Welcome to readers who have just "clicked through" from YogaFinder. The essays you are about to read are part of my online yoga book, The Mechanics of Yoga: How to Minimize Your Risk of Yoga Related Injuries - A Free Yoga Book for All Yoga Teachers and Students.
I recommend you read the website's Introduction (click here) just before or right after reading the following essays.
I know how difficult it is to read a book on a computer; but as you begin reading, I hope you will come to appreciate how useful this unusual yoga book can be for your own personal yoga practice; and if you are a yoga teacher, for your students. If you need to adjust the size of your text, click here. Otherwise, let's begin:
How To Pick A Yoga Teacher
Yoga is one of the fastest growing segments of the “fitness and wellness” industry. There are dozens of different yoga approaches and styles targeted toward a broad diversity of the population; from athletes in their 20s and 30s interested more in fitness than spirituality, to easy yoga based on meditation that's appropriate for people of all ages regardless of physical condition. There are also restorative yoga classes for the chronically ill, injured, and aging. Yoga is hardly a “one size fits all” program.
Today, most yoga styles are taught by young athletic teachers conducting wildly popular physically demanding classes. It might be more difficult to find classes designed for older people, and even more difficult to find classes for the chronically injured or ill, but they are available.
If you are under 35 and healthy, you can walk into just about any kind of yoga class and try it. If you don't like what's being taught, don't for a second think that “you've tried yoga and it's not for you.” You owe it to yourself to take at least several different classes with different teachers and at different schools. You are certain to find something that's appealing.
If you are older, out of shape, injured or ill, finding an appropriate yoga class might be a bit more challenging. Although most yoga teachers have completed some sort of yoga teacher training program, most will continue teaching primarily in that style, having a relatively narrow scope of what they teach. If you don't fit the profile of their “basic” student, you may feel left out.
Younger teachers generally aren't well equipped to teach middle aged or older students; especially those who are significantly out-of-shape, chronically ill, or injured. A younger teacher might take it slow, but they generally don't have the educational knowledge, experience, empathy, or understanding of what it's like to be living in an older, or chronically injured or ill body.
On the other hand, you might think older (and presumably wiser) yoga teachers truly understand what it means to teach “mature” students, or the chronically injured or ill. But that is rarely the case. Just because a teacher is older or has been teaching yoga for decades, doesn't mean they know how; especially if such teachers have never been injured or chronically ill themselves.
In fact, aging yoga teachers who have been practicing for decades and have not experienced significant illness or injury themselves, have difficulty relating to people their age and especially to chronically ill or injured people. In other words, to know how to teach yoga to chronically ill or injured students, it generally “takes one to know one.”
So, how do you choose a yoga teacher? You might call several teachers and ask who their classes are designed for. Even if it sounds good, you still might have to take a number of classes with different teachers until you find someone you feel comfortable with; someone who has studied extensively, who understands your body and teaches with intelligence, sensitivity, and especially, with “flexibility.”
According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), a whopping 9.5 percent of the United States population, or about 18.8 million American adults will suffer from depression this year alone. Although major depression can be disabling and interfere with your ability to work, sleep, eat, and enjoy life, there are less severe forms of depression that although not disabling, can interfere with your ability to function or feel good.
The causes of depression include a combination of genetic, psychological, and environmental factors. Recent research confirms that depression can be also triggered by physical changes caused by chronic illness, injury, or even normal hormonal disorders.
Regardless of their causes, the NIMH says that major depression is often associated with changes in brain chemistry and function. This is where yoga comes in. I know that yoga can help with depression, especially the kind that is generated by chronic illness and injury.
I know yoga helps ease depression; not because the academic literature says so; and not from my own successes in teaching yoga to depressed people. I know yoga helps because of my own personal experience as a patient with clinical depression.
In 1993, I developed MS and by 1995, suffered near paralysis in both arms. Clinical depression followed because my life as a yoga teacher and practitioner, as I had known it, was over. I completely quit yoga and soon gained over 20 pounds.
But that was then. Today, my shoulders have mostly recovered and although I still endure chronic MS pain and fatigue, I am no longer depressed. At least I now have enough energy that allows me to do some meaningful work.
