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Yoga is a meditation, a life path focus of being mindful and present in ALL areas of life, not just in the stretching physical yoga poses.
The Benefits of Yoga
(Read my article on the benefits of massage and how they compliment the benefits of yoga here)
Like I said on my benefits of massage page, I truly think the mind/body connection is powerful and amazing. I have spent years of learning, studying and practicing both. It's why I write about it here.
There are many pathways for helping the mind/body heal. Massage is one pathway and yoga is another pathway, yet if you read on you will start to learn how the benefits of massage are very similar to the benefits of yoga. This is why the two absolutely compliment each other.
Why begin a yoga practice? What are the benefits of yoga?
Like massage. Yoga makes us feel good. And feeling good just feels good.
I always say anyone can practice yoga. Anyone. Read further below as to why. But for now I will just talk about the benefits of yoga. Unlike Yoga, massage is done by someone else stretching and lengthening your muscles, helping your body heal and feel good. However, during a yoga practice you are the one stretching and lengthening your own muscles. This is helping your mind/body stay more flexible, relaxed and calm. There are many more benefits to yoga than just being physically flexible. And there is more to yoga than just doing yoga 'poses'. It's all about the mind/body connection and conscious presence everywhere in your life.
Note: You may wish to read further below for some deeper learning about how your minds thoughts during a physical yoga practice affect your body.
But first I invite you to read about some very simple easy to understand mind/body
Benefits of Yoga-
Keep in mind, yoga is more than just doing physical poses. Yet, there are amazing health therapeutic benefits to simply doing the most simple basic yoga poses. So you don't have to do advanced yoga poses to get amazing benefits from simply being present and stretching into your body from there.
This is because we have control over our state of awareness when doing anything in life. We could be doing yoga while washes dishes and letting our mind/body relax and be more calm. This is a deeper conscious awareness of the state of our mind and body and knowing it always connected.
There are even deeper benefits to practicing yoga and they are quite similar to the benefits of receiving massage. In both we are guided into a deeper place within ourselves.
In that deeper calmer place is where the healthier physiological functions of the mind/body body start to operate. It is where we are already healed.
So like massage, and like I wrote about above, yoga helps with reducing pain and stress in the mind/body. If you read closely of the above yoga benefits you will be able to see a pattern of how they are linked together. Yoga helps in decreasing muscle soreness, which decreases muscle pain. This decreases stress which helps the body feel more relaxed, flexible and at peace, which helps our bodily functions like lowering the heart rate and blood pressure. This in turns helps keep us feel strong and healthy. Practicing yoga is good for us, just like massage is good for us.
Notice I say practicing yoga. Because like anything else life, practice is important.
Read further below if you are truly interested in learning how our thoughts affect the pain/stress cycle in our mind/body.
Again though, for now I will give you some deeper scientific explanation of how yoga benefits the mind/body by helping it heal.
From a deeper perspective yoga just like massage helps maintain the internal homeostasis balance inside the body. All related to hormone levels, and brain chemistry. And even those hormone levels are affected by our thoughts which in turn affects brain chemistry or homeostasis in the mind/body. It's all linked deeply linked and very much a cycle.
Think about it.
Just think about anything in your life that requires balance. Could be the right balance of ingredients for the optimal cake, or the right balance of nutrients for the soil in the garden for certain plants to grow. Everything has a way of needing to be balanced. The mind/body are no different.
Stress is what throws that mind/body out of balance.
What many people aren’t aware of is that pain and stress in the mind/body go hand in hand. It’s called the pain/stress cycle. Or the pain body as Eckart Tolle writes about in A New Earth. This pain is affected by what we are choosing to think and let affect us.
When we are stressed, our bodies feel pain and when we are in pain we are more stressed. How does your mind/body feel when you are stressed, does it tend to hurt more? Yet think about when you are happy, or if you are happy right now how, does your mind/body feel better?
This pain body or pain/stress cycle is fed by many things including negative thinking, poor bodily habits, poor eating habits, and toxic environments. For many people this pain/stress cycle was programmed inside of our brains when we were very young. So we have been wired for pain/stress over time. In this way pain and stress have been deeply embedded in the cellular structure of our mind/body because everything inside of us is connected. Think about it?
Many of us are so used to living inside of this pain body cycle that we do not even realize we can re-wire it and transform it. It can be re-programmed and many people are experiencing it more and more. This by first realizing that simply we have been more used to and comfortable in feeling bad than we are used to and comfortable in feeling good.
This could have come from not having enough love as a child or healthy touch as a child. It can also come from having parents who don’t support us or give us encouragement. Even negative school environments can train our mind/body to protect itself by reacting to stress. Any deep trauma from our past will affect our pain/stress cycle unless we have a way of processing it and letting it go.
