Yoga’s health benefits have been known to humankind for thousands of years. It improves flexibility, balance and posture, builds muscle strength, increases your blood flow, boosts immunity, helps regulate blood pressure, helps you learn to focus, and helps you sleep better, to name but a few of the ways it can make your life better. And that’s not all! Yoga can also help those who may have never even had the chance to try it when yogis the world over use it to raise both money and awareness and send their positive energy to those who need it most.
The History of World Yoga Day
World Yoga Day was started several years ago by Samira Radsi, a yoga teacher living in Berlin, Germany. Samira herself says that the idea for creating World Yoga Day to harness the power of yogis the world over to help victims of human rights violations just came to her spontaneously when she was drinking her cappuccino one Saturday morning. Soon, she shared her dream of helping people via yoga with her friend and fellow yoga teacher, Bjoern Wyrich and they began to take action to make World Yoga day a reality. One of the first steps was to get in touch with yoga schools the world over to find out how many of them would be interested in participating, and several hundred declared their support. In general, the idea behind World Yoga Day is very simple: yoga teachers, yoga schools and yogis around the world donate a bit of their time, space and money to human rights causes. Each participating school organizes a two hour yoga session during which all of the participants devote all of their thoughts and energy to people who have suffered human right violations in hopes that that will help those people feel stronger and more positive. Students may also donate as much as they can afford, and the money collected is then donated to charities helping the victims. One important aspect of the two-hour yoga session is that it must take place precisely from 11 am to 1 pm local time, so that the result will be a 24-hour yoga marathon in the intentions of those suffering violence and other forms of injustice
.Ustrasana (Camel Pose)
Most of our daily tasks invole motions that bend the body in a forward direction, stretching the posterior side of the spine. It is rare that we
counteract such motions by bending the other way. However, it is very important to stretch the spinal column in a concave movement, as
extending the anteriror spine helps blood circulation. Performing backbends, in a number of variations of postures, opens the chest and energizes
the lungs, depending breathing and allowing more oxzygenated blood to freely circulate throughout the entire body. One of these postures is
ustrasana, or camel posture.
This posture is called the camel posture because it is said to resemble the shape of the camel. the meanings of the asanas are often suggested by
their names, and those named after animals hold some of the more interesting parallels. As the camel's poor eyesight pushes the animal to rely
on some inner compass to navigate its way through th einhospitable climate fo the desert, so does this posture require one to consider another
way of seeing. The shape of this posture places one's head and vision behind the body. As in the sirsasana, our world is turned upside down and our perspective inverted. With the change of our everyday, forward-facing vision, we can cultivate a more important inner vision. The back-bend
itself presents a challenging and less - than- hospitable environment for the body. But when developed and practiced properly, ustrasana fosters
balance and strengths the spine. This posture simultaneously opens the chest and pelvis, promotes flexiblity in the shoulders, and stretches and tones the lower abdominals and qyadriceps.
