It Can Help Your Breathing Technique
A big part of yoga is the breathing exercisesor the pranayamawhich are incorporated into positions and then on their own. The exercises encourage a more focused and centered way of breathing, and while they might not be something youll do consciously every day, theyre absolutely sure to provide methods of effective stress-management and generally make you feel much better.
Plus, as someone with asthma, it really helps to open your lungs and explore what it means to breath consciously. Trust me: do those pranayamas for a few weeks, and youll feel the benefits.
Is Hot Yoga Safe
With anything, theres always a level of risk. Thats life. The answer is yes hot yoga is safe, but its important to understand you need to play your role as well in order to keep it that way. Often unsafe practices come about by us not understanding what we need to do in order to keep us safe and hot yoga is no different.;
Because heat is involved its your number one priority to keep hydrated, this is where most of the risk is involved. Keeping yourself hydrated at all times is important but evermore with hot yoga.
Other important factors to think about are medical conditions. Do you have any yourself that you might need to consult your doctor beforehand? Its all about awareness, thats the key to keeping safe.;
Below are some pointers to consider before and while youre doing hot yoga.
- Give yourself enough time to adapt to the heat. Arrive 10 minutes before in your class to adjust to the temperature.
- Wear light clothing & maybe wear a tie back your hair to keep off your face.
- Drink plenty of fluids before, during & after the yoga session.
- Avoid going to the class on a full stomach, thats why mornings are great.
- Dont try to overexert during the exercise, pay attention to what your body;
Our Final Thoughts
How Ive Experienced The Benefits Of Yoga
I myself have experienced yogas healing power in a very real way. Weeks before a trip to India in 2002 to investigate yoga therapy, I developed numbness and tingling in my right hand. After first considering scary things like a brain tumor and multiple sclerosis, I figured out that the cause of the symptoms was thoracic outlet syndrome, a nerve blockage in my neck and chest.
Despite the uncomfortable symptoms, I realized how useful my condition could be during my trip. While visiting various yoga therapy centers, I would submit myself for evaluation and treatment by the various experts Id arranged to observe. I could try their suggestions and see what worked for me. While this wasnt exactly a controlled scientific experiment, I knew that such hands-on learning could teach me things I might not otherwise understand.
Thanks to the techniques I learned in India, advice from teachers in the United States, and my own exploration, my chest is more flexible than it ever was, my posture has improved, and for more than a year, Ive been free of symptoms.
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Scientific Research On Yoga Benefits
The U.S. military, the National Institutes of Health and other large organizations are listening to and incorporating scientific validation of yogas value in health care.
Numerous studies show yogas benefits in arthritis, osteopenia, balance issues, oncology, womens health, chronic pain and other specialties.
Your Body Is Physically Holding On To Emotional Tension And Pain
For centuries, some cultures have held strong beliefs that mind, body, and what you might call a soul are intrinsically linked, and one cannot treat an ailment in one without addressing all three.
This holistic view of healing holds that our bodies remember and store everything that has happened to us in our lives, from trauma to intense joy. When we physically reinvigorate the parts of the body that hold these emotions, as can happen during yoga, we also release those feelings.
For example, stretching and opening the hips and back can release stress and anxiety in many people, which is a good thing when that anxiety is mild. The physical stress leaves the body and is gently processed through breath and focus. If the anxiety is very strong, however, it can overwhelm the person holding the pose, and deeper inward focus and healing are required.
Through yogas physical opening of your bodys muscles, tissues, and organs, deep-seated fears and sadness can be brought to the surface. Acknowledgement of the root cause of these feelings can then be addressed mentally, emotionally, and physically.
I encourage everyone who may have experienced emotional release during a yoga class to view it as a gift, and try not to be afraid of what it has to offer. It may not feel like it at the time, but thinking about what poses make you cry and which make you laugh out loud with sudden joy is a real opportunity to explore what youre storing in which parts of your body.
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Yoga Benefits Heart Health
Regular yoga practice may reduce levels of stress and body-wide inflammation, contributing to;healthier hearts.;Several of the factors contributing to heart disease, including high blood pressure and excess weight, can also be addressed through yoga.Try it:;Downward Dog PoseGet on all fours, then tuck your toes under and bring your sitting bones up, so that you make a triangle shape. Keep a slight bend in your knees, while lengthening your spine and tailbone.
Betters Your Bone Health
Its well documented that weight-bearing exercise strengthens bones and helps ward off osteoporosis. Many postures in yoga require that you lift your own weight. And some, like Adho Mukha Svanasana and Urdhva Mukha Svanasana , help strengthen the arm bones, which are particularly vulnerable to osteoporotic fractures. In an unpublished study conducted at California State University, Los Angeles, yoga practice increased bone density in the vertebrae. Yogas ability to lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol may help keep calcium in the bones.
