The Yoga rules

By David E. Morgan

Knoxville, Tennessee is home to a growing community of yoga enthusiasts, including many excellent yoga teachers. This is great news whether you're an advanced practitioner interested in trying out different yoga styles or you're a beginning yoga student shopping for your very first yoga class.

Whether your interest in yoga is for physical fitness, for the health benefits yoga offers any number of conditions and illnesses, or purely spiritual, you will surely find a yoga style and teacher you like with a little shopping.

The number of yoga styles and traditions can be daunting, so here is a list of what yoga you can find in Knoxville, TN with a brief description. To find a studio that offers what you think you'd prefer, simply search on Google or your preferred search engine.

Ashtanga Yoga: Ashtanga is one of the more athletic forms of yoga still rooted in tradition, emphasizing movement through a prescribed series of postures.

Hatha yoga: Hatha literally means 'forceful,' though it is often attributed to gentle yoga in the West. Any form of yoga incorporating body postures and breath control could be said to be hatha yoga, including all the other types of yoga listed in this article.

Iyengar yoga: Iyengar yoga emphasizes precise alignment of the body while holding postures.

Kripalu Yoga: Kripalu Yoga integrates yoga postures and breathing with meditation, making it as much an inward experience as it is an outward exercise. Classes range from gentle to vigorous.

Kundalini Yoga: Kundalini Yoga is an intense combination of purifying, energetic movements with breathing and chanting to awaken energy centers called chakras.

Prenatal and Momma-Baby yoga: Yoga can enhance a healthy birth and keep mom in shape afterwards.

Vinyasa yoga: Vinyasa, flow, and power yoga is the movement from one posture to the next connected by the breath. Usually the flow is based on the sun salutation and the pace of movement between poses is fairly fast, but that is not always the case. The classroom is sometimes heated for increased flexibility and body purification.

Yin Yoga: Yin Yoga targets the connective tissue - tendons, ligaments, and cartilage - for increased flexibility. Postures tend to be held for longer periods as a restorative technique.

Best wishes in finding the right yoga class for your particular needs, and welcome to the Knoxville yoga community!

David E. Morgan teaches Knoxville yoga classes. See his yoga class schedule and sign up for his mailing list at Yoga with Santosh The next complete beginner series is enrolling now, and no previous knowledge or experience is required to join.