- By: Noel Swanson, 2008-07-29
Many of us today are under stress all the time, but we still need to stay in control. If this continues, we often respond to stress with bad eating habits, production of more stress hormones, and by manifesting cardiac risk factors. Nevertheless, there is a way to limit these risk factors and even turn them around without resorting to medication. All it takes is the development of some new habits that will work in partnership with your usual diet and exercise program.
Yoga is one of these; it can help you relearn the state of peace and harmony that you want your mind and body to be in. It will help you relax.
Yoga is one of the most prominent forms of meditative exercise within the growing mind-body health movement. Other forms include qigong, tai chi, and other exercise techniques that include meditation. Mind-body fitness comes from Eastern philosophies and religions. These practices improve both your emotional and physical well being.
Mind-body exercise has many benefits, which are showing themselves to be authentic even under scientific study. Indeed, mind-body exercise can accomplish a number of things, such as lowering your risk of heart disease and boosting your mood.
Yoga's soothing movements are easy on your joints while increasing strength, flexibility and muscle tone. In effect, it can make you feel better than aerobics, weight lifting, or running, which are much harder on your body.
Indeed, practicing yoga can impact every part of your existence. Most modern Western practitioners, for example, focus on the physical asanas, or positions. However, many others utilize yoga as a path to bliss and live their lives in its all-encompassing embrace.
Yoga has lofty goals indeed, but in fact practicing it is wonderfully simple and you can do it anywhere, anytime. If you take yoga to its extremes, you can utilize yoga's dietary practices and moral codes as well as its meditative practices. More commonly, though, it's utilized as a combination of asanas (or postures), meditation and breathing exercises, also called pranayama.
Authors have written entire books on how to breathe during yoga. When you deep breathe, you calm yourself, but you also energize yourself at the same time. You can feel very energized from a few minutes of careful deep breathing, but it's a different kind of energy than many of us are used to feeling. Not jittery or hyper, this type of energy is calm and steady.
When you're feeling stressed, try this five-minute "breath break" to invigorate yourself and release tension. Read through the directions a few times before you try it out.
1. With your spine as straight as possible, sit in a chair or on the floor. If you sit in a chair, your feet should be flat on the floor with knees directly over the center of your feet. If your feet don't rest comfortably on the floor, put a book or cushion under your feet so that your knees are perpendicular to your hips. Your hands should be on the tops of your legs, palms down, open and relaxed.
2. Close your eyes gently and simply rest them, lids closed.
3. Picture your ribs at the back, front and sides of your body. Your lungs reside behind your ribs.
4. Slowly breathe in, filling up your lungs from the bottom. Visualize your ribs expanding out and up. Now, slowly breathe out, with your lungs emptying from top to bottom and your ribs gently contracting back down and in. Don't push the breath out.
5. The first few times you do this, do it for 2 to 3 minutes, then do it for up to 5 to 10 minutes. At first, set aside a time at least once a day to do this. When you learn how good it makes you feel, you'll want to do it at other times as well.
Kim Archer enjoys the health benefits and relaxation of yoga. A great source of information on this restorative practice can be found at Yoga Essentials.
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