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Yoga Gives You A Natural Wind
Instead of watching a movie or checking Facebook for the 100th time, try practicing some restorative yoga. This type of practice is a very powerful way to calm the nervous system, thus improving sleep quality, helping the digestive system to do its job overnight,;therefore giving you the energy you need to get up early the next morning to salute the sun!
- Prepare your body and mind for a good nights sleep with our;Yoga for better sleep program.
How Can I Prevent Doms
Start slowly and build up gradually. In yoga we often talk about not pushing your boundaries to excess and DOMS is a good reason why you shouldnt. If you listen to your body and work with it you can prevent a certain amount of DOMS. The tricky part really is finding that balance. If you never even poke at your boundaries you also wont build up your strength.. but if you push past them you can injure yourself and get such painful muscle soreness that you cant exercise the next day.
Personally, I think a little ache is okay but if it inhibits your movements and ability to get on your mat the following da then perhaps you have pushed it too far. We are all different so there are no hard or fast rules on how little or how much you should do. The best advice is to stay present and aware and work with what youve got.
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Tips To Improve Energy After Yoga
While sometimes it cant be helped that you are feeling tired after yoga practice, there are some things that you can do to try and improve your energy after yoga. Lets take a look at some tips:
If you feel tired after yoga, then take a look at your practice and your lifestyle and make the necessary changes to make your practice energizing and restorative.;
Doms Necessary Or Not The Debate
Physiologically does our body need it? Some theories suggest that its necessary in order to increase the size and structural strength of our muscle tissue on a cellular level. Around our muscles cells there are stem cells called satellite cells and under the right conditions these cells can donate their nuclei to the muscle fibres, thereby increasing our muscular strength. The theory suggests that this can only happen when our cell walls are damaged during;strenuous exercise.
Im on the fence on this one. However, it is a fact that your muscles adapt to the new activity and;the more they adapt, the less soreness you get. But that is based on working with the same activity. If you increase the intensity of the activity the risk of getting DOMS returns.
But muscular strength is more than just the physical compostion of your cells. The other aspect of muscular strength is the health of your nervous system, i.e. how well our muscles respond to the stimulation of our motor nerves. Repeated stimulation ;increases the health of our nervous system and our motor units which is separate from microdamage. Its about neural training!
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Uses Sounds To Soothe Your Sinuses
The basics of yogaasana, pranayama, and meditationall work to improve your health, but theres more in the yoga toolbox. Consider chanting. It tends to prolong exhalation, which shifts the balance toward the parasympathetic nervous system. When done in a group, chanting can be a particularly powerful physical and emotional experience. A recent study from Swedens Karolinska Institute suggests that humming soundslike those made while chanting Omopen the sinuses and facilitate drainage.
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How Can I Get All These Benefits
As discussed at the outset, the wellbeing or high we derive from our Yoga practice does not necessarily derive from any individual;benefit described above, but from the overall sum of them.
To maximise these overall benefits, Yoga practice needs to incorporate both invigorating and calming elements to support our opposing sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.; Both are essential in giving us energy and relaxation.
For example, if the style of Yoga we practise is overly vigorous or physical, we will get fit and strong, but we miss out on calming the nervous system.
Conversely, if we only practice restorative Yoga, we might be overly blissed out unless we balance it with physical exercise as well.
It is, therefore, important to engage both the Ying and the Yang to consistently get all the benefits.
Creating such a balance is key to fostering the life force.; This often known as; prana or chi in Chinese and forms the essence of our wellbeing.
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How Yoga Can Actually Make You Happier
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I love to tell people all about my skepticism regarding yoga before I finally tried it; as someone who is constantly on the go, the idea of sitting on a mat and being still sounded like torture to me. If there;were “yoga people”– you know, people who are naturally calm and slow and patient–then;I was most definitely not a yoga person.
Except, now I am a yoga person, and it’s because I don’t come to those stereotypical attributes naturally that I’ve come;to love it so much. Yoga forces me to stop and do the things I know will help make me happier, but that I sometimes find hard to do when I’m away from my mat. For me, looking;at the science behind yoga made it feel a lot more real;and a lot less “woo-woo,” too. The;benefits of practicing yoga have been known by yogis for thousands of years, but modern research proves that it;truly can make you happier:
Different kinds of yoga have different benefitsMy vision of yoga before I tried it was a lot of statue-like beautiful people in a bare studio going “Om” in unison. It turns out that there are lots of different types of yoga, from very spiritually-focused and/or relaxing all the way up to very athletic and physically demanding. If you think yoga isn’t for you because you like ;a particular style of workout, do your research–chances are excellent there’s a style and venue that you’ll enjoy. Yoga has become so popular that it’s everywhere, and there’s no one single way to do it.
