About
Yelena Krasnov - Owner and Instructor
Yelena holds a Master's degree in Physical Education from the Saint Petersburg Academy of Physical Education. In Russia she has been active in dance, gymnastics, swimming, track and field, volleyball, basketball, cross country skiing and performed for the Russian National Junior Sport Orienteering team. Later, Yelena worked as a children's sports coach and served as a coach for the Russian National Junior team from 1993 to 1994. She continues to enjoy physical activities and the outdoors and regularly wins top places in US National Masters Orienteering competitions.
Yelena became fascinated with holistic exercise and meditation while living in Russia. She started to attend meditation classes in 1992 and completed a Holistic Exercise and Physical Therapy Instructor course in 1996. After moving to California, Yelena graduated from Milpitas Electrolysis College in February 2000 with a Therapeutic Massage Certificate and ran her own therapeutic massage business for a number of years. Eventually, Yelena made a full time commitment to teaching yoga and opened the San Ramon Holistic Yoga Center in April 2008.
San Ramon Holistic Yoga Center serves East Bay Tri-Valley and adjacent areas, including San Ramon, Danville, Alamo, Walnut Creek, Lafayette, Dublin, Pleasanton, Livermore, Castro Valley and Hayward. Classes include breathing, stretching, meditation, relaxation, healing and are suitable for beginners and advanced practitioners.
Brain Refreshing with Holistic Yoga
What is brain refreshing? It is a method of enhancing the brain's function through using various holistic yoga techniques. Brain refreshing is often referred to as "brain education." At a holistic yoga studio, you may be able to find classes in brain education which are directed at various age groups and their needs. For instance, you may find classes to help children learn, or classes to help senior citizens age youthfully.
There are times when the brain is simply tired, such as during a long day at school or when working at a desk job. During these times, you can refresh your mind with some deep breathing or yoga stretching. In addition, those who study the brain have discovered specific techniques that keep the brain youthful and stress-free.
Deep breathing is important for brain function because it brings oxygen to the brain. It also provides a mini-vacation in which you can focus on your breath and take your mind off your current worries. As you inhale slowly, imagine energy and oxygen filling you all the way to your abdominal area. Then as you exhale, slowly release the air, imagining that it is carrying out toxins and tension from your body and your life.
Physical movement is refreshing to the brain in many ways. For one thing, it gets the blood moving through your body and into your brain. Yoga stretches often involve tensing and then releasing the muscles, which helps stimulate the circulation. Again, visualization helps refresh the brain, as you imagine those muscles squeezing out tension and stress, like a sponge, and then relaxing to receive peace and energy flowing in.
Meditation is also part of brain refreshing exercises. Meditation techniques developed thousands of years ago and have often been included as part of various religions, but the techniques themselves are of value to the energy of the brain whether you believe in a particular religion or not. In holistic yoga, stretching, breathing, and meditation complement each other while strengthening the brain.
There are other brain faculties that are addressed when taking classes in brain education. For instance, you will increase in sensory awareness and attentiveness. Your imagination is likely to become more creative and vivid. You will improve in balance and control of your motor skills. Brain refreshing classes will help you have more physical energy and stamina, a better memory, and a sharper mind. In addition to all of this, it is a great way to manage the stress in your life.
All of these benefits can be accessed by anyone, whether a child, a young adult, or an older person. For students, brain refreshing activities can help with retaining what is learned as well as being better able to control impulsive behavior. Yoga classes for kids often include a character building focus, and are aimed at social and emotional development. One important aspect of any yoga training is that of getting to know one's self, both body and soul, better. For children, holistic yoga helps them get to know their bodies better while learning principles for taking care of those bodies.
Get the Most Out of Health Coaching
Health coaching is an idea that is timely and relevant. Ours is a world in which stress, illness, pollution, and tempting foods all work together to sabotage one's health. It is understandable that a person might need an ally in the struggle to get and stay healthy. A health coach is trained to look at you as a unique individual, worthy of respect, but with unique health needs. With the services of a health coach, you can begin to make the lifestyle changes needed to become healthier in every way.