What facilitated my recovery? Although medication and psychotherapy helped, what helped most was renewing the very yoga program I developed soon after I became ill; and then quit as my depression deepened.
Recovery Yoga is a very simple yoga exercise program. No forcing, No trying, No pushing into pain. No heavy forced breathing. Just a well-thought-out simple and easy-to-do yoga program practiced 15-to-45 minutes daily.
Yoga helps enormously to deal with both the physical and emotional aspects of chronic illness and injury. When appropriately practiced, yoga increases healing blood flow to all areas of your body and brain. Increased blood to the body facilitates healing. Increased blood supply to the brain promotes neurotransmitters like norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin, which are the "feel-good" chemicals of the brain.
I was both depressed and overweight when I renewed my Recovery Yoga practice just over four years ago. It took nearly a year of daily practice, but as they say, "the rest is history."
Today, yes, I still have MS and most that goes with it, but the depression has passed. My yoga practice has also helped me to lose all that extra weight. That alone has increased my energy.
Although I'm still quite limited in my ability to work, I have enough energy to teach part-time, and to help other people, such as writing these articles and adding material to my website. I didn't choose MS and its debilitating physical and emotional illness, but at least, I can choose to practice yoga in a way that maximizes my potential and minimizes my liability. For me, the payback of doing yoga well exceeds the energy I expend in its practice
According to a recent New York Times article, back problems are the eighth leading reason people visit doctors in the United States. Recent Duke University studies say treating back pain costs Americans a whopping $26 billion a year and is steadily rising. That accounts for over 2.5 percent of the total American health care cost.
I've seen studies showing that 90 percent of all adults will suffer debilitating back sometime during their adult lives. I'm not talking about an annoying twinge here and there, but a debilitating attack that leaves you bedridden for days and hobbling for weeks afterward.
Back pain can be caused by anything from superficial muscle cramping, to actual muscle tearing; from simple misalignments of your spine to such disk abnormalities as bulging, protruding, herniated, and degenerated disks. Another common cause of back pain is stenosis, which are bony growths along your vertebrae causing a narrowing the spinal canal, and is often associated with arthritis or simply growing older.
Being involved in the "natural healing" profession for nearly thirty years, you might think I have a total aversion to back surgery as a cure for chronic back pain. In fact, an often cited study published by Arthur Klein and Dava Sobel, as referenced in my book, ExTension Yoga , showed that of all the health-related modalities used to reduce back pain, including physicians, physical therapy, acupuncture, chiropractor, osteopathy, neurosurgery, and massage; yoga teachers rated number one in the ability to provide "moderate-to-dramatic long-term relief" from chronic back pain.
Yes, I strongly believe yoga is the most effective modality to help keep your back healthy. However, I also believe that there comes a time when surgery becomes necessary in order to reduce pain and to improve your quality of life.
However, I do not recommend back surgery as your first recourse to wellness. It should be your last ... after you have given an appropriate yoga practice your very best shot. If your back does not show signs of recovery within a reasonable time, or if your appropriate yoga practice causes or exacerbates pain, then I'd strongly recommend you seek the advice of a qualified back specialist.
Although surgical techniques have improved significantly in the last several years providing a higher statistical probability of long-relief than ever before, post-surgical yoga can be the very best therapy you can do.but only when appropriately practiced. Otherwise, yoga can be among the very worst things you can do. It all depends on how it is practiced.
For example, most classical approaches to yoga, including most yoga taught in health clubs and gyms, are designed for healthy people. Because they compress your spine and stress soft tissue, they can exacerbate your pain, retard healing, and even make your back worse.
On the other hand, when appropriately taught by teachers with a firm foundation in anatomy, physiology, and kinesiology, and who understand the nature of soft-tissue injury and its resolution, "recovery" yoga can be one of the very best post-surgical therapeutic programs available today.
Yoga's momentum is building. It's no longer about hippies getting high on yoga. Today, people everywhere are doing yoga: from young to old, athlete to couch potato, student to educator, and white-collar to blue-collar worker. They all are conditioning their bodies and quieting their minds -- and are reaping enormous benefits from what was originally, the ancient practice of yoga.
