Pain Do not overstretch or force yourself into a pose.

Yoga Precautions
Precautions
Asana Transitions
It is important to move in and out of poses gracefully as this transition period is often the time when injuries occur. Be aware of your alignment as you transition.
Medical Advice
You should seek advice from a qualified yoga instructor and your doctor before you begin your practice, especially if you have any known medical problems.

Pain
Do not overstretch or force yourself into a pose. There should be no pain of injury. Your face and eyes should be soft and not strained. You should be mindful of how deep you can go based on your own capacity at the moment. You may experience mild, temporary pain from growth in your practice, but this feels different from the pain of injury. Be comfortable.

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Advanced Yoga Techniques : Chair pose yoga video

Advanced Yoga Techniques
Series:

Amy Pancake is a yoga instructor at Yoga Yoga studio in Austin, Texas.

Transcript of This Video:
So we’re going to a pose called chair pose, also called awkward pose and you’ll see why in a minute. We’re going to start by placing the big toes together so your heels are just about an inch apart, and the knees are pressing against one another. And standing nice and tall, you start to sit back into your heels, sitting your weight back into your hips and your heels, a little bit further with each breath, just like you’re sitting down into a chair - pressing your knees together, and then taking your hands together at the heart and then reaching up. And if it’s comfortable for your shoulders you can keep your hands together, for a lot of us it’s more comfortable for us to have our hands shoulder width apart, and tilting the chin up, and sitting her for several breaths, keep releasing your weight down. This is s wonderful strengthener for the back body, for the legs, the hamstrings, the glutes, and inhaling, reaching up and bringing the hands back to the heart.


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Controlling Your Breath Eye Position during Meditation
Controlling Your Breath
At no time during the practice of this technique should you make any effort to control the breath. Let it flow naturally. Gradually, you may notice that the pauses between the inhalation and exhalation are becoming longer. Enjoy these pauses, for they are a glimpse of the deep peace state of advanced meditation. As you grow very calm you may notice that the breath is becoming so shallow (or the pauses so prolonged) that it hardly seems necessary to breathe at all.

Eye Position
Focus your attention at the point between the eyebrows. This area, called “the spiritual eye,” is a center of great spiritual energy. Your eyes should be closed and held steady, and looking slightly upwards, as if looking at a point about an arm’s length away and level with the top of your head.

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Contemplation and placement meditation
We begin by contemplating the meaning of a Dharma instruction that we have heard or read. We do this by considering various lines of reasoning, contemplating analogies, and reflecting on the teachings. By deeply contemplating the instruction, eventually we reach a conclusion or cause a specific virtuous state of mind to arise. This is the object of placement meditation. We then concentrate on the objecfor as long as possible to become deeply acquainted with it.

For example, if we are meditating on compassion we begin by contemplating the various sufferings experienced by living beings until a strong feeling of compassion arises in our heart. When this compassion arises we meditate on it single-pointedly. If the feeling of compassion fades, or if our mind wanders to another object, we should return to the contemplation to bring it back to mind. When the feeling has been restored we once again leave our contemplation and hold our compassion in placement meditation.

This kind of meditation is immensely valuable in our daily life because it enables us to deal with difficult situations by developing peaceful and constructive states of mind.

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Meditation Techniques - Buddha taught that everything depends upon the mind.
Meditation Techniques Buddha taught that everything depends upon the mind. To realize this, we must first understand the nature and functions of the mind. At first, this might seem to be quite straightforward since we all have minds and we all know what state our mind is in - whether it is happy or sad, clear or confused, and so on. However, if someone were to ask us what the nature of our mind is and how it functions, we would probably not be able to give a precise answer. This indicates that we do not have a clear understanding of the mind.The heart of Dharma practice is meditation. The purpose of meditation is to make our mind calm and peaceful. If our mind is peaceful, we will be free from worries and mental discomfort, and so we will experience true happiness; but if our mind is not peaceful, we will find it very difficult to be happy, even if we are living in the very best conditions. If we train in meditation, our mind will gradually become more and more peaceful, and we will experience a purer and purer form of happiness. Eventually, we will be able to stay happy all the time, even in the most difficult circumstances

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Buddhist Meditation
Meditation is a method for acquainting our mind with virtue. The more familiar our mind is with virtue, the calmer and more peaceful it becomes. When our mind is peaceful we are free from worries and mental discomfort, and we experience true happiness. If we train our mind to become peaceful we shall be happy all the time, even in the most adverse conditions, but if our mind is not peaceful, then even if we have the most pleasant external conditions we shall not be happy. Therefore it is important to train our mind through meditation.