Increased Strength And Flexibility
After practising Yoga, we walk taller and stronger.; Our back feels straighter and we find ourselves looking at the world head-on.; Suddenly, bending down and picking up things or tying shoelaces is much easier.; We sit in our chair straight rather than slumped down.
There is ample scientific proof that Yoga makes you stronger and more flexible.; This also translates to the mind and the emotional realm, making us feel well, stronger human beings.
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Is Hot Yoga Good For You And Your Health
Hot yoga is all the rage nowadays and is becoming very popular among the health-conscious, although for a lot of people and maybe you, hot yoga has been around for a while.;
Hot yoga is a whole-body experience that comes with a number of health and mind benefits, making it a complete experience. The hot aspect of yoga is with the use of infrared panels that are around the room to create the heat within the room, this adds that extra heat element over regular yoga, and with that comes a range of other benefits.
Yoga Boosts Your Metabolism
A morning yoga practice will help to get the blood, breath and muscles moving before breakfast, therefore allowing the nutrients from your food to be better absorbed. A strong practice can help build muscle, dramatically boost metabolism, and breathing fully and deeply increases circulation, also helping the metabolism to stay ticking along nicely.
- A little bit of pranayama, a little upper body strength, of course, some opening work as well. Start the day with a clean slate with this class ;Your morning cuppa.
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Builds Awareness For Transformation
Yoga and meditation build awareness. And the more aware you are, the easier it is to break free of destructive emotions like anger. Studies suggest that chronic anger and hostility are as strongly linked to heart attacks as are smoking, diabetes, and elevated cholesterol. Yoga appears to reduce anger by increasing feelings of compassion and interconnection and by calming the nervous system and the mind. It also increases your ability to step back from the drama of your own life, to remain steady in the face of bad news or unsettling events. You can still react quickly when you need toand theres evidence that yoga speeds reaction timebut you can take that split second to choose a more thoughtful approach, reducing suffering for yourself and others.
What To Expect From A Yoga Class
Let me walk you through a typical yoga class for me.;
We begin by sitting cross legged; breathing, realigning, and setting an intention.;
This simple act reinforces the value of setting a goal. Begin with the end in mind, as Stephen Covey says in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.; A dream without a map is just a dream, but with a map it can become reality.;
Breathing exercises begin the class. I breathe through my throat, opening up my fifth chakra. This chakra is one most often blocked in women, the one that aligns with the thyroid. The most common reason this chakra becomes blocked is because we often do not speak our mind.;
As I inhale, I fill in my belly as big as Buddhas.;
I raise my arms over my head, and like the diagnostic needle of a Geiger counter, I swing back and forth, realigning my spine, tuning my body in to its natural rhythms. I give in to its natural ebb and flow, like the ocean.;
The class is usually 1.5 hours, but I do the express, only one hour. Im busy, and I practice self care in many ways, so I devote a dedicated amount of time to everything daily. Queen of the Thrones®Castor Oil Pack, a sleep routine with my Beauty Sleep Eye Kit, grateful practices and mindset training, everything is penciled in on my daily schedule. This maintains my foundation, my life and my happiness. I grow and glow because of it!;
Yoga taught me acceptance of where I am at right now.;
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Understanding Force Of Muscle Contraction And Increasing Strength
A motor unit consists of several hundred muscle fibres and one nerve that stimulates them to contract. Muscle fibres operate under the all or nothing law, meaning that all the fibres in the motor unit will contract or none of them will.
Muscle strength is defined by the quality of interaction of our neurological and muscular system, the usage of our motor units;and the physical condition of our muscle fibres. The force of our muscle contraction is dictated by the number of motor units that fire;up in our muscle. If a little amount of force is required, only a small number of motor units are activated, if the need potential is increased if you need more strength ;more units are fired up. Our muscles get stronger when the amount of motor units used and their frequency of activation increases.
How many units we fire up also depends on our age, genetics and the health and the current strength of the muscle. If our muscles are unconditioned we may not be using the optimal amount of motor units.
So by increasing the workload of your muscles, you will increase their stamina and their response time will become quicker. Your motor units will be fired more frequently and with the increase in demand more motor units;will be activated. This, in turn, reduces the risk and frequency of DOMS.