Nationwide, it's estimated that over 20 million people practice modern versions of yoga. Locally, evening adult education classes are offering several new yoga classes and yoga is popular at the gym.
Today's yoga goes far beyond what was originally taught by the orange-robed swamis from India. Yoga is in metamorphosis. From back yard to boardroom: corporations now offer yoga. Its popularity is benefiting from scientific scrutiny: the NIH recently funded research on yoga and back pain.
Today, there are many different styles of yoga to meet anyone's needs: from gentle and restorative where pain is to be avoided, to literally the hottest thing going.
One approach to yoga literally turns up the heat. In rooms approaching 100 degrees, you are told it increases flexibility and promotes an enhanced cardiovascular workout.
Appropriate for younger people demanding extreme fitness, this and other forms of extreme yoga are appealing because they embrace "no pain no gain," and are extraordinarily demanding.
Conversely, extreme yoga is difficult and even dangerous if you're out-of-shape; or if you've been injured or chronically ill, or when you're older. Even if your body can adapt, these approaches may lack the calming, relaxing benefits that less vigorous yoga provides.
Within the different styles, there are instructors who teach pragmatically while others teach quasi-spiritual, quasi-athletic yoga with incense burning and quiet Eastern music playing in the background.
In most yoga classes today, the instructor demonstrates the exercises while students try to follow the best they can. These approaches are perfectly ok for anyone in reasonably good health, but students who are already in distress or those who have difficulty following will usually drop out.or worse yet; they may become injured.
If you are profoundly out-of-shape, injured, or chronically ill, just about any exercise system can be risky or even unattainable. Along with a select few of my colleagues nationwide, I teach both ExTension and Recovery Yoga, a system designed for everyone, but is especially beneficial for people who are recovering from acute injury or illness. Oddly enough, we use the very same techniques with outstanding results when training Top-rated athletes.
Our intention is to first enhance the parasympathetic nervous system. This allows your body to profoundly relax, so that when you first begin the exercises, you are able to intelligently and safely build, step-by-step, appropriate foundations without injuring yourself.
This allows you to ultimately build substantial strength, flexibility, and endurance without forcing or trying. In fact, this approach is so totally counter-intuitive to everything you've learned before, it's initially difficult to grasp, especially in light of its rapid results. In part, that's what makes this particular approach to yoga so fascinating.
When people think "yoga," different concepts emerge. Some believe it is an Eastern religion while others believe it is only an exercise system. Some think yoga is passive meditation; others think it only consists of basic stretching exercises, while others believe it also promotes strength and endurance. Confused? Read on!
Yoga can improve physical conditioning, but it is not exactly exercise.
Yoga develops concentration and quiets the mind, but it is not exactly meditation.
Originally a part of the Hindu religion, contemporary yoga has absolutely nothing to do with religion.
So if yoga is NOT exercise, or meditation, or religion, then what is it? Well, that depends primarily on who's teaching it. But first, a bit of history:
Derived from an ancient language, "yoga" simply means: "union or balance of body, mind, and spirit."
Yoga developed thousands of years ago in India by Hindu priests living a strict and disciplined lifestyle. Through the millennia, the "yogis" as they were known, were vegetarians, wore minimal clothing, and lived literally close to the earth learning directly from nature. They were more flexible than Gumby.
These ancients observed that in nature, the bodies of animals were nearly perfectly balanced exhibiting profound flexibility, strength and endurance. They were in balance with their environment.
The ancient yogis observed that animals ate when hungry, rested when tired, stayed quiet when injured, and showed little fear or anxiety. But when they did, it was brief because animals did not appear to worry about their past or future. The ancient yogis developed yoga to imitate the effects of nature.
Through millennia, yogis developed and codified a system including both exercises and breath management, using it to enhance their health and spirituality.
In our western youth-oriented society, the more popular forms of yoga range from the restorative and quiet, all the way to extreme forms of physically challenging aerobic yoga. Yet most are based upon an ancient system that tries to enhance a person's flexibility. Unfortunately, people drop out because they are not flexible enough to "perform," or they because they get hurt.