That first healing session with a new health coach might seem overwhelming and a little frightening, but it is a coach's job to put you at ease. In an atmosphere of safety and attention, your health coach will assess your needs and begin to devise a complete plan for wellness. An important aspect of health coaching is that it assumes a different model of disease. Instead of a mechanistic model, the approach is organic and completely individualized to the whole person.
Another unique aspect of the approach taken by health coaches is that of trusting the body's natural ability to heal itself. By learning all about your lifestyle and habits, he or she can assist you in accessing that natural healing. In other words, the approach is based on wellness and wholeness instead of pathology and disease. You will be looking for what is good and what works instead of what is wrong.
Health coaching makes the most of the body mind connection and its role in healing. By looking at the client as a whole individual, your emotional and spiritual wellness will not be ignored. After all, the mind and emotions play a critical role in well being and wholeness. Expect meditation and relaxation to be part of the treatment plan, as your coach helps you free up the energy flow in your body so that natural healing can take place.
The first rule for getting the most out of health coaching is to choose a coach with whom you can communicate comfortably, and whose approach you like. Next, remember that the goal is to improve your life, so the treatment needs to focus on your personal needs more than on the science and disciplines involved. In other words, make sure your health coach is individualizing the methods to fit you.
Finally, health coaching won't do you any good if you do not follow the instructions of the coach. If you have gotten as far as seeking a health coach, it stands to reason you are ready to take action to become a healthier person. It takes discipline, however. Work with your coach as he or she teaches and trains you in the principles and practices needed for your health. Be faithful in doing the exercises prescribed and following any nutritional advice you receive.
Holistic Yoga for Stress Relief
No one would argue that the world is filled with stress, which in turn is a major factor in a wide variety of emotional and physical disorders. One of the best stress relief treatments is the practice of holistic yoga. Yoga stretching, relaxation, breathing, and meditation have been around for thousands of years, and still offer a wide range of health benefits, but none is more notable than the benefit of stress reduction.
Many people may think of yoga as merely a discipline in which you gain flexibility, but that is only part of the picture. Yoga involves mindfulness and visualization techniques that relax the parts of the body where stress settles. Have you ever wondered why someone might say, when they are having a lot of problems, that they feel like they have "the weight of the world on their shoulders"? It is because we tend to carry stress, worry, and tension in the region of our shoulders.
Holistic yoga is a way to release that stored tension, which can be in many other parts of the body as well, including the internal organs. For instance, the gnawing sensation you get down in your stomach when nervous and disappointed. Yoga uses the mind body connection to get into those stressed regions to work relaxation and healing.
Yoga relieves stress first through deep breathing, being careful to focus the mind on the breath. At the same time, you consciously relax the parts of the body you are working on. When you stretch and relax while breathing in this way, the natural energy flow of the body is released and stress relief can begin.
Breathing also brings oxygen to the blood, while the stretching helps improve the circulation so that life giving oxygen can get to all of your body parts, internal organs, and even your brain. The various positions, or asanas used in yoga, focus on different body parts. Some of them stimulate and relax the various internal organs. Holistic yoga can be an important part of a stress reduction plan when someone is suffering from stress-related illness, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, or migraine headaches.
Daily stress causes the body to kick into its natural adrenaline pumping "fight or flight" response. By learning holistic yoga, you can train your body to move into an opposite gear known as the relaxation response. Do remember that it takes daily practice to learn how to relax this natural response to stress. Experts recommend at least ten to twenty minutes a day for relaxation and meditation, so the time requirement is not great, but it does need to be consistent.
You can learn some about yoga techniques from a book, but a video is better. Best of all is a live class or individual healing session with a certified yoga trainer. A class setting can be motivational, but if you are nervous around people, it might be better to start one-on-one. A live teacher or health coach will help you adapt the exercises to your own particular body. He or she can tell when you may need props or an adaptation of a position, as well as offering other helpful instruction.
How a Yoga Healing Session Can Restore Healthy Energy Flow
You may think of yoga as simply an ancient form of physical exercise or spiritual meditation, but holistic yoga is actually all about making its practitioners healthier. A good yoga teacher or studio will want to schedule a healing session to determine your health challenges before you begin to study yoga. The breathing and stretching techniques of yoga are helpful for many physical diseases and emotional disorders. A private session with your yoga teacher will allow her to adapt the practice of yoga to your individual needs.
