What is Yoga?
Yoga is a science, a philosophy and guide to living a healthy, conscious lifestyle. It originated in India over 5000 years ago so its really stood the test of time.
It is an ancient wisdom and technique aimed at uniting body, breath and mind, bringing balance and harmony through the use of asana (physical postures) pranayama (breath control) and meditation.
What are the benefits of Yoga?
The benefits of a yoga practice are numerous but here are just a few:
Through the practice of the postures we learn to build strength, increase flexibility, improve our posture and protect our spine. This helps keep the joints and cartilage happy while strengthening our bones.
Yoga boosts our immune system, aids the digestive system and drops blood pressure while increasing our heart rate.
Yoga encourages you to relax and let go. We use the breath to activate our parasympathetic nervous system, allowing us to slow down, to become present, and move through the practice from a more relaxed and calm space. Thus, we are not acting from a state of flight or fight (sympathetic nervous system) which creates and increases anxiety and stress, producing cortisol in the brain. A little calm space can really improve your health.
Yoga is the emotional release, the letting go of the past. The mind and body are intrinsically linked. We store a lot of our past traumas, fears, sadness within the physical body, our muscles store memories. Through the asana we are able to release energetic and emotional blockages, we are able to release our pasts.
Yoga has an overall effect of improving our concentration and focus while opening the mind to an awareness that can help us break through our self- limiting thoughts and behaviours. As we begin to make friends with our breath the mind finds stillness and becomes more present.
When one becomes more peaceful within then the journey through life becomes more harmonious, happy and fulfilling.