Refreshed, Energetic, Open Minded

Have you ever woken from a great night’s sleep and felt refreshed, energetic, open minded, ready to take on anything that life throws your way? That is how your body feels after practicing yoga.

As you begin class, you breathe through the poses slowly at first allowing the body to open and the breath to deepen, you begin to relax. As the body relaxes, the breath deepens and the body settles into the floor. Did you ever notice that the more stressed you are, the shorter your breaths are? As your body relaxes and the breath deepens, the mind and the body become calm, quiet and focused. The oxygen you breathe in actually energizes the body at the same time you are relaxing. The stretching of

all the muscle groups, one by one, releases tension in the body.

Something so simple like rolling the neck while coordinating the breath can actually release all of our tension in our upper back, neck, even relieve a headache. We sit all day at desks hunched over, the simple act of slowing down, rolling the head from side to side while breathing –deeply- can relieve weeks of built up stress –in only a few minutes. But we never do it. We never find the time. We need to find the time.

In class, as you move along the body, focusing on stretching each area, focusing only on that and your breath and how your body feels, there is a sense of immediacy in yoga’s rewards. Sometimes in class you will stretch all of one side of the body and then bring the feet together with straight legs, seated. You can actually SEE the difference in the length of the legs!

Standing for hours at a job, as many of us work on our feet, can tighten the lower back and shorten the hamstrings. Yoga lengthens the spine, the whole body, creates space between the vertebrae in the spine, lengthens the hamstrings as we stretch, and opens tight hip flexors and outer hips too. Sometimes if our low back is achy the cause can be the hips or the hamstrings. Yoga works on all of that.

Halfway through class, you begin to add more movement, slowly working your way up to standing. Some classes you will work on strengthening your core muscles as your focus. Strong core muscles, keep your back healthier, safer. Some classes you will focus on strengthening the legs. Some classes will combine all of those.

After you complete your standing work, you begin to slow things back down again. Working your way back down to the floor to deepen your breaths once again, and slow the heart rate. As you come into our Savasana, our relaxation time of class, lying still never felt so good. This is your time to focus on a specific positive thought, to let your mind go blank or to listen to the reading or guided meditation offered to you.

After the hour or so of class as you slowly begin to move again, it hits you: you have not thought about a single thing that is on your to-do list, what stresses you, or anything other than your breath, your alignment, and how your body feels. It is like a mental vacation. You feel refreshed, energetic, open minded, ready to take on anything that life throws your way.

If the benefits of yoga are that great and that immediate and that drastic, what are you waiting for?