ABOUT YOGA AND ITS BENEFITS
The purpose of yoga practice is to maximize your highest human potential. It is the best all purpose, all person, whole self, individualized fitness program.time-tested over centuries.
Creating effective yoga positions requires skill and practice. While learning and refining the positions, we develop patience, stamina, strength, and mobility in the physical body. The physical benefits are incredible.
Yoga poses create health from the inside out by systematically circulating blood, oxygen and energy throughout the entire body. Each pose creates a new pathway for circulation to flow, creating a lush inner environment from which all the systems of the body thrive. Your endocrine and nervous systems balance, creating a healthy and steady state of mind and body.
Deepak Chopra says "To feel the body as a luxury, as a bird feels when shooting though the air, and a normal child feels.that is health."
Do you remember when you were a child and could move freely, without the hitches and glitches of an achy back or creaky knees? Remember the energy level you felt when you woke up in the morning, ready to embrace the day? Yoga helps you reclaim the attitude, energy level and mobility of your youth
The benefits of a yoga practice are cumulative. Each time you participate with 100% presence and interest, you add to your peace and clarity reservoir within, and outer strength of your body.
Like the tide moves, cleanses and rejuvenates the ocean, yoga uses breathing and specific body positions to create our own internal "tide". Our bodies are made up mostly of fluid. When these fluids become stagnant from inactivity and immobility, we become lethargic, overweight and over stressed. The natural ebb and flow reoccurs through yoga postures and breathing. We rejuvenate quickly as all the systems respond to the new circulation.
Benefits include:
- Enhanced mental clarity. You'll make better decisions that prioritize peace of mind. You'll have less anxiety producing thoughts.
- Your skin glows from the enhanced circulation and internal health. You look younger.
- Your breath becomes more rhythmic and deeper. Your voice has more resonance.
- Body weight naturally balances due to proper digestion and hormone balancing. You body feel lighter, more sensitive.
- Muscles become relaxed and strong. Your skeletal system realigns to allow for proper joint mobility. You'll move better with more agility and grace. Movement is freer, more natural and effortless.
- Your senses become more acute. There is more sensitivity and enjoyment of color, light form, sound and all other sensory pleasures.
- Regular yoga practice helps to develop determination, dedication, and patience. You'll develop deeper awareness and presence. There is more capacity to respond to the immediate functional challenges of your life.
Yoga is not designed to be a "strenuous" practice, although it can be rigorous. We practice moving through the positions with ease and grace, even when the positions are challenging. The "yoga" is the "ease". The challenge is to practice "the ease" no matter what position we are faced with in our practice, and in our lives.
The magic of the practice is developing the delicate balance between yielding, and the reaching out from the yielding. We learn how to release tension in order to bend, twist, and reach while staying mentally relaxed. This practice pays off as we move through challenging situations in our lives.
As our skill refines, more advanced positions can be practiced without straining the body. We are already pretty good at tightening, grabbing, pushing, forcing. The most important thing to learn in the beginning of your yoga practice is how to release the tension. "Feel" the positions, rather than being eager to create the end product "pose" through force. We learn to finesse the body with breath and conscious presence.
The only ability necessary to start practice is the willingness to begin.
To achieve maximum benefits practice yoga every day. An effective home practice can be done in as little as 15 or 20 minutes per day.
Learn to do the positions compassionately, safely, and properly so you realize the most benefit immediately. |