Personally, I rejected the older "classical" system many years ago because I believe appropriate yoga should create a balance between strength and endurance, as well as flexibility.
When adapted to honor the variable nature of today's women and men of all ages and levels of capacity, I believe yoga can be a significant vehicle for both maintaining and improving health. It is also profoundly spiritual because when appropriately practiced, and when used in combination with gentle yoga breath management, the actual "balance and union" of nature can be experienced.
Through the years, I adapted yoga so that "normal" people could safely practice in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with flexibility, and especially with anyone's religion.
In order to maximize yoga's potential and minimize its liability, the yoga I teach is based upon known physiological principles and laws, which are presented in my free yoga educational website, www.extensionyoga.com
So, what is yoga? It is a system that when appropriately practiced, promotes wellness of body, mind, and spirit. It promotes a physical and emotional balance between strength and flexibility, which builds functional endurance. In so doing, yoga quiets the mind and promotes a profound feeling of well-being.
It's at that point when yoga truly becomes: "Meditation in Action."
I smile when people say: "I tried yoga, but didn't like it." This is like saying "I dated once, but he/she wasn't my type, so I stopped dating. I'm less amused when people say, "I stopped because I wasn't flexible enough." But worse yet is: "Yoga hurt me, so I quit."
Historically, very flexible people created classical yoga in India many thousands of years ago. Although the early yoga exponents could do amazing things with their bodies, most classical yoga is simply inappropriate for our Western bodies and lifestyles.
About a hundred years ago, yoga came to the West. Many different styles developed.some stayed traditional, and some adapted to tenets of modern exercise physiology.
Here are some of today's yoga approaches with numerous styles in between:
Yoga Styles: Some yoga is totally physical while others are totally spiritual: Some approaches are so aerobically challenging that only the fittest survive while others are so slow and meditative that many quit due to boredom.
Teaching styles: Some are "follow-the-leader," wherein teachers demonstrate by practicing with the class while students follow the best they can. Other teachers demonstrate first, and then guide students into the exercises. Others yet don't even demonstrate; they just "talk" the students through it.
Instructor expertise: Some teach only what they were taught irrespective if they can do the exercises themselves. Others teach basically only what they can do. In these classes, students who thrive are able to adapt themselves to what the instructor does. Those who can't adapt quit.
Training: Most yoga instructors have taken some sort of yoga-teacher training. Some training programs last a weekend while others last months. Regardless, most instructors take periodic training seminars.
A major problem is that yoga is usually taught by good-meaning people who have studied basically one style of yoga and that's what they teach. Their students who can adapt to that style thrive; those who can't, quit.
For instance, what if a yoga style is designed for athletically supple people and the new student is middle aged, or out-of shape, stiff-as-a-board, previously injured, or recovering from chronic illness? Most approaches are inappropriate for these people; they are either too demanding or too easy.
Because yoga varies wildly, new students should always choose their instructors carefully. If you don't feel comfortable taking yoga with your first teacher, try another school and other teachers. After awhile, you'll develop a better understanding of what style and what teacher is best for you.
"Did you see that yoga article in Monday's paper? You know, that article with those pictures showing a woman doing impossible things to her body," Cathy at the Post Office excitedly asked. "I thought you said anyone can do yoga!"
I really like our local post office. Our regular clerks are always friendly, helpful, and extremely good-natured and through the years, I've talked to them a little about what yoga is and is not.
Which brings us back to that yoga article. It shows pictures of a young woman doing yoga exercises that demands folding her legs into what most adults over age 30 would consider as excruciatingly painful, if not outright impossible.
Even though that particular newspaper article went on to describe five different approaches to yoga, from easy/gentle to athletic/aerobic, most people over 30, regardless of their physical ability, will take one look at those pictures and say, "Forget it! I can't do yoga." and the person will turn the Directory.
