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Yoga Research & Wellness

Research on yoga from medical, psychological, kinesiological, and leisure perspectives are covered in this guide.

Books

Parks Library offers a selection of popular, non-research yoga books that can support your home practice or deepen your understanding. If we don’t have a title you need, you can request it via interlibrary loan (usually arrives in about a week) or suggest it for purchase (typically 1–2 months). If you suggest a purchase, I’ll add you to the notification list so you're alerted when it's available. I welcome purchase suggestions even if you use interlibrary loan.

New book Titles on Yoga Topics

Yoga and Parkinson's Disease

Ease stiffness, improve strength and balance, and relieve stress with gentle, easy yoga postures. Yoga is one of the most beneficial complementary therapies for Parkinsonis disease (PD), helping to increase flexibility, correct posture, loosen tight, painful muscles, build confidence, and in general, enhance the quality of life.

Yoga and Parkinson's Disease

A Journey into Yin Yoga

You will learn about the origins and practice of yin yoga, a passive approach in which poses are held for a few minutes to target the connective tissues of the hips, pelvis, and lower spine. You will slowly and mindfully transition between poses as you gently allow those tissues to stretch, facilitating better circulation and joint health and improving flexibility. A Journey Into Yin Yoga presents over 50 yin yoga poses with stunning photos and detailed instruction, along with inspiring quotes, stories, and interviews from celebrities, doctors, and athletes.

A Journey into Yin Yoga

Principles and Themes in Yoga Therapy

Yoga therapy has emerged as an effective alternative approach to health and wellness. Explaining the principles and underpinning ideas presented by the yoga therapy movement, James Foulkes identifies the methods leading to the most effective practice. Applying a principles-based approach, he explores the concept of delivering yoga therapeutically and discusses more complete ways of thinking about anatomy and the wholeness of the human being, using theories, illustrations, and case studies. Yoga therapy practitioners will learn to improve their work and more effectively support their clients.

Principles and Themes in Yoga Therapy

Yoga for Healthy Aging

The authors provide readers with a yoga toolbox for healthy aging that includes poses, breathing practices, meditation, and yoga philosophy. They then offer you a safe, real-world yoga program to suit your particular needs. These short yoga practices were developed in consultation with scientific and medical experts on aging, and allow you to focus on maintaining overall physical health and/or addressing target problem areas, such as digestion, cardiovascular health, or anxiety.

Yoga for Healthy Aging

Yoga Therapy for Arthritis

Yoga therapy is commonly used for the management of arthritis, but often focusses exclusively on adaptation of the physical poses and on structural solutions. This book moves beyond the traditional routines to present yoga as a lifestyle designed to improve quality of life and overall well-being for individuals living with arthritis and rheumatic conditions. By incorporating the ancient practices of yoga as both physical and mental exercises involving a model of 5-koshas or sheaths (physical, energetic, mental/emotional, wisdom, and spiritual), the yoga therapy practice presented here will help reduce pain and shift the perspective of the individual living with arthritis. This therapy uses a whole-person approach that employs a broad range of tools to address the biopsychosocial effects of arthritis through the application of yoga practices and philosophy. Useful as a guide for people living with arthritis, this book is full of inspiration for self care along with instructions for yoga teachers and medical professionals to guide their clients using this whole-person perspective.

