After my last weekend of yoga teacher training, a friend asked me over dinner, “Why do you do yoga? So you can learn to do what… headstands?â€
Why do people do yoga?
More than 90 percent of people come to yoga for flexibility, stress relief, health, and physical fitness. But, for most people, their primary reason for doing yoga will change. Two-thirds of yoga students and 85 percent of yoga teachers have a change of heart regarding why they do yoga — most often changing to spirituality or self-actualization, a sense of fulfilling their potential. Yoga offers self-reflection, the practice of kindness and self-compassion, and continued growth and self-awareness.
Yet the health benefits are very real. Yes, yoga can increase your flexibility, improve your balance, and decrease your cholesterol. A recent review in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology shows that yoga reduces the risk of heart disease as much as conventional exercise. On average, yoga participants lost five pounds, decreased their blood pressure, and lowered their low-density (“badâ€) cholesterol by 12 points. There is vast growing body of research on how yoga improves health problems including chronic pain, fatigue, obesity, asthma, irritable bowel syndrome, and more.
As a psychiatrist, I am also naturally interested in the brain. While most people intuitively get that yoga reduces depression and anxiety, most people — even physicians and scientists–are typically surprised to find out that yoga changes the brain.
A May 2015 study published in the Frontiers in Human Neuroscience uses magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain to show that yoga protects the brain from the decline in gray matter brain volume as we age. People with more yoga experience had brain volumes typical for much younger people. In other words, yoga could protect your brain from shrinking as you get older.
The protection of gray matter brain volume is found mostly in the left hemisphere, the side of your brain associated with positive emotions and the relaxation response. Emotions like joy and happiness have exclusively more activity in the left hemisphere of the brain on positive emission tomography (PET) brain scans. The left hemisphere is also linked to the parasympathetic nervous system, the “rest and digest†network responsible for relaxation.
This “neuroprotective†effect of yoga has also been found in brain imaging studies of people who meditate. In some regions of the brain, 50-year-old meditators were found to have the gray matter volume of 25-year-olds. These changes to the brain can occur within a few months. One study found brain changes after only eight weeks of a mindfulness-based stress reduction program. The regions of the brain responsible for learning, memory, cognition and emotional regulation showed growth. In contrast, the areas of the brain responsible for fear, anxiety, and stress shrank.
But the truth is that the practice of yoga is not about changing the brain, body, headstands, or even about gaining greater happiness and joy. If it were, it’d be just like taking a spinning class or doing a set of lunges at the gym. Yoga aims toward transcendence of all those things. In a culture in which we rush from one day to the next, constantly trying to change our health, our body, or our emotions, or to plan our future, yoga opens up the possibility of connecting to what we already have — to who we already are.
When people tell me that they want to try yoga but don’t because they aren’t “flexible enough,†I tell them yoga isn’t about attaining the perfect pose. Use as many blocks as you need. Modify the pose to feel comfortable in your own body. It’s not about being “good enough†or “rightâ€: Yoga is about removing any judgment and letting us be present to who we are now.
As Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron explains:
“Practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are.
We recognize our capacity to relax with the clarity, the space, the open-ended awareness that already exists in our minds. We experience moments of being right here that feel simple, direct, and uncluttered.â€
So, why do I practice yoga? The answer can be complex and personal, but it can also be simple and universal: Because I want to be present. Because I want to be present not just on my mat but also to myself and other people, the community around me.
Yoga can change the heart — but we’re not just talking about blood pressure.
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Dr. Wei’s Psychology Today Blog
For more on yoga health, go to: Yoga Health
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Also on The Huffington Post:
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It’s a bird … it’s a plane … it’s — yoga, in a suspended hammock?
Antigravity Yoga (also referred to as Suspension Yoga, Upside-Down Yoga and Aerial Yoga) is not for the faint of heart. The practice incorporates traditional yoga poses mixed with acrobatics in a silk hammock suspended from the ceiling.
What are the benefits of yoga off the ground? Kayda Norman, who documented her Aerial Yoga experience for Health.com writes, “Aerial yoga allows you to stretch further and hold positions longer than other types of yoga. Suspension yoga also helps to decompress tight joints and relieve pressure.â€
Alexandra Sifferlin, a reporter for Time, also shared her go with a Suspension Yoga class. She reported in a video of her experience that the aerial class was helpful for “better controlled movements as you strengthen your core muscles.â€
And for those without the strength and control for traditional inversions like headstands, Aerial Yoga gives us a chance to try these out.
