Easy Yoga VCD

Stay Young With Yoga

Yoga, a 4,000-year-old system of exercise and meditation from India, has 20 million followers in the United States – more than triple the 6 million enthusiasts in 1994, says Trisha Lamb Feuerstein, head of research for the Yoga Research and Education Center, part of the International Association of Yoga Therapists in Santa Rosa, California.

“In the 1960s yoga was an attempt to get a drugless high,” Feuerstein says. “Now it’s more about stress reduction. Also, a lot of the boomer population is hitting an age where jogging is hard on the body. People are looking for a form of exercise that is gentler.”

Yoga strives to unite body and spirit. Exercise poses, called asanas, promote flexibility, relaxation, strength and inner peace.

But yoga isn’t just about spiritual awareness. Numerous studies in India and the United Sates conclude that yoga offers many physical benefits. If you suffer from mild asthma or high blood pressure, yoga may reduce your need for medicine. It’s also helpful for people who are suffering from diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, cerebral palsy, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and back pain.

“Yoga exercises stretch each joint in the body through a full range of motion,” says yoga instructor Suza Francina, who specializes in classes for people over 50 at her Ojai Yoga Center in California.

By limbering up, you feel younger, Francina says. “The accepted view of aging is that it’s a process of stiffening, rigidity and closing down. Most Americans don’t get proper exercise, so their bodies contract with age and they lose height, strength and flexibility.”

Yoga also gives you constant source of energy, says Alice Christensen, founder and executive director of the American Yoga Association in Sarasota, Florida. “When you practice yoga,” she says, “you actually have more vitality and vigor. In that way, I really think it can help to make you feel younger.”

Christensen’s assessment of the ancient practice is corroborated by modern science. A group of 170 college students showed that those taking yoga classes had less tension, depression, anger and fatigue after a class than before. And a British study finds that yoga breathing can reduce symptoms of asthma.

Yoga offers benefits to practitioners in many different levels, says Rolf Slovik, director of New York’s Himalayan Institute of Buffalo. “People come for stress management or because they’re trying to manage some physical problem. Some come because of a very strong spiritual curiosity. They want more quietness in their lives.”

Yoga can help to improve your performance in other sports such as golfing, distance running and even football, says Rebecca Laney, who runs the Center for Yoga and Health in Clinton, Mississippi. “It’s an awareness of movement, weight distribution and posture. Developing such a sense can help athletes more clearly feel what they’re doing.”