Yoga is a practice that serves to cleanse your soul and strengthen your body. The various yoga positions or asanas are designed to achieve specific objectives. When practiced correctly it proves to be very beneficial. Aerial yoga or Unnata is a new style of yoga that has been developed recently. It uses various props to help the practitioner achieve greater accuracy in some difficult traditional yoga poses. ‘Unnata’ is a Sanskrit word which means elevated. Here the elevation refers to both that of your body as well as your spirit.
Aerial yoga is a practice that begun around 14 years ago when its founder Michelle first became certified to teach Yoga back in 1998. After the introduction of aerial yoga into the world, it picked up its own pace.
Aerial yoga as the name suggests involves practicing such yoga positions that make you lift part or the whole of your body up in the air. It essentially uses a circus hammock as a prop to reach otherwise impossible yoga positions. These advanced yoga positions are difficult and generally take several years to master. Aerial yoga provides you with an easier and faster method to learn how to practice these very positions.
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Unnata or aerial yoga helps the students improve their flexibility, strength and alignment. It also makes them practice other non-aerial yoga positions. Essentially the practice of every kind of yoga focuses on letting go of stressful thoughts so that we can stop seeing the world through fear, anger, sadness or desire. Once we’ve got rid of these negative emotions that hamper our moods and colour the world around us in rather unflattering tones, we automatically feel much better.
The teachers of Unnata design exercises that are simple and easy to handle. These exercises help the students understand the complicated yoga postures better and thus, makes it easier for them to achieve those positions. The practice of other physical activities which are included in the Unnata sessions, help improve the muscular strength of one’s body. The unnata techniques are not just simple stretching exercises. They go a little deeper than that. Practice of breathing exercises reinforces a calm and serene attitude, which in turn increases our mental flexibility and as Unnata deals with physical as well as spiritual elevation, these become an important part of the routine too!
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The essential use of the hammock is to release the tension from certain parts of your bodies. With the help of a few skilfully designed exercises, unnata teachers identify the regions of chronic tension in your body and then they use the hammock to release this tension, thus improving your flexibility. Release of this chronic tension also helps reduce mental pressure.
While it may look difficult, unnata yoga is fairly simple and designed in such a manner that it can be practiced by all even those without any background in sports, yoga or any other physical activity. However it is not to be practiced by pregnant women or those with high blood pressure.
Because of unnata the yoga hammock has now become one of the most purchased yoga items. It is fairly strong and can hold the weight of heavy people too. As has been mentioned above, aerial yoga or unnata is not just for a select few but for the entire population! Before beginning each class one should follow certain rules for one’s own benefits. These include, removing all pieces of jewellery, not consuming food just before the class begins, again one must not be hungry during class either. Eat your food at such a time that it is completely digested when you reach class. Other than these precautions there aren’t many others that you need to observe.
Aerial yoga is a fun and intelligent way of learning yoga and is gaining popularity fast! All in all if you’re a yoga fanatic, it’s worth a try.
Content Source: Aerial Yoga
