Yoga is exploding with popularity. Why?

There are many reasons why yoga is so powerful and appropriate for our complex and confused lives. In our highly stressed and overworked society, it helps us to find balance and a much needed sense of peace and rest not afforded by many other popular forms of exercise.

I want you to know that you can achieve far more from your investment of time doing yoga.

Since my illness, I have studied yoga intensively and attended teacher training courses in Bali and India and numerous workshops. When we work together, you will discover that yoga is a deep, profoundly wise collection of insights that help us to find safety, freedom, energy, peace, compassion and love – all fundamental human needs.

There is yoga for everyone. If yoga has caused you injury or made you feel worse, please don’t write it off! Yoga requires you to make your own rules that suit your body and your mind. When done correctly, you should get measurably taller and feel a sense of serenity and belonging that many describe as “coming home.”

Here are some of the ways in which yoga can make a difference for you:

Nervous System

Our autonomic (automatic) nervous system is made up of the sympathetic (fight or flight) and parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest). When yoga is done in a way that is appropriate for your needs, it will stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system so your body can switch on its healing and repair mechanisms working to switch on the immune and digestive systems, reduce pain and inflammation and fight infection and cancer cells.

Breathing

Not only do breathing practices improve oxygen delivery to tissues and help metabolism, they allow relaxation or stimulation depending on what you need. As a quick exercise, try taking 10 deep breaths now, making your exhale double the length of your inhale. What have you sensed – do you feel more calm? This method of breathing lowers your heart rate, blood pressure and relaxes you. If you need energy, lengthen the inhale instead and feel your energy returning.

The breathing practices in yoga require concentration and use the part of the brain called the neocortex. Since there are more opioid receptors in the neocortex, conscious breathing helps to produce natural “feel good” hormones, something you don’t access on the treadmill watching the news…

Love and compassion

More than just the softer side of life, without love and compassion human beings cannot survive. It is how we are hard-wired. Plus, the more love and compassion we experience the happier we will be. Yoga focuses on these qualities as we first learn to have love and compassion for ourselves (something too many of us lack in today’s “you must change and improve or you are a loser” media-dominated world).

I have seen first hand on many occasions the way a dedicated and carefully adapted approach to yoga changes a person’s life for the better. This is the perfect blend of science and soul.