So many people have not been aware that we can affect our mind/body conversation by being aware our what we are thinking and how it is affecting us. We have control of ourselves, our thoughts and our reactions.
There are certain thoughts and emotional states that promote stress/pain in the body. Fearful thoughts, anger, depression, frustration, sorrow all keep us looped in a stress/pain cycle in the body. These thoughts are many times associated with negative thinking.
There are thoughts and mind states that do promote peace and love in the mind/body. And these are usually positive state of being like, gratitude, happiness, love, optimism, peace and acceptance.
Once I personally started realizing this. I started practicing it by choosing to think good things about myself and my life...and the pain in my body went away. I was experience a direct link between what I was thinking and how that affected my mind/body. Now when I am sad,depressed or angry, I am deeply aware of how my body hurts more. Yet when I am happy and feeling love inside, my body feels good, so good. It feels more relaxed, more flexible and more at peace.
Yoga helps with retraining mind/body to feel good from the inside out.
We can affect our own re-wiring by choosing to love and be happy within. We can choose those things simply because we have free will to choose, and sometimes it takes practice.
So promoting good thoughts and doing things that support our internal love and our internal happiness are important. We deserve it, simply because we are here on this earth to deserve it. This helps lessen that mind/body pain/stress cycle more and more. in fact, it really strengthens our love/peace cycle really!
Feeling good about loving ourselves enough to practice yoga and be mindful of thoughts towards ourselves and towards others, now that's powerful!
It is possible to step out of that pain and stress cycle by being more aware of what causes stresses and what causes pain inside of oneself.
This deeper awareness is to observe what thoughts you are thinking and how they are affecting your mind/body. It’s been a function of our unaware sub-conscious automatic programming that has kept us from realizing our own divine nature inside and also realizing we have the ability to choose our mind state. I like to call this awareness yoga of the mind. This awareness can be everywhere in life not just during 'physical yoga' practice.
The Yoga of the Mind. The unity of mind/body and our divine spirit within. In this deeper awareness we can be conscious of what thoughts we choose about ourselves and about others. In this place we are also deeply aware of how our internal mindset affects our external bodily functions. Here we have the internal freedom to be free of pain and suffering and enjoy ourselves and our lives. When we feel better about ourselves we always positively affect the environment around us.
There are yoga teachers who understand this and are truly able to help you see inside of yourself, to be inside of yourself. However the ultimate guidance always comes from within you, whether you are in a yoga class with lots of people or you are happy doing a home practice with yourself. There are benefits to both of these styles of yoga practice, and some people gravitate towards one style of practice more than the other.
There are many pathways for helping the mind/body heal. Massage is one pathway and yoga is another pathway, yet if you read on you will start to learn how the benefits of massage are very similar to the benefits of yoga. This is why the two absolutely compliment each other.
Why begin a yoga practice? What are the benefits of yoga?
Like massage. Yoga makes us feel good. And feeling good just feels good.
I always say anyone can practice yoga. Anyone. Read further below as to why. But for now I will just talk about the benefits of yoga. Unlike Yoga, massage is done by someone else stretching and lengthening your muscles, helping your body heal and feel good. However, during a yoga practice you are the one stretching and lengthening your own muscles. This is helping your mind/body stay more flexible, relaxed and calm. There are many more benefits to yoga than just being physically flexible. And there is more to yoga than just doing yoga 'poses'. It's all about the mind/body connection and conscious presence everywhere in your life.
Note: You may wish to read further below for some deeper learning about how your minds thoughts during a physical yoga practice affect your body.
But first I invite you to read about some very simple easy to understand mind/body
Benefits of Yoga-
- Yoga helps with muscle flexibility This is commonly what is known about yoga. Many people think that they cannot start yoga because they are not flexible. This is usually because they have not yet realized that it takes patience, focus and presence to teach the muscles to relax and become more flexible. But they do become more flexible with patience, commitment and focus.
- Yoga helps with pain relief because yoga helps with muscle flexibility it thus helps with pain relief. When muscles are tight they usually hurt. Yoga helps the muscles relax which helps us feel good and decrease our pain. Here is the mind/body again being connected. Plus, just like massage, yoga helps release feel good hormones(serotonin) into our mind/body. More about those feel good hormones later in this article.
- Yoga helps with stress reduction because as we are in pain less and our mind/body feels more relaxed, thus we are less stressed. It's all connected in a cycle in the mind/body.
