3 Things Yoga Taught Me
Yoga works on many levels. There is so much more to it than stretching!
Yoga teaches us so much. And there are definitely a few things that I would have taken much longer to learn if I had not been doing yoga and I want to share them with you!
Here are 3 things that I learned either in yoga teaching training or as a yoga practitioner.
1.The importance of posture
Our parents always told us to stand up straight and not slouch, but it’s not until I started practicing yoga that I learnt how vital having good posture is for your overall health. Our posture affects our whole body. It can also play a part in determining whether or not you feel pain in your joints when you're older.
The optimal alignment for your body means that your ears, shoulders, hips, knees and ankles are all in one line. When this is done, this means your spine is properly aligned.
Poor posture can cause all kinds of problems. If you’re slouching, you are compressing your chest and not giving your lungs enough space to fully expand when breathing. This means you are not getting enough oxygen or nutrition to all your organs.
Overall, you are inhibiting your ability to breathe as deeply as you could. That is why it is important to keep your torso upright, open and strong.
Poor posture can also lead you to develop joint problems. Especially if you are slouching over a desk all day, you can develop neck, back and shoulder issues; even migraines! Many cases of back pain are caused by poor posture.
We need to pay attention as much as we can to our posture!
How does yoga improve posture? Yoga poses help us practice the correct alignment of our spines and form the habit in our body. Our posture also improves when we are stronger and more flexible.
2.The power of our breath
I had no idea about the true power of our breath before I started practicing yoga. It has the power to energize us, calm us down, relieve stress and just affect how we feel overall.
The most helpful thing I have learnt about our breathing is that it can help to manage stress and anxiety. The “relaxation response” is turned on when we start to take deeper breaths and slow down our breathing. I use this technique in my classes to help us slow our nervous system, heart rate and reduce our blood pressure.
Breath work is so powerful and so simple to apply to our everyday lives. It is free and we can use it any time. Can you imagine that practicing breathing exercises can make you healthier? It’s that easy.
3.The chronic effect that stress can have on our health
We talk a lot about how stressed we are, but we don’t realize the impact that it can really have on our health. Actually, the majority of visits to your primary care doctor or GP are caused by stress related factors, some data suggests up to 80 percent!
Stress is so powerful that it can affect our cardiovascular and immune systems. If you think about it, even illnesses such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes can be caused by stress if we are not taking care of ourselves properly because we are stressed.
Yoga and its emphasis on deep breathing are great ways to help us manage stress. Yoga is good for our bodies but it is also good for our minds. So how about considering doing yoga the next time you’re feeling stressed.
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