional photos and guide to over 150 yoga asanas • Multiple sequences for beginning, intermediate, and advanced students • Yoga sequences for kids, teens, seniors, and women across their life cycle • Yoga classes designed for relieving depression and anxiety • Sequences for each of the major chakras and ayurvedic constitutions • Guidance for teaching breathing (pranayama) and meditation techniques • Glossary of terms and alphabetical asana index with thumbnail photographs • Yoga class planning worksheets • Representative sequences from several popular styles of hatha yoga • And many more resources for further reading! Drawing on ancient yoga philosophy and contemporary insights into functional anatomy, biomechanics, and kinesiology, Yoga Sequencing is the ultimate guide teachers looking to bring the transformative power of yoga into their practice and classes.

Deida explores the most important issues in men's lives--from career and family to women and intimacy to love and spirituality--to offer a practical guidebook for living a masculine life of integrity, authenticity, and freedom.

Audi Gozlan, a certified yoga instructor and the founder of Kabalah Yoga, offers a book that fuses the practice of yoga with the ancient wisdom of Jewish mysticism, teaching you how to awaken the secret energy of each Hebrew letter in order to enliven your practice and experience the hidden powers of the universe. There is an authentic need for spirituality in our lives—one that connects us with the sacred, something greater than ourselves, but that is also practical, touching the body and soul in deep and meaningful ways. While yoga offers us postures (or asanas), breathing, and meditation techniques, it may not always fulfill the deep desire for spiritual connection that has arisen. But when combined with the mystical tradition of Kabalah, it may be just the answer modern spiritual seekers are after. Kabalah Yoga blends the movement and meditation of Hatha flow yoga with the ancient teachings of Kabalah, incorporating the wisdom of the Hebrew letters, also known as the Sacred Shapes, which are believed by Jewish mystics to be divine templates that contain the creative energy of the universe. This book describes the body, breath, and soul found within each of the Sacred Shapes, and shows that by moving your body into asanas based on each letter of the Hebrew alphabet and meditating on their meaning, you can unlock and embrace their great, empowering, and healing wisdom. Kabalah Yoga brings a new form of awareness to the practice of yoga as a language of the soul, allowing you to journey deep within and discover yourself from the inside out, while tapping into the divine energy of each of the Sacred Shapes. With the explanations, insights, stories, meditations, and photographs in this book, you’ll enhance your practice and improve your life.

When she was in her early fifties, Dorothy Walters, a Midwestern college professor, had a profound experience that took her ten years to fully assimilate. She didn't almost die and come back; she didn't get abducted by black-eyed aliens; and she didn't float out of her body to visit other dimensions. No, she had a mystical experience that spontaneously unfolded right in her own body. Her kundalini awoke. Kundalini is well-known in the East as the basic life force energy that normally sleeps in most people but can suddenly stir and start to radically transform everything in one's life, restructuring the self at the deepest level. When kundalini stirs-and this especially can happen at midlife--potentially all of consciousness gets illumined by its dazzling light. As Walters reveals, awakening kundalini can be a joyous and tumultuous ride until the body and psyche settle down. For her, it was an experience characterized by unimaginable bliss and bodily ecstasy as well as periods of intense pain and suffering. "After years of avoiding psychic or intense spiritual encounters, I was singled out and captured by a new spiritual energy, one that appeared to originate within my body. My awakening was abrupt and unforeseen, my life transformed in a single instant of grace." Unmasking the Rose is Dorothy Walters's frank and personal narrative of that ten-year ride on the kundalini wave, a unique day-by-day chronicle of her changes in which her only teacher was the inner guide, the solitary voice within. For Walters, the process was well worth the extremes, for it opened for her a path of authentic union with the divine, with the "Beloved Within."