The healing nature of yoga stems from its effect on the energy flow in the body. Yoga and other eastern healing methods identify several directions of energy movement in the body as well as meridians in the body. The meridians are channels in the body through which energy flows. These channels can become blocked so that energy stagnates. Illness, pain, or imbalance are often the result of blocked meridians.
A yoga healing session will pinpoint your exact needs from yoga. For instance, you will find out which breathing exercises will help unblock energy flow so that healing can take place in the parts of your body where you need it. You will also find out about stretches and poses, or asanas, that are specific to your particular illness.
Here is an example of how this works. A common health issue these days is obesity. If you are seeking help with weight loss through a healing session, you will be instructed in yoga positions that stimulate the thyroid gland which is often sluggish in overweight individuals. The thyroid gland is in the front of the neck, so asanas such as the fish pose and the plough are helpful for it. The fish opens up the area while the plough closes it, so the two work together. Also helpful for weight loss are breathing exercises which brings oxygen to the fat cells, which in turn can metabolize more easily. Yoga also has a positive effect on emotional stress and nervousness, and can help people overcome emotional eating.
Another common example of a health issue that can be improved through a yoga healing session is arthritis. Yoga stretching is so gentle and painless that it is a wonderful, natural place for a person with arthritis to begin to exercise. Of course, you have to go slow and never stretch farther or longer than is comfortable.
Breathing and stretching exercises help clear the meridians so that energy can flow freely in the body. The blockages are like toxins which the body can remove as the energy flows. When yoga is individualized to your own particular needs, the result can only be an increased sense of well being and better all around health.
There are yoga postures that stimulate and relax every part of the body, including the internal organs and glands. But a yoga healing session isn't just for physical illness. Emotional disorders such as depression and anxiety can begin to get better when the relaxation and meditation of yoga are practiced. (Of course, if you are so depressed that you feel like you might harm yourself or someone else, please get help.)
Use Mind Body Connection to Enhance Well Being Naturally
The mind and body are not separate entities, but are connected in a close, real way. Everyone can think of times when they felt nausea or butterflies in the stomach in a time of anxiety, such as right before a date or when giving a presentation. Another common unpleasant sign of the body responding to the mind is a tension headache. Fortunately, the mind body connection can be used in positive ways. Train the body to relax, and the mind will rest. Likewise, train the mind to relax, and the body can release pain and stress, and begin to heal.
Well being happens when the mind is relaxed and happy and the body is relaxed and healthy. An upset in the mind will often show up in the body, and vice-versa. For instance, illnesses like diabetes and cancer can cause depression, but stress in one's life can predispose them to serious illnesses like diabetes and cancer.
Meditation and relaxation connect the mind and the body. Indeed, it is virtually impossible to truly meditate in the eastern sense if the body is not in a relaxed position. Learning progressive relaxation through holistic yoga is an excellent way to help the mind relax. Yogic breathing and stretching exercises can help to create a sense of emotional balance in an individual. The stretching exercises pinpoint each part of the whole body, which means a person can find and release any stored tension in his or her muscles.
When our lives are stressed, we have a tendency to store tension in various muscles of the body. For instance, a tension headache results when we let worries and troubles cause us to tighten the muscles of the back of the head and neck. Shoulders are another area people tend to tense up, but tension can also build up in other areas, such as the low back, or even the ankles. Holistic yoga exercises bring slow sustained stretching to all of these areas, inviting energy in with each inhaled breath, and tension out with each exhaled breath.
Here are some common stress symptoms that can be relieved by working with the mind body connection. Digestive problems, such as constipation, diarrhea, or irritable bowel syndrome are often connected with emotional stress. Stress can cause insomnia, which can result in feeling tired and run down. Emotions such as anxiety, depression, apathy, fear, and irritability are stress symptoms. Stress affects relationships by causing a person to feel like arguing, blaming, and not trusting the other. These symptoms can sometimes be improved with prescription medicine, but the side effects, cost, and long term health effects make this option undesirable for many people.
Exercise is a very important way in which the body can relieve the symptoms of stress, but vigorous exercise is often not enough. A holistic yoga teacher or wellness coach can help you develop a balanced routine of exercise, so that you are stretching, relaxing, and exercising the mind, as well as exercising the heart and muscles.