Yoga Therapy for Arthritis

Teaching Power Yoga for Sports

Show your athletes how yoga can propel their performance to the next level. Teaching Power Yoga for Sports prepares you to develop and teach yoga programs that are directly relatable to specific sports and player positions, resulting in more resilient athletes who consistently compete at the top of their game. Author Gwen Lawrence shares her approach, developed through years of work with sports' top professional teams; NBA, NFL, NHL, MLS, and MLB coaches; and elite athletes. She takes into account the athlete's training cycle, the position they play, and common movements and injuries in the sport. In this book, she offers detailed, easy-to-implement instruction on the following: * Safe and effective poses that complement common movements in sport * Yoga routines, organized by sport and season * Ways to spot and fix posture and alignment imbalances before injury occurs * Five restorative sequences to facilitate recovery and long-term stability * Six facets of Power Yoga for Sports: balance, strength, flexibility, focus, breathing, and mental toughness * Mindfulness tools for developing focus, clarity, and determination Exclusive to this book are invaluable sport-specific sequences for athletes participating in a range of sports: football, soccer, basketball, baseball and softball, hockey, lacrosse, volleyball, wrestling, golf, tennis and racket sports, skiing, swimming, running, cycling, and mixed martial arts. For each sport, you'll find the top five poses that most closely mimic that sport's movements, along with accompanying images that compare each pose to an athlete in action. Gain valuable teaching and coaching skills you can immediately put into practice with your athletes. Learn to train the whole body and mind with powerful yoga poses, breathing techniques, and mental focus activities. With Teaching Power Yoga for Sports you will develop balance, strength, flexibility, and performance in your athletes and help them thrive in a long and successful sporting career. CE exam available! For certified professionals, a companion continuing education exam can be completed after reading this book. The Teaching Power Yoga for Sports CE Exam may be purchased separately or as part of the Teaching Power Yoga for Sports With CE Exam package, which includes both the book and the exam.

Teaching Power Yoga for Sports

Motivational Yoga

The benefits of yoga are valuable to people of all ages and all fitness levels. Yoga teachers have a responsibility to keep classes fresh and challenging to help students discover their unlimited potential available. Serious yoga students have a personal responsibility to learn the principles of yoga in order to lead a more fulfilling, meaningful life. Motivational Yoga simplifies that task with 100 easy-to-follow lesson plans that vary in length. The lessons progress from basic yoga asana and pranayama lessons for beginning students to more advanced material such as mindfulness and meditation. Fully customizable to meet individual student needs, these ready-to-use lessons will save you valuable preparation time. Choose from beginning lessons focusing on body and breath awareness, basic postures, and breathing, or select more advanced instruction on the yamas and niyamas, guided relaxation, the heart center, the chakras, emotions, and mindfulness. You'll also find lessons for kids, older adults, athletes, and pregnant women to ensure you are equipped to serve all populations. Most of the lesson plans offer a written script for use in class, or as a guide for student home practice purposes.  For beginning teachers, these scripts provide a helpful structure and set the stage for mindful yoga instruction. Veteran teachers may use these lessons and scripts as a creative departure point for expanding on one of the eight limbs of raja yoga or designing a tailored focus for the day's practice. Motivational Yoga is a starting point for bringing yoga's abundant teachings into the daily lives of teachers and students alike. For ease of planning and organization, each lesson follows a five-part outline: The intention provides the focus for the day's yoga class. The lesson (script) embodies the essence of the day's teaching. The Asanas for Deepening section illustrates the lesson through body stretch, movement, and sensation. The Motivation Off the Mat section presents suggestions, homework assignments, and reminders for practicing the yoga teachings outside of the classroom. Teacher Tips and Wise Words offer advice for fine-tuning sequences and proverbs that convey a specific thought or feeling for the lesson. In addition, five full-length workshop lesson plans help you expand your teaching beyond a traditional class to offer focused workshops to your students on these popular topics: Spring Cleaning Yoga Detox, The Joy of Backbends, Yoga for Absolute Beginners, Introduction to Meditation, and Transformational Breath. With each lesson, Motivational Yoga demonstrates how the strength, balance, and stretching of the physical practice can inspire a healthy, complete, and joyous existence on and off the mat. CE exam available! For certified professionals, a companion continuing education exam can be completed after reading this book. Motivational Yoga Online CE Exam may be purchased separately or as part of Motivational Yoga With CE Exam package that includes both the book and the exam.