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Tantrum Yoga can help you access your inner child: the grumpy one, who needs to throw a tantrum to get back to center.
It isn’t violent; instead, it’s an outlet — a release — that combines traditional yoga poses, dancing and, yes, some yelling.
Yoga teacher Hemalaaya developed this therapeutic kind of yoga as the next step in her fusion-focused classes. And, as she puts it, throwing a little tantrum works to relieve her own frustrations. She encourages her students to release stress by yelling, chest-pounding and laughing.
“I believe we are emotional beings and there are times we need to express in order to let go of emotion, especially old stuff that is sitting in there, festering. Otherwise it gets stuck in our bodies and could turn into stress, disease, etc.†she told ABC News.
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Perhaps it is Wheelchair Yoga that best demonstrates the versatility of the yoga practice.
Many of the actions performed in Wheelchair Yoga (or, similarly Chair Yoga) are traditional poses adapted for those who are in wheelchairs. The Cat Stretch, Cow Pose and Eagle Pose, for example, have all been modified to be performed while sitting.
Chair Yoga prioritizes breath-work and physical postures and can be incredibly beneficial for those with limited mobility. The activity can help to decrease physical pain and tension and it promotes the many benefits of physical activity to those with disabilities might not otherwise have access.
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Harmonica Yoga is a form of Raja Yoga (yoga for both the body and the mind). Harmonica playing and yoga are both based on the control of the breath, making this a fun way to work on mindfulness.
“Harmonica is the easiest and most accessible way to practice breath control,†David Harp, the founder and originator of HarmonicaYoga™ and HuffPost blogger wrote in an email to The Huffington Post. “This allows practitioners to short-circuit mental patterns such as fight or flight responses, and thus develop mindfulness,†he continued.
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If laughter is the best medicine and yoga touts countless health benefits, the combination of the two must be infallible.
In this silly practice (its founder, Sebastien Gendry, called it “bizarre†and “weirdâ€) you might find yourself clapping joyously, milking imaginary cows and pretending to be a lion, just as Catherine Pearson did in her Laughter Yoga class, as she reported in HuffPost’s Healthy Living.
Laughter Yoga incorporates much less of the physical aspects of yoga and much more of the social and mindful aspects. Still, the physical benefits are not completely lost: laughter has been found to burn calories and lower blood sugar levels.
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Karaoke Yoga, developed by Los Angeles-based yoga instructor Jennifer Pastiloff, gives people the opportunity to stretch their limbs and their vocal chords.
The class is equipped with a TV screen to display song lyrics and, luckily for those with stage fright, there are no solo performances. You can expect to sing along with the whole class to songs from Adele, Elton John and Journey.
The focus of the class is joy, not the perfecting of poses. “It’s not about alignment, it’s about connecting to your joy,†Pasiloff said in an ABC News interview. Though not about the yoga, per se, it’s still about the workout: “It’s longer exhales, it’s sweating, dancing,†she insists.
Pasiloff wrote in a blog post for Mind Body Green,â€It is connecting some of the greatest pleasures I know of in life: dancing, singing, yoga, connecting and good old fashioned rock ‘n’ roll.â€
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Yoga Raves bring the yoga studio to the club — so don’t forget your glow sticks (and glitter).
Combining music, movement and meditation in a single space, Yoga Raves also promote drug-free fun. Many of these raves begin with a guided meditation as a warm up, to lead into a more free movement.
According to the not-for-profit movement’s website Yogarave.org, “The Yoga Rave Project will bring the spiritual element back to celebration and the way we have fun, offering a drug free alternative for our youth to gather and release their energy and tension.â€
The Art Of Living Foundation, which funds and organizes Yogaraves.org, is not the only initiative propelling the yoga dance party. Jivamukti and Laughing Lotus are among the yoga schools supporting the combination of yoga and “getting down.â€
Yogadork.com might have said it best: “The Yoga Rave: a place where you can totally trip out drug free, get friendly with your fellow man/woman and wake up in your own bed the next morning (if you so choose).â€
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And just for fun, here’s a video of the world’s oldest yoga teacher, 93-year-old Tao Porchon-Lynch, showing off all she’s got.
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Yoga instructor Seane Corn explains the benefits of Vinyasa yoga.