Yoga

Suffering from anxiety or depression, and the aches, pains, and stiffness that come with daily life?

Legs have trouble falling asleep at night?

Have migraines often?

Try Yoga

Yoga is a tool and practice designed to counteract and release the physical and emotional tensions that accumulate in the body through daily living.

Yoga is for all people, of every age, shape, gender, faith and color. It’s purpose is to cultivate comfort and strength in the body and can be scaled to every level of experience and capability using props; like tables, chairs, blocks, straps and pillows.

As we go through life, face trauma, and perform repetitive, constrictive actions, we develop stiffness, tension and pain in our muscles and joints that can manifest as other maladies (for example, neck tension contributes to headaches and migraines).

Yoga is an ancient tool and practice designed to counteract the trauma that we inflict upon our bodies by daily living. Its purpose is to facilitate and cultivate deep rest, wellness, healing, rejuvenation, strength and flexibility by strategically moving parts of the body into positions of stable, gentle rest that both relieve tension and strengthen.

  Yogic asanas (“comfortable or effortless positions”) strategically position parts of the body, utilizing both gravity and the architecture of the body itself, to achieve increasing degrees of strength, flexibility, expansion, and fluidity within the bones, joints and muscles. Stretching and strengthening in these ways also stimulates the production of endorphins (feel-good chemicals) that contribute to sensations of well-being and emotional release that are experienced both during and after practice.

   The deep breathing and slow intentionality required to comfortably take and hold asanas engages the activation of the parasympathetic nervous system. This acts as a kind of para-chute that slows things down in the body and shifts the nervous system into a state of “rest, relaxation, and digestion”, as opposed to the “fight, flight, or freeze” activation of the sympathetic nervous system that we often find ourselves in in the fast paced modern age.

The unusual and positive stresses placed on the bones during asanas (poses) also catalyzes the deposition of extra layers of calcium into the living bone matrix, fortifying it. This is extremely beneficial in regard to the lessening of bone density that can occur as we age (Osteoporosis), but must also be done slowly, gently and with caring attention to the body and its signals.

   In addition to strengthening the muscular and skeletal systems, the twisting action of some asanas also produces a “wringing” effect in the abdominal organs that aids in the flushing and  elimination of toxins in the liver and other organs by directing  lymphatic fluid and blood toward the larger vessels of the cardiovascular system.

Yoga makes us feel better by activating muscles and systems that we don’t usually use, giving us time to rest, and by releasing the tensions and the traumas that we store in the body, mind and spirit.