- Yoga helps with injury recovery Yoga helps injury recovery by keeping muscles that surround an injury relaxed and stretched out. This helps injuries heal because, nutrient rich blood flow can get to the injured areas. When muscle and tissue around an injured area are more relaxed that area is less likely to develop severe scar tissue. Muscles Spasms and Cramping are reduced with yoga because muscles are just more flexible.
- Yoga helps keep Our immune system healthier and stronger Colds and the flu happen when we have a weakened immune system. Yoga helps regulate that immune system.(the deeper science of it is further below). Yet yoga helps because it helps keep our mind/body more relaxed which trains our immune system that we are strong and healthy.
- Yoga helps us heal from trauma, disease, and disorders. MS, Fibromyalgia, Arthritis, Lupus, Anxiety, or Depression are always related to some imbalance in the mind/body. Practicing yoga helps bring balance to the mind/body. So people with MS, Fibromyalgia Arthritis, Lupus, Anxiety and Depression are always being helped by practicing some form of yoga.
Keep in mind, yoga is more than just doing physical poses. Yet, there are amazing health therapeutic benefits to simply doing the most simple basic yoga poses. So you don't have to do advanced yoga poses to get amazing benefits from simply being present and stretching into your body from there.
This is because we have control over our state of awareness when doing anything in life. We could be doing yoga while washes dishes and letting our mind/body relax and be more calm. This is a deeper conscious awareness of the state of our mind and body and knowing it always connected.
- Yoga can help us access peace of mind in ourselves. When we are more relaxed, calm our bodies feels good. Here we tend to feel more at peace in ourselves. Those good feelings come from yoga connecting us to our deeper part of ourselves and helping those feel good hormones release. Keep reading for deeper understanding of why those feel good hormones are connected to our thoughts.
There are even deeper benefits to practicing yoga and they are quite similar to the benefits of receiving massage. In both we are guided into a deeper place within ourselves.
In that deeper calmer place is where the healthier physiological functions of the mind/body body start to operate. It is where we are already healed.
So like massage, and like I wrote about above, yoga helps with reducing pain and stress in the mind/body. If you read closely of the above yoga benefits you will be able to see a pattern of how they are linked together. Yoga helps in decreasing muscle soreness, which decreases muscle pain. This decreases stress which helps the body feel more relaxed, flexible and at peace, which helps our bodily functions like lowering the heart rate and blood pressure. This in turns helps keep us feel strong and healthy. Practicing yoga is good for us, just like massage is good for us.
Notice I say practicing yoga. Because like anything else life, practice is important.
Read further below if you are truly interested in learning how our thoughts affect the pain/stress cycle in our mind/body.
Again though, for now I will give you some deeper scientific explanation of how yoga benefits the mind/body by helping it heal.
- Yoga stimulates and regulates our immune system Being relaxed and calm stimulates our helper T-Cells. These are the cells in our immune system that help protect us from harmful toxins, bacteria and viruses. Like massage, yoga also stimulates lymph flow in the body, so harmful bacteria and viruses get flushed out of our system faster.
- Yoga re-trains our sympathetic nervous system. This system is what readies our body for stress. Fight or flight response is what it is commonly called and it is produced by stress in our mind/body. The hormones Adrenaline and Cortisol are released into the body. In large amounts both these hormones actually make the mind/body more toxic. So being less stressed is better for the mind/body. And practicing yoga is a practice in being less stressed. This comes from within.
- Yoga activates the para-sympathetic nervous system by activating the more relaxed part of us. Yoga is a practice in being calmer and more present in every area of life and when we are more relaxed, we can be more present. This calmer nervous system is responsible for increased digestion and over all good health of the intestines and colon. This system is also what helps release those feel good hormones I wrote about earlier.
From a deeper perspective yoga just like massage helps maintain the internal homeostasis balance inside the body. All related to hormone levels, and brain chemistry. And even those hormone levels are affected by our thoughts which in turn affects brain chemistry or homeostasis in the mind/body. It's all linked deeply linked and very much a cycle.
Think about it.
Just think about anything in your life that requires balance. Could be the right balance of ingredients for the optimal cake, or the right balance of nutrients for the soil in the garden for certain plants to grow. Everything has a way of needing to be balanced. The mind/body are no different.
Stress is what throws that mind/body out of balance.
- Yoga helps bring the mind/body back into balance.
What many people aren’t aware of is that pain and stress in the mind/body go hand in hand. It’s called the pain/stress cycle. Or the pain body as Eckart Tolle writes about in A New Earth. This pain is affected by what we are choosing to think and let affect us.
When we are stressed, our bodies feel pain and when we are in pain we are more stressed. How does your mind/body feel when you are stressed, does it tend to hurt more? Yet think about when you are happy, or if you are happy right now how, does your mind/body feel better?
