Like me, you may have tried your first yoga class for the physical benefits. And there are many - here are a few I wrote about in a recent blog post.
Benefits of Yoga
The number of studies on yoga is growing rapidly and according to the National Institutes of Health National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health yoga may have many benefits including:
Stress relief
Management of anxiety
Improved mental and emotional health
Improved sleep
Reduction of low back and neck pain
Reduction in frequency and severity of headaches
Chronic disease symptom management and improved quality of life
Supporting healthy eating
Supporting smoking cessation
Relief of menopause symptoms
Yoga is So Much More Than Poses (Asana)
Perhaps over time, however, you realized there was so much more to yoga than asanas (poses).
Yoga, which means "to yoke" or "to unite", helped me feel more connected to the universe by giving me tools like asana, pranayama (breathing practices), and meditation to calm the constant chatter in my over-active mind.
As yoga teacher Judith Hanson Lasater says, "In order to create a statue, a sculptor merely removes all the stone that is not the statue; nothing is added to the stone. Likewise, the practice of yoga is not about adding anything to the individual."
Yoga does't seek to improve or change. The practice of yoga simply helps us to remove that which obscures our true nature, thereby revealing our truest, deepest, most divine Self.
I'll meet you on the mat!
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