51735 Articles

You’re under stress, but you have to be in control all day long. Over time, that can lead to poor eating habits, the production of stress hormones and cardiac risk factors. The good news is you can reverse these risk factors non-pharmacologically and develop some habits for a lifetime that complement conventional diet and exercise.

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 well-known forms of meditative exercise within the rising movement of mind-body health. Other forms include qigong, tai chi, and various practices of meditation. Mind-body fitness comes from Eastern philosophies and religions and can enhance both your emotional and physical health.

Mind-body exercise has many benefits; these benefits are showing themselves to be bona fide even under careful scientific scrutiny. In fact, mind-body exercise can do many things, not the least of which are to reduce cardiac risk and enhance mood.

The kinder, gentler movements typical of yoga improve flexibility, strength and muscle tone and can be more youth-promoting than the wear-and-tear of daily aerobics, weights and running alone.

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 certainly can be an ambitious undertaking, but in reality practicing it is amazingly easy and you can do it just about anywhere. If you utilize yoga to its full potential, you can incorporate its meditative and dietary practices as well as its code of ethics into your life. Usually, however, it’s practiced as a mixture of asanas, 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.

If you’re feeling particularly stressed, try this five-minute “breath break” to energize yourself and release stress. Read through the instructions several times before you actually try following the steps.

1. With your back as straight as possible, sit in a chair or on the floor. If you choose to sit in a chair, your feet should be flat on the floor with your knees in line with 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. Become aware of your ribs at the back, front and sides of your body, and think about your lungs behind your ribs.

4. Now, slowly breathe in, filling your lungs up from the bottom. Picture your ribs expanding out and up. Now, breathe out, slowly, 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.

Tags: Yoga