This pain body or pain/stress cycle is fed by many things including negative thinking, poor bodily habits, poor eating habits, and toxic environments. For many people this pain/stress cycle was programmed inside of our brains when we were very young. So we have been wired for pain/stress over time. In this way pain and stress have been deeply embedded in the cellular structure of our mind/body because everything inside of us is connected. Think about it?
Many of us are so used to living inside of this pain body cycle that we do not even realize we can re-wire it and transform it. It can be re-programmed and many people are experiencing it more and more. This by first realizing that simply we have been more used to and comfortable in feeling bad than we are used to and comfortable in feeling good.
This could have come from not having enough love as a child or healthy touch as a child. It can also come from having parents who don’t support us or give us encouragement. Even negative school environments can train our mind/body to protect itself by reacting to stress. Any deep trauma from our past will affect our pain/stress cycle unless we have a way of processing it and letting it go.
So many people have not been aware that we can affect our mind/body conversation by being aware our what we are thinking and how it is affecting us. We have control of ourselves, our thoughts and our reactions.
There are certain thoughts and emotional states that promote stress/pain in the body. Fearful thoughts, anger, depression, frustration, sorrow all keep us looped in a stress/pain cycle in the body. These thoughts are many times associated with negative thinking.
There are thoughts and mind states that do promote peace and love in the mind/body. And these are usually positive state of being like, gratitude, happiness, love, optimism, peace and acceptance.
Once I personally started realizing this. I started practicing it by choosing to think good things about myself and my life...and the pain in my body went away. I was experience a direct link between what I was thinking and how that affected my mind/body. Now when I am sad,depressed or angry, I am deeply aware of how my body hurts more. Yet when I am happy and feeling love inside, my body feels good, so good. It feels more relaxed, more flexible and more at peace.
Yoga helps with retraining mind/body to feel good from the inside out.
- Yoga helps us heal by helping us feel good. Yoga helps with retraining mind/body to feel good from the inside out. Sometimes just the simple focus on your breath or the yoga of breathing can helps the mind/body heal.
We can affect our own re-wiring by choosing to love and be happy within. We can choose those things simply because we have free will to choose, and sometimes it takes practice.
So promoting good thoughts and doing things that support our internal love and our internal happiness are important. We deserve it, simply because we are here on this earth to deserve it. This helps lessen that mind/body pain/stress cycle more and more. in fact, it really strengthens our love/peace cycle really!
Feeling good about loving ourselves enough to practice yoga and be mindful of thoughts towards ourselves and towards others, now that's powerful!
- Yoga helps with positively affecting the pain body and promoting happiness
It is possible to step out of that pain and stress cycle by being more aware of what causes stresses and what causes pain inside of oneself.
This deeper awareness is to observe what thoughts you are thinking and how they are affecting your mind/body. It’s been a function of our unaware sub-conscious automatic programming that has kept us from realizing our own divine nature inside and also realizing we have the ability to choose our mind state. I like to call this awareness yoga of the mind. This awareness can be everywhere in life not just during 'physical yoga' practice.
- Yoga is not about who is most flexible or a competition, rather it is about being with yourself. your mind/body...learning it, loving, moving with it..in whatever "life pose" you are in. This could be washing dishes, or doing a simple stretch of the arms/shoulders while sitting in a chair,(chair yoga)...or doing an 'advanced' pose like the yoga back bend I am doing in the picture on my approach to yoga page.
- Yoga is about accepting your mind/ body with where it's at in the moment...and stretching or not stretching into yourself, your life from there. Our own minds are what we usually competing against. There is no reality to the perfection of a yoga pose or perfection of oneself, for perfection is an illusion. It's all about being aware and feeling, feeling with presence your deepness, feeling your muscles, feeling your own inner shine! And then helping others do the same.
The Yoga of the Mind. The unity of mind/body and our divine spirit within. In this deeper awareness we can be conscious of what thoughts we choose about ourselves and about others. In this place we are also deeply aware of how our internal mindset affects our external bodily functions. Here we have the internal freedom to be free of pain and suffering and enjoy ourselves and our lives. When we feel better about ourselves we always positively affect the environment around us.
There are yoga teachers who understand this and are truly able to help you see inside of yourself, to be inside of yourself. However the ultimate guidance always comes from within you, whether you are in a yoga class with lots of people or you are happy doing a home practice with yourself. There are benefits to both of these styles of yoga practice, and some people gravitate towards one style of practice more than the other.
Alternative Healing, Day Spa, Healing, Massage Therapy and Yoga, Redding, CA, in downtown. 2910 Veda St. Redding, Ca 96001 530-917-0123
