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lose weight cycling is a fun and enjoyable way to improve your health and to make you feel better. Pedaling down a rural road or through a city park rouses your spirit and awakens your senses.

A regular routine to lose weight cycling can reduce the risk of serious conditions such as heart disease, high blood pressure and obesity.

One of the most powerful arguments for encouraging more people to cycle is that it leads to considerable improvements in public health.

Cycling is also a good way to improve your balance and co-ordination. It enhances your general well-being and promotes mental health. Beyond the health benefits, it's an enjoyable way to get around.

Getting on your cycling bike regularly can also be an effective form of aerobic exercise. Cycling can have positive effects on how we feel too.

Moderate exercise has been found to reduce levels of stress and depression, improve mood and raise self esteem. It has also been found, in some instances, to relieve symptoms of PMS.

Benefits in strength and agility can come from regular cycling also. There are no real-age barriers to cycling and people at almost any fitness level can begin slowly and gently if necessary.

Physically active older people can reduce the rate of hip fractures with regular cycling exercise. most of the negative things we associate with aging aren't a result of chronological aging but rather a lack of physical activity.

A recent study found that even a small amount of cycling for weight loss can lead to a significant fitness gain. Aerobic fitness was boosted by 11 percent after just 6 weeks of cycling short distances four times a week.

Cycling is as gently on your body as a sport can be. It is a non weight bearing exercise so it's easy on your joints, even the achy ones. It can be a wonderful way to get exercise and lose weight without pain.

They say once you learn to ride a bike you never forget and that is true. The motion and balance come back to you very quickly. If you're looking to get outside more often and improve your fitness, biking is the answer.

If your looking to lose weight cycling, jump on your bike and leave your worries and stress at home. Enjoy your ride. Just think you could be at work instead.

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yoga originated in ancient india. The word "yoga" is sanskrit for "union," and yoga is seen as a union of body, mind and spirit. What we commonly think of as yoga can more properly be termed "asana," or the practice of physical poses to achieve some physical or inner goal.

Asana, however, is only one of the "eight limbs" of yoga. Here are all eight:

1. Yama - Five guidelines on treatment of others: a. Ahimsa: Nonviolence b. Satya: Truthfulness c. Asteya: Never steal d. Brahmacharya: No lust e. Aparigraha: No covetesness

2. Niyama - Five guidelines of treatment of yourself: a. Saucha: Cleanliness b. Santosa: Contentment c. Tapas: Sustained practice d. Svadhyaya: Self-study

3. Asana - Practicing yoga positions

4. Pranayama - Breathing exercises

5. Pratyahara - Sensory deprivation, or allowing no distractions to inner reflection.

6. Dharana - Concentration, allowing no inner or outside distractions.

7. Dhyana - meditation

8. Samadhi - bliss, or enlightenment. How you merge with the universe.

yoga poses

Yoga's purpose is to create balance by strengthening the body and making it more flexible. This is done by practicing poses or positions. The way is which this performance flows depends upon the style in which the teacher has been brought up. poses can be strenuous and quick to advance strength and power, or they can be done more slowly with emphasis on holding a position for a set amount of time. The former, known as vinyasa-style yoga creates heat through the movement and is often used for weight loss. The latter concentrates on that perfect alignments and is used to increase stamina.

When you begin to practice the yoga positions, you'll find some difficult and some easier. But no matter what, yoga has the ability to evolve with you and change your goals just enough that it never get boring. As your flexibility increases, for example, you'll find yourself moving to a whole new level on many of the positions. In this way, yoga is non-competitive, and even liberating in it's devotion to the teaching that no one is better than anyone else. Everyone just does the best he or she can do.

yoga and spirituality

Some yoga classes will include a strong spiritual teaching in addition to the physical poses. This may mean chanting or meditation, or sometimes a spiritual reading. This will depend on the yoga tradition in which the class teacher has been trained. Typically gym yoga classes concentrate on the physical aspects of yoga. Even so, many students find themselves more open to spiritual exploration because of their yoga studies. Others simply enjoy the benefits of a good low-impact workout.

Yoga for stress Management

Western companies, especially in the U.K., are finding yoga classes to be a great assist in stress relief for their workers. This leads to better health and enhanced creativity. Hence, many are starting yoga fitness programs.

Other Yoga Benefits

- better sleep - allergy symptoms diminish - lower blood pressure - helps in stopping smoking - slows the heart rate - gives a sense of well-being - reduces anxiety - relaxes muscle tension - slows aging

Whichever is your goal, you're sure to find a yoga class that suits you in your area.