Yelena Krasnov - Owner and Instructor
Yelena holds a Master's degree in Physical Education from the Saint Petersburg Academy of Physical Education. In Russia she has been active in dance, gymnastics, swimming, track and field, volleyball, basketball, cross country skiing and performed for the Russian National Junior Sport Orienteering team. Later, Yelena worked as a children's sports coach and served as a coach for the Russian National Junior team from 1993 to 1994. She continues to enjoy physical activities and the outdoors and regularly wins top places in US National Masters Orienteering competitions.
Yelena became fascinated with holistic exercise and meditation while living in Russia. She started to attend meditation classes in 1992 and completed a Holistic Exercise and Physical Therapy Instructor course in 1996. After moving to California, Yelena graduated from Milpitas Electrolysis College in February 2000 with a Therapeutic Massage Certificate and ran her own therapeutic massage business for a number of years. Eventually, Yelena made a full time commitment to teaching yoga and opened the San Ramon Holistic Yoga Center in April 2008.
San Ramon Holistic Yoga Center serves East Bay Tri-Valley and adjacent areas, including San Ramon, Danville, Alamo, Walnut Creek, Lafayette, Dublin, Pleasanton, Livermore, Castro Valley and Hayward. Classes include breathing, stretching, meditation, relaxation, healing and are suitable for beginners and advanced practitioners.
Brain Refreshing with Holistic Yoga
What is brain refreshing? It is a method of enhancing the brain's function through using various holistic yoga techniques. Brain refreshing is often referred to as "brain education." At a holistic yoga studio, you may be able to find classes in brain education which are directed at various age groups and their needs. For instance, you may find classes to help children learn, or classes to help senior citizens age youthfully.
There are times when the brain is simply tired, such as during a long day at school or when working at a desk job. During these times, you can refresh your mind with some deep breathing or yoga stretching. In addition, those who study the brain have discovered specific techniques that keep the brain youthful and stress-free.
Deep breathing is important for brain function because it brings oxygen to the brain. It also provides a mini-vacation in which you can focus on your breath and take your mind off your current worries. As you inhale slowly, imagine energy and oxygen filling you all the way to your abdominal area. Then as you exhale, slowly release the air, imagining that it is carrying out toxins and tension from your body and your life.
Physical movement is refreshing to the brain in many ways. For one thing, it gets the blood moving through your body and into your brain. Yoga stretches often involve tensing and then releasing the muscles, which helps stimulate the circulation. Again, visualization helps refresh the brain, as you imagine those muscles squeezing out tension and stress, like a sponge, and then relaxing to receive peace and energy flowing in.
Meditation is also part of brain refreshing exercises. Meditation techniques developed thousands of years ago and have often been included as part of various religions, but the techniques themselves are of value to the energy of the brain whether you believe in a particular religion or not. In holistic yoga, stretching, breathing, and meditation complement each other while strengthening the brain.
There are other brain faculties that are addressed when taking classes in brain education. For instance, you will increase in sensory awareness and attentiveness. Your imagination is likely to become more creative and vivid. You will improve in balance and control of your motor skills. Brain refreshing classes will help you have more physical energy and stamina, a better memory, and a sharper mind. In addition to all of this, it is a great way to manage the stress in your life.
All of these benefits can be accessed by anyone, whether a child, a young adult, or an older person. For students, brain refreshing activities can help with retaining what is learned as well as being better able to control impulsive behavior. Yoga classes for kids often include a character building focus, and are aimed at social and emotional development. One important aspect of any yoga training is that of getting to know one's self, both body and soul, better. For children, holistic yoga helps them get to know their bodies better while learning principles for taking care of those bodies.
Get the Most Out of Health Coaching
Health coaching is an idea that is timely and relevant. Ours is a world in which stress, illness, pollution, and tempting foods all work together to sabotage one's health. It is understandable that a person might need an ally in the struggle to get and stay healthy. A health coach is trained to look at you as a unique individual, worthy of respect, but with unique health needs. With the services of a health coach, you can begin to make the lifestyle changes needed to become healthier in every way.
