Mistakes while practicing Yoga that should be avoided and rules for combining practices

1. If you want to practice Yoga on your own you should consult a competent teacher who will prepare you a programme, which will be adapted to your physical and psychic condition and particularities, your age, health condition or problems, physical capacity and free time.
2. Exercises are never described to people who do not practice Yoga but ask just out of curiosity. This only confuses them and pollute the knowledge. This knowledge is sacred and “do not throw pearls to the swine”.
3. The exercises should not be explained to other people but rather be demonstrated. This is particularly valid for the Pranayama practices. The paraphrase or explanation leads to mistakes in the transmission and reception of the information.
4. Yoga practices are made at least 3-4 hours after eating.
5. The different Yoga techniques are not practiced separately, each of its own, but are practiced always in a system of techniques. The Yoga techniques are not pills having a given effect (for tonus, for increasing or decreasing blood pressure, etc.)
6. Between the different Yoga practices you should never make pause, break, getting up, going out and hanging around. The exercices fluently are passing from one to another which balances the person in terms of psyche and rises the conciousness.
7. The exercices have to be done with ease and pleasure and not with effort, tension, striving and overstraining. Let us aspire joy and inner harmony and not towards showing off and external effects. The forced entry and going out of the different asanas leads to tendon stretches, strain and pains. The forced retaining of the breathing during Pranayama leads to pulmonary emphysema (breakdown of the walls of the alveoli and widening of the alveoli). The forced practicing of Pratyahara and Samyama practices leads to neurosis and psychic stress. There is no forced concentration in Yoga.
8. The detention of asanas is not performed by the clock but by the limits of confort. Yoga does not uses clocks.
9. The asanas are always combined on the principle posture – contra posture and are performed in groups: inverted, twisting and turning asanas, balance asanas, relaxing asanas.
10. Mukta asanas and vari asanas (dynamic, isometric exercices) are always performed before the static postures, not after them.
11. You should never enter sharply into an inverted asana, you should always do it slowly and with relaxation. Inverted asanas are never practiced after kriyas related to the repeated use of energy keys.
12. In hot weather Shirshasana (headstand) is never performed and the other inverted asanas are hold for a shorter periods of time.
13. Inverted postures are never performed after the generating pranayamas.
14. generating pranayamas (with bandhi and controlled breathing) are not performed without proper preparation of the body through mukta asanas and vari asanas (dynamic, isometric exercices) because it can lead to overstressing the body and the overstress of certain organs and systems. Relaxing pranayamas and exercices from Pratyahara can be performed before meditation without any preliminary preparation through mukta asanas and asanas.
15. Several generating pranayamas should be never practiced one right after another (with few exceptions). Between the pranayamas chakhi are always performed in order the generated energy to be absorbed.
16. generating pranayamas (with bandhi and controlled breathing) are never performed right after Pratyahara exercices (Tala Yukta, cobra breathing, yoga nidra, etc.) r Dharana exercices. This leads to strain and neurotic tension.
17. During the generating pranayamas the duration of the kumbaka (suspension of the breathing) must be performed according to the internal sent and feeling of comfort and not be a strict timing according to a clock because the biorhythms of every person are different.
18. In hot weather pranayamas including the simultaneous or consecutive use of the three bandhas is never performed but the technique with use of one or two of the bandhas (keys) can be performed.
19. Shakti bandhi are never performed one right after another because this will lead to a energy overload. Between them are performed exercices that distributes the energy – mukta asani and vari asani.
20. The mudras are performed always after Shakti bandhi and never the other way around because the mudras concentrate the energy while the bandhas are spreading the energy.
21. A person should never enter with force into meditation, with volitional concentration and with struggle with one's thoughts. In Samayama (meditation) the person should enter through a fine breathing technique of Pranayama (keivali, retaining the breathing, shiva's breath, nadi shodhana, udjaya, the dragon's breath, etc.) or through Pratiahara technique (tala yukta, cobra breathing, kriya etc.)
22. A person should not meditate or relax while is overstressed, enervated or angry. In these cases satvasani breathing techniques (keivali, Shiva's breath, nadi shodhana, abhaya) are performed. No radjastanas or generating pranayamas are performed.
23. Dharana tehcniques (Vivarta, Merudanda, Chakra Dharana) are performed for a short period of time (5-10 min.) and after that a smooth transition to the Dhyana is made. The continuous practice of Dharana leads to neurotic tension and Kundalini syndrome.
24. Kundalini syndrome (tension and weight in the head, vegetative disturbances, terrors, sensation of warmth or cold in the body, neurotic over excitement, para-hallucinations – visions with the peripheral vision) is a consequence of a unharmonious practice which overloads the central energy system (Ida, Pingala and Sushumna) and the peripheral energetics has blockages, which leads to a energy unbalance. This unbalance can be corrected through Tala Yukta, Yoga Nidra, Prana Shudhi, Prana veda, Svastika darshana etc.
25. The conciousness is the connection between Atman (the live-giving power inside us) and our psycho-physiological structure. Atman of the memory, the personality, the ego, the body, the heart and the organs. Atman is the thing that sets them in action. If the Yoga exercices are performed mechanically and unconsciously, like conditioned reflex, they have minimal effect, mainly on physiological level. All exercices especially Pranayama and Pratiahara are performed with an attention guidance and full realization of the process (which does not means thinking or reasoning). Thinking and reasoning are informational verification of the content of the memory.