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Yoga

My wife and I are now beginning our fourth year as American expats in Guanajuato, Mexico. Sometimes it seems only yesterday that we sold all we owned in Overland park, Kansas, and moved here with just suitcases, nothing more. Sometimes it seems like we never had a beginning but have always lived here.

I think however, no matter how long we stay, we will always be foreigners. No matter how many of the locals we know, how many dinners and parties we get invited to, we will always be strangers. We will always be the American Gringos from the Midwest.

I came to Mexico with no expectations. I intellectually knew and understood that Mexicans, though wonderfully lovely people, are just as fallible as I am. And, they most certainly are. I did not come expecting paradise. I knew I would find bugaboos and problems. Mexico and her people do not have a Utopia south of the American Border.

But, I must admit I was hoping that culturally there would be some sort of respite in Mexico from what had originally driven my wife and I from America. There had to be something, somewhere, that could provide relief from the American cultural meltdown that so repulsed us. There just had to be.

There was.

Mexico did indeed provide a surprise that still, to this day, charms us. When we did our fact-finding trip to Guanajuato to see if this was the place for us, what we immediately noticed was the absence of public rage. We did not find what is so common in America whose citizens think it is socially appropriate behavior to "cut loose" whenever the spirit moves them, showing just how violent and mean they can be.

(The only public rage you will see, I am almost afraid to tell you, is with Americans tourists. They seemingly have no compulsion in acting out on the streets of Guanajuato.)

There are no Mexicans screeching in grocery stores, couples fighting in shopping centers, fistfights on the street, cursing (and I purposely learned all the Spanish naughty words and do not hear them being used publicly here!), or anything else that in America causes you to wonder when the knives and guns will come out and the blood will be shed.

That is so refreshing and soul cleansing that I have once again learned to be horrified at the news accounts I read on the Internet of what happens almost daily in America. I had become calloused but now am again sensitive to those horrors.

Another relief soothing to the heart is to see how family is not fractured here. family, right down to cousins fourth and fifth removed, are part and parcel of the well-being of this society. Some of them live in family compounds, generations of them, and do so in peace, in harmony, in love and respect. I envy this greatly.

For the most part, we've been treated with the greatest degree of respect. Some have made us feel like we are their long-lost American cousins who have finally come home to where we belong. We have been invited into their homes (no small privilege if you know Mexican culture) and sometimes into their lives.

Mexicans, almost without exception, treat Gringos with respect. They show far more respect than we Gringos deserve considering how we've historically treated Mexicans and still do to this day. There are some, however, that have a passive-aggressive relationship with the gringo expat community. Where this comes from is anyone's guess. But there are little, subtle, and almost unnoticeable things that you usually don't see as a tourist. You have to live here and carefully observe behavior to see that are a few snakes in paradise.

one day, while walking home on one of Guanajuato's rather narrow and harrowing sidewalks, a Mexican woman stopped us and politely lectured us. She said because we were gringos, we should walk on the outside part of the sidewalk, nearest the street, so the Mexicans could walk on the inside and not have to be in danger from the car traffic.

Those who do express consternation at the gringos are polite about it at least. Thank you very much.

There is a restaurant here that refused service in the upstairs dining room to a retired, district attorney friend of mine. The manager told him because he was a gringo he had to eat downstairs near the kitchen. He informed my friend the upstairs was for Mexican patrons only.

And, the manager told him this with the utmost politeness, of course.

When I report these sorts of stories, I usually get many readers' comments that border on the vitriolic. For example,

"I've certainly never seen this sort of thing happening anywhere in Mexico and I was once in Puerto Vallarta for two whole weeks."

I've even gotten e-mail from Mexicans, not from Central Mexico, who take umbrage at what I write.

The funny thing is the vast majority of Mexicans will never be rude to you in a million years. They will smile and, frankly, patiently endure a lot from American gringos (more than they should). But, endure they will.

What gets good in the quest for assimilating the culture is when you become fluent enough in the language to sit in a home with a local who trusts you enough to tell you things that you will never read in a guidebook or any book about Mexican culture (usually written by an American). He tells you about how he was raised, what he was taught from childhood, and so on.

Nevertheless, when I report what I learned from these encounters, I end up with an inbox full of angry e-mails from those who think they know better--those who live in artificial gringo-enclave bubbles insulated from Mexican culture.

But I keep on, in my not so perfect Mexican paradise, learning all I can so I can have more articles to write.

It keeps me busy.

Doug Bower is author of YOU CAN LEARN SPANISHNo Matter Your Age or Disposition available at LuLu Press, and co-author of THE PLAIN TRUTH about LIVING IN MEXICO available at Amazon.com