Weight-Resistance Yoga : Practicing Embodied Spirituality

by Popov, Max

• ISBN13: 9781594778162
• ISBN10: 1594778167
• Copyright: 2011-10-14
• Publisher: Inner Traditions

Summary

HEALTH / FITNESS "In _Weight-Resistance Yoga_, author Max Popov blends weight training and yoga practice in a conscious manner. His attention to paying attention assures not only a well-sculpted form but also a finely honed mind."--(Christopher S. Kilham, author of _The Five Tibetans_) "This more meditative form of weight lifting seeks self-liberation through the mindful movements of the joints against resistance."--(_Yoga Journal_) Applying the wisdom of hatha yoga to weight-lifting exercises, fitness trainer Max Popov's _Weight-Resistance Yoga_ reveals the path to transforming strength-training sessions into a mindful, calm, and meditative yoga practice. Fully illustrated instructions for 26 weight-resistance exercises offer tips for safely, effectively, and efficiently strengthening the neck, shoulders, arms, torso, hips, knees, and ankles using machines, free weights, and the body itself as resistance. Popov's guidelines for becoming fully absorbed in the body's movements against resistance--movements made within stillness and stability and coordinated with rhythmic breathing--point the way to performing the exercises with tranquillity. To support the contemplative state of this practice, Popov includes 20 themed meditations on the embodied experience of performing the exercises. The perfect complement to weight-surrender yoga (the yoga of flexibility postures), weight-resistance yoga (the yoga of strengthening exercises) allows you to become stronger, fully inhabit your body, empty your mind of everyday preoccupations, and fill your soul with comprehensions of deeper realities--creating a yoga practice that provides strength, attentiveness, serenity, and spiritual illumination. MAX POPOV is a fitness trainer and scholar of modern yoga. He began developing weight-resistance yoga in the late 1980s by applying the teachings of yoga master B. K. S. Iyengar to the strength-training teachings of famed 1920s Indian bodybuilder K. V. Iyer.