A picture is worth a thousand words. That's the problem with how the media almost always presents yoga. It shows nimble young women and men doing unattainable "poses." And even when the media shows pictures of an older person doing those unattainable yoga poses, the average person fails to recognize that the older person has been doing yoga for years, and their bodies are far from average.
I've written extensively about the benefits of yoga and how yoga, when appropriately practiced, is arguably one of the very best exercise modalities available today for men and women of all ages. Yoga, and I emphasize, when appropriately practiced, is extraordinarily beneficial for everyone, not just flexible young women.
Let's look at the facts: Younger adults have an enormous capacity to stress their bodies during exercise and not only do they survive; they thrive. In fact, that's exactly what nature intended. Young adults are evolutionarily designed to push to the maximum so that the fittest survive.
Although younger adults can look at such photographs and not be as "turned off," but not so older adults . or those who are chronically ill or injured. Quite frankly, the mail clerk's response is a typical response to the media's portrayal of yoga and justifiably so.
Just as the article describes, there are numerous yoga styles taught today. The problem is that most yoga teachers, whether young or old, are those who have successfully "adapted" themselves to style they teach. Accordingly, their role as teacher is to encourage their students to "do what they do." Those who can, enjoy yoga. But those who can't will drop out saying "I can't do yoga." What they don't know is that they can't do that particular style of yoga.
Let me again say: I've been studying exercise physiology for nearly 30 years and if I could find another exercise modality that's better than yoga, I'd be doing it. It's just that people have to find the style that's appropriate for them.
During a five-day Recovery Yoga workshop, there was a person attending I will never forget. He was 20 when an automobile accident took away his youth by crushing his pelvis and mangling his abdominal organs.
Six years later, he lives with one kidney, persistent urinary dysfunction, and chronic pain so horrific that it makes normal life impossible. For example, when he sits longer than 20 minutes, his pain increases to such an unimaginable level, that it makes him totally sTop what he's been doing.
He's seen a number of Top medical specialists and although they've helped enormously, he's still in chronic pain 24-7; but you wouldn't know it to look at him. He's tall, exceptionally good-looking, brilliantly intelligent, and amazingly upbeat considering his chronic pain.
He's committed to finding something -- anything that can help him live a normal life. You've never seen anyone try so hard to get well. He stays abreast of the newest medical literature and travels constantly to confer with medical specialists who might facilitate his recovery.
That being said, Brian (not his actual name) is a yoga devotee. He takes different yoga classes and workshops whenever he can, because once a few years ago, he took a yoga class and was encouraged to "go deeper" than he ever had before. Amazingly, Brian experienced a couple of pain-free hours.
Although Brian has never been able to replicate that one class or the relief he experienced, he's never sTopped trying. I doubt if you or I could ever understand how seductive that one class must have been ... to experience a few hours of relief in a life dominated by pain.
So he continues searching for yoga teachers and classes that might help him recapture that lost moment of peace. To be fair, Brian has also tried doing no yoga at all, but that certainly didn't work: as his body tightened up, and his pain only intensified.
He finally found it at the workshop I taught. As paradoxical as it may seem, he learned that while he was actually stretching and strengthening his body, at the very same time, he was relaxing his body and allowing his pain to lessen.
See, the thing about pain is that that it contracts soft tissue and makes you physically (and mentally) tighter. That's what pain is supposed to do. Pain is nature's way of forcing you to slow down so you can heal.
Exercise, especially when we try hard, does the very same thing. When you're chronically injured, "trying" or "forcing" to stretch through your tightness will almost certainly exacerbate your pain. That's because forcing, like pain, ultimately causes soft-tissue to contract even more. The harder you try to exercise, the more you hurt.
So how did Brian obtain relief in that yoga class a couple of years ago? Not because he pushed his yoga so hard that it finally worked, but because he ended up anesthetizing his nerve endings. Pushing his yoga during that class had the same effect on his body as getting a deep pressure-point massage that makes pain go away ... but just like a deep massage, the pain always returns.
However, there is a way of practicing yoga that actually reduces pain - along with physical and mental stress - while it actually stretches and strengthens the body; but it's not done by trying or pushing hard.
