Because the author is so lax about following through with yoga, every now and then you might find a tongue-in-cheek reference to the practice, stolen from this website.
This particular quotation comes from an online article by Psychology Today. It mirrors research found and disseminated on many other sites.
An estimated 80 to 90 percent of visits to the doctor are stress-related but less than 3% of doctors talk to their patients about how to reduce stress.
Maybe it’s time to take your physical and mental health into your own hands.
A mind/body practice, yoga can train your body and mind to cope better with stress. Less stress can lead to improved health and well-being.
The practice of yoga can vary from gentle to challenging. As a practitioner, you can choose your own style. There are many ways you can start doing yoga, including books, YouTube and DVDs. If you are a beginner, though, it is best to seek out an instructor.
♥ I tried yoga once but took off for the mall halfway through class, as I had a sudden craving for a soft pretzel and world peace.
Seriously, though, as I walked through the mall, munching on that soft pretzel, I ruminated on the many benefits of doing yoga. Yoga can help us:
- Improve and maintain the health of muscles, joints and organs
- Keep our minds healthy
- Get a better night’s sleep
- Improve performance and prevent injuries in sports
- Speed recovery from training
- Prevent conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and auto-immune disorders
- Slow down the negative effects of office jobs
- Increase our sense of happiness and well being.
Seriously, who wouldn’t want to improve their life in these ways?
♥ Life is hard. It’s breathe, breathe, breathe … all the time.
I interrupted my breathing to read a bit more about the practice of yoga. From this website comes a suggestion for beginners.
If you have never done yoga before, the best place to begin for most people is with a beginner hatha yoga class. Hatha yoga generally spends more time on physical postures, as opposed to mantra, pranayama and meditation, and moves slow enough for anyone to keep up while focusing more on safe alignment.
Hatha yoga instructors are more easily found, as well. Especially for people like me, who live in rural areas. Find more tips on that site if you are over the age of 55, or if you think you don’t have the flexibility to manage yoga.
♥ The Yogini says to the hot dog vendor: “Make me one with everything.”
If you’re keeping track, I’ve now had a pretzel and a hot dog. Now I really need to exercise, but I have to finish this post. This one is tough. I know too little about the subject, which is probably why the yoga studio gets the least ink-time in my books. If you’re a reader, and you notice it starts to get more time, you’ll know I’m back at it.
So what do I do when I write about a subject I know little about? I copy from a master. In this instance, I go once again to this site.
Yoga is not a religion, a cult or a belief system. At the root of yoga is self-inquiry. Everything we do, whether it’s a yoga pose, a meditation, a mantra or a breathing technique (pranayama), has the purpose of encouraging us to connect to our bodies and our life experience in a more meaningful way.
In Closing
If we use every tool in our toolbox to chill, and if we introduce a few people to the chiller, and they introduce a few, and so on and so on, we would have a more chill society. Right? And wasn’t that the purpose of the article? Yoga for an uptight world? Maybe we can become like the woman in the following story.
♥ A young woman who was worried about her habit of biting her fingernails down to the quick was advised by a friend to take up yoga. She did, and soon her fingernails were growing normally. Her friend asked her if yoga had totally cured her nervousness. “No,” she replied, “but now I can reach my toe-nails so I bite them instead.”