Article – Yoga’s Spiritual Balance May Boost Health

 Yoga may be becoming more of a mainstream approach to health woes. A grow- ing body of scientific evidence is building the case that the spiritual balance cre- ated by yoga provides proven health benefits.
Research has found that yoga can help people who are dealing with health prob- lems as wide-ranging as back pain, chronic headaches, sleeplessness, obesity, neck aches, upset stomach, anxiety, depression, and high blood pressure, said Bat Bir Singh Khalsa, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and an associate neuroscientist in the Division of Sleep Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Yoga may also help bolster the immune system by lowering stress. “When you reduce stress, you make the body healthier” he said. “When the body is healthy, it is able to use its own defenses better.”

The health benefits mainly stem from yoga’s focus on the connection between the mind and body, Khalsa said. “The evidence really shows that yoga is good at reducing stress and helping people cope with the stress they have. It improves management of stress both psychologically and physiologically.”

According to the U.S. National Institute of Health, proper yoga practice combines:

●Physical postures that participant flow into and then hold, before proceeding to the next posture. For example Yin and Hatha practices.

●A focus on breathing techniques that make participants more aware of their bod- ies

●Deep meditation and relaxation

All of those element must be in place for people to get the (very) best results for their health and well-being, said Karen Sherman, an affiliate associate professor of epidemiology with the Center for Health Studies in the School of Public Health at the University of Washington.

People interested in improving their health through yoga need to find an experi- enced teach who combines the three elements of yoga. Be wary of teachers who focus postures without also emphasizing breathing and meditation, particularly if they press students to take on extreme postures. Yoga can cause injury if people push themselves too hard, and such contortions have little to do with the mind- body link that student of yoga are trying to attain. For this reason, the experts say, people may do better to start their practice at a traditional yoga studio rather than taking yoga through a gym, community center or health club.

Many difference styles of yoga exist. Those suitable for beginners include Hatha, Kundalini, Viniyoga, and Restorative Yoga, which incorporate the use of props to 6 help support the body. This is very important and beneficial to Myasthenics.