Everything we learn in sports and exercise is about trying and pushing hard. That's why this particular approach to yoga is so counter-intuitive: It's difficult to conceive how yoga can actually promote wellness without trying or forcing, much less actually increasing strength, endurance, and flexibility.
I encourage you to read the material in the "Mechanics of Yoga" chapters that describes how this approach to yoga works. Then I invite you to apply the logic and techniques to your own yoga practice so you can, like Brian, experience how you can "get more by appropriately doing less." The proof is in the doing.
I recently began teaching a new student from New York who is spending her winters in Florida. At age 61, she's been taking yoga classes with various younger teachers in and around New York City. Although she is in extremely good shape and a willing student, much to her dismay, she hasn't yet found a yoga teacher with whom she feels comfortable. Although she can basically do what's asked of her; she's always felt as if she was being pushed too hard. Probably because she is in such good shape, all her younger teachers have been encouraging her "try harder" and to stretch deeper.
Don't get me wrong. Younger yoga teachers are wonderful. They have the energy and exuberance of youth, and they teach yoga because they want to do something positive to help other people. That being said, many younger yoga teachers "teach from their own perspective," rather than from the perspective of their students'. Although teachers might “adapt” yoga exercises for their older and chronically ill and injured students, they still often encourage them to go too far. Taken to the opposite extreme, many teachers out of caution, will not encourage them to go far enough.
Without a full conceptual understanding of the nature of soft tissue; without fully understanding how and why it changes as people age, or when they are chronically ill or injured; it is understandable why yoga teachers lose so many students who are older than they are, or why they lose so many students who have been or who currently are chronically ill or injured. These are the yoga students who will take only a single yoga class or two, feel as if they simply can not do what is asked, and then drift away. The same goes for students who are not being challenged enough.
On the other hand, there is an increasing awareness by a growing number of younger yoga teachers of the needs of their older students, as well as appreciating the needs of chronically ill and injured people. These are the teachers who study anatomy, kinesiology, and physiology and take a variety of seminars to increase their knowledge.
Although studying and taking seminars is a good thing, younger healthy yoga teachers still lack the one undeniable component that allows for a deeper understanding, and empathy for what their aging or their chronically ill or injured students are going through. Younger healthy yoga teachers lack direct experience of what it feels like to be living in an aging body; or how it feels to be chronically ill or injured.
To experientially know what their older students, or their chronically ill or injured students are feeling gives the average yoga teacher who are themselves older or who have been themselves chronically ill or injured, an unparalleled advantage over their younger and healthier colleagues; because their students know they are are being understood and listened to. The students of such teachers feel an empathy that they can never experience with their younger or healthier teachers. They know in their hearts that this is a teacher who understands what they are feeling; not just physically, but emotionally as well.
And herein is the Catch-22 of younger yoga teachers: Because they are young; because they are dedicated and energetic; because they have such a strong desire to help; and because of their own direct experience that comes from their own vigorous yoga practice, they will often push their older or their chronically ill or injured students too far. On the other hand, there are legions younger teachers who, out of caution or from the lack education, experience, or confidence, will limit the progress of their students by discouraging them from going far enough. In both cases, older or chronically ill or injured students lose. To be fair however, students who are advised against going far enough can, in many ways, still reap benefits through yoga; although they will still come short of being able to “maximize their potential.”
The Catch-22 deepens: If older or chronically ill or injured students totally avoid younger teachers in favor of older teachers, they are often confronted by older teachers that, whether by genetics or good luck, have never been chronically ill or severely injured themselves, either in or out of the yoga room.
These are the older yoga teachers who have done yoga for years; and for the most part, have escaped the common pitfalls of normal aging, such as: weight gain, daily aches and pains, diminished energy, a stiffer less mobile body, droopy and sagging skin, and so on. Just as with their younger colleagues, they also tend to teach from their own experience; and in so doing, will leave their older and chronically ill and injured students behind. Interestingly, these are the older teachers who tend to attract younger, more physically active students who are mesmerized by their abilities.
