What Yoga Can Do For You

If you’ve been apprehensive about attending a yoga class because you’re afraid you won’t be able to bend into the shape of a pretzel, never fear! Yoga is a gentle, slow-moving exercise that helps to create awareness necessary to be in tune with your body. All that matters is that you do your personal best. If you can’t touch your knees at first, no problem: Postures can be modified to accommodate your current level.

And yoga can help us in so many ways. Recently, when Cait was having a mild asthma attack, a friend showed her a special yoga breathing technique that almost miraculously stopped the attack in its tracks. Who knew yoga could be good for asthma? And that’s just the beginning.

Check out this list of health and other issues that yoga can help with, here:

Practicing yoga is a perfect way to help deal with Western cultural problems of incorrect posture, aggressive lifestyles, job stress, demanding family lives, overeating and indigestion, and stiff muscles and joints.

The many benefits of yoga include increased flexibility, profound relaxation, clarity of thought, and improved muscle tone and strength, as well as improved balance, coordination, concentration, and oxygen intake.

Yoga practice can also help manage anxiety, arthritis, asthma, back pain, blood pressure, carpal tunnel syndrome, chronic fatigue, depression, diabetes, heart disease, menopausal symptoms, migraines, multiple sclerosis, and osteoporosis.

For more information on yoga teachers in your area, go to the Yoga Alliance homepage.

Read more: Spirit, Fitness, Inspiration, Self-Help

Adapted from How to Feel Fabulous Today! by Stephanie Tourles (Storey Books, 2001). Copyright (c) 2001 by Stephanie Tourles. Reprinted by permission of Storey Books.
Adapted from How to Feel Fabulous Today! by Stephanie Tourles (Storey Books, 2001).