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By: Laura Flood PT, DPT
Published: July 25, 2013 :: 4:00AM PST
The benefits of yoga are as varied as the yoga studios, classes and teachers that you will find within a 10 mile radius of your home these days......Vinyasa, yin, Asthanga, Anusara, flow, restorative, Iyengar, power, slow flow, acroyoga, therapeutic……the list goes on and on. Each yoga class will have specific benefits depending on their length, speed, postures, level and teacher style. Some classes are energizing while others are more restful and aimed at renewing and revitalizing our energy rather than using or depleting energy. Above all I recommend finding a class, teacher and style that suit your needs, needs which can vary greatly
daily and seasonally. Choosing the incorrect class for your body and mind cannot only negate the benefits of yoga but can be harmful. But finding the right yoga for yourself can be life changing. Here I will discuss some of the general benefits of yoga, drawing from my experiences over the past 13 years of practicing, teaching and integrating yoga into my daily life, as well as using it as a powerful rehabilitation tool in my profession as a physical therapist.
There is no doubt as you take one look around a yoga studio, that yoga is physically beneficial. Yoga sculpts the body, enhances core strength, sharpens balance and agility, stretches tight muscles, strengthens weak ones and helps prevent injury. I personally feel much less prone to sports injury since I began a regular yoga practice, mainly because I think I am able to fall better. When you spend time jumping around on a yoga mat regularly it teaches you the balance between agility and stability, as well as improving flexibility and strength for skiing, trail running, biking, climbing, paddling and much more. Yoga is attractive to the sports and recreational athlete because it can complement the rigors and physical demands of sports performance perfectly. Whether you are an athlete with an injury or just simply have pain that disrupts your daily life, yoga is a powerful tool for
addressing specific rehabilitation needs. Firstly yoga poses increase blood flow to specific areas to help accelerate the healing process. Yoga also aids in realigning the body and improving posture, which can be incredibly beneficial because the root cause of so many people’s musculoskeletal pain is mal-alignment and postural dysfunction. Yoga also teaches us to breath. As simple as it sounds, many of us do not realize what a positive effect focusing on our breath can have on our pain, anxiety and fear. Yoga can offer us a greater sense of control and empowerment of our own body – a feeling that can be lacking as part of the injury and chronic pain process. Yoga strengthens our connection to the inner body, thereby creating healthy and sustainable energy flow so that our mind and body can let go of fear and tension and allow healing to begin.
I actually began practicing yoga in my early 20s, seeking relief from the stress of a rigorous research year as part of my undergraduate college education. Yoga is a constant source of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing in my life. I believe that yoga has the greatest benefit in calming and healing the mind and body. While I love a hard workout as much as the next Bend girl, I find myself seeking out yoga more and more as a means to help balance the physical and mental demands of living in the 21st century. We are all master jugglers in this day and age; balancing careers, families, finances, health, fitness and nutrition.
We are challenged every day to keep all of these balls in the air. Yoga can offer an incredible reprieve from the chaos of everyday life with time to focus on oneself, breathing and slowing the mind. Traditional yoga poses were designed to calm the nervous system and balance the complex processes within our body, which in turn balances the mind and feeds back to the body. After all yoga means ‘to yolk’, to bring together. Yoga is all about uniting the body, heart and mind. Through this process yoga teaches us to live life more fully – with less fear, more compassion and kindness, greater humility and grace and with a more expansive perspective. Yoga makes us better human beings. I believe that a daily yoga practice for everyone may even be the key to world peace! But seriously, this yoga is pretty powerful stuff.
A wise yoga instructor once warned against “coming to your yoga mat in desperation”. This teaching has stayed with me and continues to inform my yoga practice and my life. While yoga is tremendously beneficial in a plethora of ways, its true benefits lie in practicing yoga in our everyday lives. If we are able to experience the benefits of our practice longer and live in greater harmony and balance every day the benefits of our yoga practice will be more sustainable. We will be able to go deeper and deeper. And that is the true beauty of yoga: the benefits just keep on coming. I will be sure to update you as I discover more yogic benefits as I enter my 14th year of yogi life. Yoga has truly changed my life. It has shaped who I am and continues to inform my own body, mind and the treatments I deliver to help my physical therapy patients heal and recover from injury and manage
their pain.
Laura Flood is a licensed Physical Therapist at Therapeutic Associates at The Athletic Club of Bend who specializes in therapeutic yoga, as does her colleague Laura Cooper, who is the Director of Physical Therapy at the same location.
Call to schedule an appointment with us today if you have individual rehabilitation needs and are interested in us incorporating yoga into your plan of care. Also be sure to look up one of the wonderful yoga studios in the Bend area and find the class and teacher that best suit your needs.
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