Motivational Yoga

Restorative Yoga for Ethnic and Race-Based Stress and Trauma

Presenting ways in which Restorative Yoga can contribute to healing emotional wounds, this book invites yoga teachers, therapists and practitioners to consider the psychological impact of ethnic and race-based stress and trauma. It aids in the process of uncovering, examining, and healing one's own emotional wounds and offers insight into avoiding wounding or re-wounding others. The book describes how race-based traumatic stress differs from PTSD and why a more targeted approach to treatment is necessary, as well as what can trigger it. It also considers the implications of an increasingly racially and ethnically diverse and global yoga community, as well as the importance of creating conscious yoga communities of support and connection, where issues of race and ethnicity are discussed openly, non-defensively and constructively. By providing a therapeutic structure that assists those directly and indirectly impacted by ethnic and race-based stress and trauma, Restorative Yoga for Ethnic and Race-Based Stress and Trauma provides valuable tools for aiding in the processing of stressful experiences and in trauma recovery.

Restorative Yoga for Ethnic and Race-Based Stress and Trauma

The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali

The rise, fall, and modern resurgence of an enigmatic book revered by yoga enthusiasts around the world Consisting of fewer than two hundred verses written in an obscure if not impenetrable language and style, Patanjali's Yoga Sutra is extolled by the yoga establishment as a perennial classic and guide to yoga practice--except it isn't. Virtually forgotten in India for hundreds of years and maligned when it was first discovered in the West, the Yoga Sutra has been elevated to its present iconic status only in the course of the past forty years. David Gordon White retraces the strange and circuitous journey of this confounding work from its ancient origins to today, bringing to life the improbable cast of characters whose interpretations and misappropriations of the Yoga Sutra led to its revered place in contemporary popular culture.

The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali

Yin Yoga 50+

Cultivate balance, flexibility, and mobility through yin yoga. The long, passive stretches of yin yoga help you release tension, and they improve your flexibility and mobility. But the benefits of yin yoga go beyond the physical. The slow, mindful nature of the practice helps reduce stress and calms your mind, giving you a greater feeling of well-being. The book gives you the tools and inspiration you need to practice this soft, slow form of yoga. Find the benefits you get from each pose; try out sequences that help with everything from sore shoulders to improving your golf, hiking, and skiing; and start or end the day with a 15-minute fix to take the stress out of your joints and muscles. Whether you are a beginner or an experienced yogi, Yin Yoga 50+ is the perfect guide to help you harness the power of yin yoga and experience a more peaceful, balanced life. Time to give yin yoga a try? You'll be surprised at the profound effect this gentle practice will have on your body and mind.

A World of Yoga

One of the great teachers has created this extraordinary celebration of yoga, offering poses in the most iconic and exotic destinations around the world. There will never be a more beautiful, immersive book on yoga. Hundreds of exquisitely photographed asanas, mudras, affirmations, yantras, mandalas, reflections, intentions, sequences, and techniques--many created for this book--are combined with poses shot on location around the world, from remote beaches to urban enclaves. Sections are organized by the following areas of yoga benefits: increasing energy, toning and flexibility, stress relief and mindfulness, boosting metabolism, resting and rejuvenating, and inner alignment. Each chapter has a selection of postures, including some never-before-seen asanas created by Lourdes that encourage muscle mobility, supporting innervation of 600 muscles through mind-body communication. Lourdes shares functional, purposeful, and liberating ways to transition in and out of postures to aid structural integrity. For committed yogis and teachers alike, this is a portal to encourage deep process work. For those newer to yoga, it is an artfully crafted guidebook to the unique world that exists when yoga practice merges with the universal pulse of heightened physical awareness and philosophical thought. For all practitioners, it is an extraordinarily inspiring demonstration of the myriad places one can create mindfulness and well-being wherever one is in the world.

Landed : a yogi's memoir in pieces & poses

American-born Jennifer traces her journey-both on and off the yoga mat-reckoning with her adopted country (Israel), midlife hormones (merciless), cross-cultural marriage (to a Frenchman) and their imminent empty nest (a mixed blessing), eventually realizing the words her yoga teachers had been offering for the past twenty-three years: root down into the ground and stay true to yourself. Finally, she understands that home is about who you are, not where you live. Written in experimental chapterettes, Landed spans seven years (and then some), each punctuated with chakra wisdom from nationally-acclaimed Rodney Yee, her first teacher.