I had never thought about taking a yoga class, to be honest I thought it would be a class full of vegetarians who simply stretch and experience out of body happenings that I would never come close to experiencing. When this extra credit opportunity came up, I pressured my roommate into going to one of these yoga classes with me. Well we went to a class that the Cary St. Gym was offering at 5pm with an instructor named Viktoryia. We sat down and I was surprised to see the people in the class. Guys, girls, rockers, jocks, and sorority girls. It made me change my mind about who seeks tranquility in yoga.
It started with stretching, then the breathing that helped to relax you and centralize your thoughts. I think because it was my first class I was so concerned about making sure I was doing everything right and concentrating on so hard on looking like I was concentrating hard. I may have not gotten everything out of it that I could have, however, I do plan to go back and in fact tie it into my exercise routine especially after reading this article in Time magazine.
The article first talks about how yoga has become all the craze from Politian’s to movie stars to sport heroes taking classes to help maintain some tranquility in their lives. From the popularization and the fact that it tones and firms your body (which most Americans need) many have begun to study the more internal benefits of Yoga. Opera devoted an entire segment on Yoga and had special guests like supermodels and a well known guru Rodney Yee to talk about the power of Yoga. Callers who had been practicing yoga swear that it has saved marriages, improved child’s grades, overcome smoking addictions, cured phobias, and helped some sleep again. Psychologists and medical professionals are starting to question, can yoga really help long term medical conditions and improve the overall quality of life, even if you’re not a practicing Hindu or Taoist? The answers are proven in the results. Studies have shown with post menopausal women that it helped improve and almost diminish menopausal symptoms. Another study was preformed with those with coronary heart disease. The incorporation of Yoga with a low fat diet helped stabilize and in some cases reverse arterial blockage.
The moral of the story? “Yoga heals by relaxing you, and relaxing heals.” Says author of the Times article Richard Corliss. Researchers and specialists who have looked into yoga as a therapeutic and healing way of life says that with the two parts of the nervous system (sympathetic: fight or flight reaction, and parasympathetic: relaxation response) Yoga helps turn off the sympathetic, which many believe we’re always in a constant state of which produces enormous amounts of stress, and helps us tap into and turn on our parasympathetic. Doing this helps release the tension in our muscles; the breathing exercises help gain control over our movements and tap into our ultimate state of relaxation.
Yoga believers says it will take a little while for you to reach your enlightenment through yoga, but when it happens it’s different for every person. You have the epiphany of understanding your body and the connection between body and mind and suddenly that language you’ve been studying for months makes sense. Yoga is a way for us to connect our mind with our body and have a total connection between the two. Once you have that connection, that enlightenment, there’s nothing you can’t achieve.
Going into this Yoga class, I didn’t know all this. As I mentioned before, I really thought it was for people unlike myself. I never thought of yoga as just stretching, but it’s an American stereotype that is just that. After reading this article I couldn’t be more amazed by the power yoga has. The ability to heal and overcome challenges in one’s life by the practice of such an amazing exercise (for lack of a better word) is phenomenal. I’m graduating in a few weeks, so I won’t be able to use the Cary St. gym to further my yoga journey, however, I intend to join one of the studios in Richmond as soon as I can, because I want to reach my own enlightenment through Yoga as well.
The article, which is amazing and I highly recommend:
Corliss, Richard. The Power of Yoga. TIME. April 15th, 2001. Retrieved May 4th 2011. <http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,106356-3,00.html
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