Posts Tagged ‘ashtanga’

Use yoga to stop the clock!

Slow the signs of aging and feel younger with a simple yoga regimen. These are huge claims, but as someone who has had, shall we say, an undulating habit of practice, there’s nothing like the feeling of a body fresh from the mat.  And the various positive effects last throughout the day.  Without a doubt a regular practice has effects that extend far beyond just the hours following….

Eight years ago, when Sharon Gothard Weisman turned 40, backaches, dark undereye circles, forgetfulness, and fatigue made her feel more like 60. In the hope of finding anti-aging relief, Weisman took a yoga class. An hour later, she felt more relaxed than she had in years. She’s been doing yoga three times a week since and says, “I have more energy, strength, and flexibility than most women half my age.”She recently ran into an old high school friend who asked, “Don’t you get older like the rest of us?”

Many women try yoga for stress reduction, but they stick with it because it makes them feel–and look–younger, says Larry Payne, PhD, a yoga director at Loyola Marymount University and coauthor of Yoga Rx. Unlike traditional exercise, yoga blends anti-aging moves that improve circulation, balance, flexibility, and strength with meditative techniques such as deep breathing. “My students call yoga a natural face-lift,” he says. “It cleanses, relaxes, and restores.”
Read more of the advantages of yoga….

Perhaps if I had a dog that required yoga-ing, I’d take my commitment to a regular practice more seriously.  But, alas, my lovely beast of a dog would rather be walked than yoga-ed.

And as a result of this tender, gentle, affectionate, needy beast’s need for exercise, it is given priority in my day.  Just about every day.  As it should.  On those days that I am unable to fulfill my commitment to her, we both feel it.  Guilty.  Irritable. Just plain not right.

The benefits to walking are abundant.  As are the benefits to yoga.  Unfortunately, however, I don’t have a pair of big, brown doe eyes staring at me, following me, urging me to be sure I get in a practice everyday.  Perhaps there’s a business idea in there somewhere…. What I have is the wondrous feeling, laying in savasana, my body limp and damp, and sinking into the floor, longer, lighter and more invigorated than before.  Not eager eyeballs, just the joy of well-being.

So, as I talk myself down from the “Doh…I haven’t practiced in a week already…” ledge, it is this feeling I have to keep in mind when I am putting it off and putting it off, a seemingly perpetually unchecked activity in my dayplanner, with morning disappearing into lunch, lunch fading into afternoon and afternoon evolving quickly into the mayhem that is the late day activities, supper and bed-time rituals.

It’s the feeling of light and opening… and it’s as essential to me as our walks are to my lovely beast of a dog.

Although, to my credit, my daily meditation has taken hold as something of an early morning habit.  Wonderful.  Not unlike most, mine is a mind full of thoughts and images in freaking TechniColor and SurroundSound, even at five in the morning, I still enjoy aspiring to the stillness.

Just me, a freshly lit fire in the fireplace… and my lovely beast of a dog.