That first healing session with a new health coach might seem overwhelming and a little frightening, but it is a coach's job to put you at ease. In an atmosphere of safety and attention, your health coach will assess your needs and begin to devise a complete plan for wellness. An important aspect of health coaching is that it assumes a different model of disease. Instead of a mechanistic model, the approach is organic and completely individualized to the whole person.
Another unique aspect of the approach taken by health coaches is that of trusting the body's natural ability to heal itself. By learning all about your lifestyle and habits, he or she can assist you in accessing that natural healing. In other words, the approach is based on wellness and wholeness instead of pathology and disease. You will be looking for what is good and what works instead of what is wrong.
Health coaching makes the most of the body mind connection and its role in healing. By looking at the client as a whole individual, your emotional and spiritual wellness will not be ignored. After all, the mind and emotions play a critical role in well being and wholeness. Expect meditation and relaxation to be part of the treatment plan, as your coach helps you free up the energy flow in your body so that natural healing can take place.
The first rule for getting the most out of health coaching is to choose a coach with whom you can communicate comfortably, and whose approach you like. Next, remember that the goal is to improve your life, so the treatment needs to focus on your personal needs more than on the science and disciplines involved. In other words, make sure your health coach is individualizing the methods to fit you.
Finally, health coaching won't do you any good if you do not follow the instructions of the coach. If you have gotten as far as seeking a health coach, it stands to reason you are ready to take action to become a healthier person. It takes discipline, however. Work with your coach as he or she teaches and trains you in the principles and practices needed for your health. Be faithful in doing the exercises prescribed and following any nutritional advice you receive.
Holistic Yoga for Stress Relief
No one would argue that the world is filled with stress, which in turn is a major factor in a wide variety of emotional and physical disorders. One of the best stress relief treatments is the practice of holistic yoga. Yoga stretching, relaxation, breathing, and meditation have been around for thousands of years, and still offer a wide range of health benefits, but none is more notable than the benefit of stress reduction.
Many people may think of yoga as merely a discipline in which you gain flexibility, but that is only part of the picture. Yoga involves mindfulness and visualization techniques that relax the parts of the body where stress settles. Have you ever wondered why someone might say, when they are having a lot of problems, that they feel like they have "the weight of the world on their shoulders"? It is because we tend to carry stress, worry, and tension in the region of our shoulders.
Holistic yoga is a way to release that stored tension, which can be in many other parts of the body as well, including the internal organs. For instance, the gnawing sensation you get down in your stomach when nervous and disappointed. Yoga uses the mind body connection to get into those stressed regions to work relaxation and healing.
Yoga relieves stress first through deep breathing, being careful to focus the mind on the breath. At the same time, you consciously relax the parts of the body you are working on. When you stretch and relax while breathing in this way, the natural energy flow of the body is released and stress relief can begin.
Breathing also brings oxygen to the blood, while the stretching helps improve the circulation so that life giving oxygen can get to all of your body parts, internal organs, and even your brain. The various positions, or asanas used in yoga, focus on different body parts. Some of them stimulate and relax the various internal organs. Holistic yoga can be an important part of a stress reduction plan when someone is suffering from stress-related illness, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, or migraine headaches.
Daily stress causes the body to kick into its natural adrenaline pumping "fight or flight" response. By learning holistic yoga, you can train your body to move into an opposite gear known as the relaxation response. Do remember that it takes daily practice to learn how to relax this natural response to stress. Experts recommend at least ten to twenty minutes a day for relaxation and meditation, so the time requirement is not great, but it does need to be consistent.
You can learn some about yoga techniques from a book, but a video is better. Best of all is a live class or individual healing session with a certified yoga trainer. A class setting can be motivational, but if you are nervous around people, it might be better to start one-on-one. A live teacher or health coach will help you adapt the exercises to your own particular body. He or she can tell when you may need props or an adaptation of a position, as well as offering other helpful instruction.
How a Yoga Healing Session Can Restore Healthy Energy Flow
You may think of yoga as simply an ancient form of physical exercise or spiritual meditation, but holistic yoga is actually all about making its practitioners healthier. A good yoga teacher or studio will want to schedule a healing session to determine your health challenges before you begin to study yoga. The breathing and stretching techniques of yoga are helpful for many physical diseases and emotional disorders. A private session with your yoga teacher will allow her to adapt the practice of yoga to your individual needs.
