How Yoga Trains Us to Deal with Stress

by Jeannie SalomonAll Posts, Health & WellnessPosted on Comments are Disabled

In her article, Kristin Diversi wrote: “When we think of yoga, we often think of a practice that is inherently relaxing: Lying on a mat and getting totally blissed out, feeling amazing from the first ‘Om’ to the final namaste.” “By and large, that is a very incomplete picture. The reason yoga works long-term is that the practice is designed to trigger our stress response. Think about it: what could be more stressful than holding a weird shape for an indeterminate amount of time, while your legs are burning and your arms feel like jelly? Even in restorative yoga you are being asked to hold a static shape—one that is probably not natural for your body—while you also release the thoughts you are holding.” “Yoga works because in the midst of these stressful situations, something else is happening: We are actively working to train our minds and bodies to relax, despite the stressful situation. We are reorienting our stress response from the innate (fast, heavy breathing, panicked thoughts, and tense muscles) to the learned (slow, deliberate breathing, calm thoughts, and engaged but not clenched muscles). By training our mental reactions, we are also modulating our physical reactions. ” Moreover, Kristin made reference to another article, “Yoga for Anxiety and Depression” by adding, “We are lowering our heart rates, blood pressure, and easing our breathing. We are letting our heart rates, blood pressure, and easing our breathing. We are letting the body become a secondary concern, rather than the primary driving force of our practice.” These articles gave me deep reflection on why I liked long distance running and why I had done it for so long even when it had brought me injuries from the repetitive movement. It’s because of the calm that it gave me. After realizing that yoga can give me the same result, I stopped running with gladness and not having to miss it because I found a substitute which give me the same calm if not more in yoga. Check out Cultural Society’s Health & Wellness courses and our Meditation courses to learn how to stay calm in the midst of life’s busyness.

woman sitting with yoga pose and meditation expression

Why Breath Matters in Your Yoga Practice

by Jeannie SalomonAll Posts, Health & WellnessPosted on Comments are Disabled

Yoga means union. You may often hear a yoga teacher says “inhale your arms up” as a cue to remind you to coordinate your arms’ movement with your breath. “When we begin a yoga practice, one of the first lessons we learn is to breathe in and out through the nose. This is quite contrary to the way we breathe when we work out at the gym, which is often in through the nose and out through the mouth.” In yoga, we breathe through the nose for many reasons: 1) The nose has a smaller opening which means that less air can breathe in and out there. Often time, our breath is the gauge of how strenuous of our movement during a yoga practice. If you have to use our mouth to breathe during a yoga practice, that means you have pushed yourself too far. That’s a signal to you that you should pause and let your heart rate comes down a bit before moving on. 2) Yoga means “union”. If you have to push yourself beyond your exertion point during a practice and continue to do that during your practice, you are not achieving the “union” within yourself. 3) Our nose is lined up with hair. The air we breathe in through the nose is purified through the hair. Therefore we are breathing in cleaning air when we breathe through our nose. There are many more reasons why breath matters in yoga. Please check out this article: “Why Breath Matters – How to Breathe Well in Yoga Class If you haven’t found a place to begin your yoga practice, please check out our Course offering at Cultural Society where we teach yoga by addressing a different aspect of health that is related to you. Here’s our course offering. Email us if you have any questions.