In order to become more adept at yoga, younger yoga teachers rightly must develop their personal yoga skills through discipline and by asserting their bodies. In order to learn, younger yoga teachers have to “get more by doing more,” which becomes the experience by which they teach. The Catch 22 is that their personal learning experience does not serve their older or chronically ill and injured students who will benefit more by doing less; not by doing more.
The best way for younger yoga teachers to help all of their students is by studying anatomy, physiology, and kinesiology; by learning the nature of soft-tissue and how and why it changes as people age, or become chronically ill or injured; and by taking seminars designed to increase their knowledge of how to work with chronically ill, injured, or aging students.
Education, is only half the picture. The other half is for the younger yoga teacher to develop an experiential feeling through their own practice, of practicing yoga the way they think their older and chronically ill and injured students should practice: by experimenting within their own practice ... learning how to "get more by doing less." Although it is easier said than done, learning how to practice as their students practice can help a younger yoga instructor to become a much better teacher.
By personally practicing both Recovery and ExTension Yoga, the younger teacher can experience how it is totally possible to actually increase their own flexibility, strength, and endurance, as well as reducing their chances of injury; not by trying or pushing harder, but by appropriately doing less. Then, from an understanding based upon their own direct experience, younger teachers can better serve their older or chronically ill or injured students.
Finally, I wish to emphasize that even though it might seem that I approach yoga as primarily an exercise system intended to increase strength, flexibility, and endurance; it is in reality, a system designed to help everyone, young and old, healthy and not, physically capable or not, to move toward “balance and union.” It is a system designed to move us all closer toward what “nature” had intended.
Then, as we slowly and appropriately train our bodies to move toward what nature intended, a symbiotic balance of strength, flexibility, and endurance (at whatever level is attainable without forcing or straining) will follow. By moving in that direction, our feelings of spirituality can only deepen. It seems to me, that the process of “moving toward balance and union” is, in fact, the very essence of yoga.
Everyone knows exercise is an important activity that promotes good health. Right? Not necessarily. When inappropriately practiced, any exercise including yoga can do more harm than good.and the risk and consequence of inappropriate exercise is actually magnified for chronically ill, injured, and aging people.
Although yoga can be a powerful tool for general conditioning, it can also help us to deal with illness and injury; and when appropriately practiced, yoga can also help us to age gracefully. Otherwise, I submit that the harder we try to do our yoga, the more we expose ourselves to liability and the less it provides us with the results we desire.
It works like this: Your body is currently suffering from a current or previous injury.or you've been ill for some time.or your body is simply aging and is no longer as strong and flexible as it once was. In any event, chronic illness, injury, and aging cause your nervous system to become chronically stimulated; and as such, many areas of your body's soft-tissue contract (even more so in those areas that were or are currently injured).
You've heard that yoga can help you to recover, so you sign up for a class. There are many approaches to yoga; so you might have signed up for a class that is primarily meditative where you are asked to sit, deep breathe, and perhaps chant. Or you might have signed up for a tough aerobically oriented class that turns up the heat. Or there are numerous approaches in between.
Some of these approaches stress alignment and discipline, while others are much more relaxed. Your yoga teacher might instruct you to avoid pain like the plague; or your instructor might push you by saying: "No pain is no gain." In any event, it seems like the harder you try to do your yoga; the more you hurt.
Instead, I submit that we should not try to do yoga.but instead learn how to do yoga. Semantics aside, trying is competitive and aggressive. As such, trying can further irritate an already irritated nervous system which only serves to further promote stress and injury.
If we can instead learn how to do yoga without stressing an already stressed out body, we can actually enhance our flexibility, strength, and endurance in such a way that relaxes the nervous system; even while exercising. This allows us to further move our bodies toward strength, endurance, and flexibility without forcing and trying; and our bodies will respond in ways we never dreamt possible.
Although aspects of all yoga approaches can be quite beneficial, it's paradoxical that the harder we try to do our preferred style, the more we increase our potential for injury and the less benefit we achieve. On the other hand, when appropriately done, yoga helps us to increase our strength, flexibility and endurance, while at the same time, it helps to quiet the mind. It's at this point that our yoga practice can be truly called: "Meditation in Action."
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