Life and Yoga

By Toni Greene, Owner

Happy Hour Yoga Center

. http://happyhouryoga-reiki.vpweb.com

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Life and Yoga

Yoga can help give you a better quality of life. Yoga enhances your awareness. It makes you aware of your thoughts and actions. Yoga can help you change your thoughts before they surface into depression or anxiety. When you begin to practice yoga you will become aware of your body and how it moves. You will begin to notice the tightness you are holding in your body due to stress, fear, worry or anxiety.
We sometimes have neck, head, and shoulder problems because we hold our stress in those parts of our body. Sometime we are not aware of our fingers being stretched, or our forehead becoming wrinkled because we hold stress in our face. Some people clench their teeth, or even grit their teeth causing oral health problems. Lower back pain, leg pain and muscle spasms could be as a result of how we hold stress in our bodies. Stress can cause a stroke, aneurisms or a heart attack. Yes, the effects of stress could kill you. Stress can cause us to become abusive. We may start screaming, shouting and cursing because we are stressed out.
Yoga breathing and asanas (yoga postures) can help you alleviate stress. After a mild to vigorous yoga work out, we relax into the corpse pose (the yoga posture, savanasa). While relaxing into the corpse pose, a yoga teacher will help you become aware of all parts of your body. They will ask you to slow down your breathing, and concentrate on each part of your body, starting with your feet, asking you to relax your toes, ankles, legs, knees, thighs and hips. The teacher will ask you to tilt your hips up and down, then relax them. They will ask you to relax the buttocks, abdomen, chest, shoulders, upper arms, neck, face and head, having you move your head from side to side finding a comfortable spot for the neck.
The teacher will instruct you to relax your ears, mouth (soften your tongue, open your mouth, stick your tongue out, close the mouth), eyes (stretch your eyes wide and roll them around and close them fully, then completely relax your eyes). You will relax the total body, let go, surrender totally. You will be told to not hold anything in, let everything in your body fall to the floor and to let your thoughts go. Breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth.
The teacher will most likely be playing soft, non-descript music that is soothing and relaxing. Music that will carry your thoughts to a far off place and time.
While inhaling and exhaling slow and deep you will feel the quietness of the room, while smelling the scent of lavender, rose, ylang-ylang, or nag champa incense burning. The room will have a feeling of healing and relaxation. As you drift off to a deep relaxed state you will probably hear someone snoring, you may wonder if that is the person next to you, or it it is you. Chances are, it was you.
Om shanti, shanti, shanti (peace, peace, peace). Sat nam (truth and existence).