The healing nature of yoga stems from its effect on the energy flow in the body. Yoga and other eastern healing methods identify several directions of energy movement in the body as well as meridians in the body. The meridians are channels in the body through which energy flows. These channels can become blocked so that energy stagnates. Illness, pain, or imbalance are often the result of blocked meridians.
A yoga healing session will pinpoint your exact needs from yoga. For instance, you will find out which breathing exercises will help unblock energy flow so that healing can take place in the parts of your body where you need it. You will also find out about stretches and poses, or asanas, that are specific to your particular illness.
Here is an example of how this works. A common health issue these days is obesity. If you are seeking help with weight loss through a healing session, you will be instructed in yoga positions that stimulate the thyroid gland which is often sluggish in overweight individuals. The thyroid gland is in the front of the neck, so asanas such as the fish pose and the plough are helpful for it. The fish opens up the area while the plough closes it, so the two work together. Also helpful for weight loss are breathing exercises which brings oxygen to the fat cells, which in turn can metabolize more easily. Yoga also has a positive effect on emotional stress and nervousness, and can help people overcome emotional eating.
Another common example of a health issue that can be improved through a yoga healing session is arthritis. Yoga stretching is so gentle and painless that it is a wonderful, natural place for a person with arthritis to begin to exercise. Of course, you have to go slow and never stretch farther or longer than is comfortable.
Breathing and stretching exercises help clear the meridians so that energy can flow freely in the body. The blockages are like toxins which the body can remove as the energy flows. When yoga is individualized to your own particular needs, the result can only be an increased sense of well being and better all around health.
There are yoga postures that stimulate and relax every part of the body, including the internal organs and glands. But a yoga healing session isn't just for physical illness. Emotional disorders such as depression and anxiety can begin to get better when the relaxation and meditation of yoga are practiced. (Of course, if you are so depressed that you feel like you might harm yourself or someone else, please get help.)
Use Mind Body Connection to Enhance Well Being Naturally
The mind and body are not separate entities, but are connected in a close, real way. Everyone can think of times when they felt nausea or butterflies in the stomach in a time of anxiety, such as right before a date or when giving a presentation. Another common unpleasant sign of the body responding to the mind is a tension headache. Fortunately, the mind body connection can be used in positive ways. Train the body to relax, and the mind will rest. Likewise, train the mind to relax, and the body can release pain and stress, and begin to heal.
Well being happens when the mind is relaxed and happy and the body is relaxed and healthy. An upset in the mind will often show up in the body, and vice-versa. For instance, illnesses like diabetes and cancer can cause depression, but stress in one's life can predispose them to serious illnesses like diabetes and cancer.
Meditation and relaxation connect the mind and the body. Indeed, it is virtually impossible to truly meditate in the eastern sense if the body is not in a relaxed position. Learning progressive relaxation through holistic yoga is an excellent way to help the mind relax. Yogic breathing and stretching exercises can help to create a sense of emotional balance in an individual. The stretching exercises pinpoint each part of the whole body, which means a person can find and release any stored tension in his or her muscles.
When our lives are stressed, we have a tendency to store tension in various muscles of the body. For instance, a tension headache results when we let worries and troubles cause us to tighten the muscles of the back of the head and neck. Shoulders are another area people tend to tense up, but tension can also build up in other areas, such as the low back, or even the ankles. Holistic yoga exercises bring slow sustained stretching to all of these areas, inviting energy in with each inhaled breath, and tension out with each exhaled breath.
Here are some common stress symptoms that can be relieved by working with the mind body connection. Digestive problems, such as constipation, diarrhea, or irritable bowel syndrome are often connected with emotional stress. Stress can cause insomnia, which can result in feeling tired and run down. Emotions such as anxiety, depression, apathy, fear, and irritability are stress symptoms. Stress affects relationships by causing a person to feel like arguing, blaming, and not trusting the other. These symptoms can sometimes be improved with prescription medicine, but the side effects, cost, and long term health effects make this option undesirable for many people.
Exercise is a very important way in which the body can relieve the symptoms of stress, but vigorous exercise is often not enough. A holistic yoga teacher or wellness coach can help you develop a balanced routine of exercise, so that you are stretching, relaxing, and exercising the mind, as well as exercising the heart and muscles.