The Yoga Workout | Taking Care of Ourselves through Yoga  |  Why Yoga   |  Yoga helps cancer patients relieve their stress  |Yoga, a state of mind | Tomorrow won’t be better!

Why Yoga?

"The bottom line is that yoga is an exercise that is food for the heart."
Dr. Noel Bairey Merz; Medical Director Cardiac Center at Cedars Sanai Medical Center, Los Angeles

"Fifteen million Americans include some form of yoga in their fitness regimen-twice as many as did five years ago." Time Magazine

Yoga is a natural way to slow down and live with greater awareness. It is an ancient proven tradition that exists since thousands of years. Actually, Yoga at the workplace has become extremely popular in many companies, nationwide.
Yoga has proven to help with:

* Stress reduction
* low cost of implementation
* helps to quiet down mind and body
* low impact
* strength and flexibility
* building concentration
* eradicates fatigue
* generates energy
* increase productivity and morale
* adaptability with different skill levels and abilities –

The popularity of yoga has soared in recent years. Attitudes to health, spirituality, lifestyle and mankind's place in the environment have changed dramatically and people are seeking solutions to the problems of their everyday existence. The yoga system is based on universal truths so it does not interfere with anyone's religious beliefs. Yoga is for men and women of all ages and occupations and you can begin to learn at any time.
Yoga is first of all non-competitive. The purpose of yoga is to understand yourself through your yoga practice and to work slowly and deliberately to gain flexibility as you progress. It is the antithesis of the "no pain no gain" philosophy. Graceful, fluid movements create a balance and strength of body, mind and spirit. The purpose is not to build muscle but to build muscle tone. In yoga aasanaas (postures) the muscles are stretched lengthwise. The postures also build the immune system. They also exercise the internal organs so that the body will work like a finely tuned car in peak condition. Yoga also helps to ease physical tensions through deep stretching and correct breathing techniques. Working on the physical body with deep concentration on breathing creates a real and lasting sense of harmony, embracing the body and mind. Yoga is a wonderful way of learning how to relax. The physical techniques create a calm and concentration that extend beyond the body, deep into the mind, effectively reducing stress at all levels.

If one wishes to deepen the relaxation and concentration techniques Yoga has also developed a wonderful system based on meditation techniques, which are highly effective. For more information on meditation click here

For our yoga classes schedule, click here

TOP

Yoga helps cancer patients relieve their stress:
Prof's research tries to pinpoint other benefits

After John Chandler was diagnosed with mantle cell lymphoma, a rare and aggressive cancer, the 51-year-old Calgarian discovered he could count on yoga to relieve his stress.

Weekly sessions of poses, breathing and meditation may seem like an unusual choice for a former oilpatch technician with a short temper. But Chandler insists the classes are an important part of his fight against cancer.

"If I'm going out, I'm going out kicking," he says.

It isn't known whether the ancient art, which has surged in popularity in recent years, can by itself prolong the life of cancer patients, but a growing body of research at the University of Calgary suggests a program of meditation and yoga, known as mindfulness-based stress reduction, can lead to health benefits -- from improved immune function to lower blood
pressure. "Patients can't cure cancer just by their thoughts," says Dr. Linda Carlson, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at the U of C. "We do know that stress and our thoughts can affect our health." Carlson began studying the impact of yoga and meditation on cancer patients a decade ago, when Calgary's Tom Baker Cancer Centre started offering a mindfulness-based stress reduction program. Some 1,200 patients have enrolled in the classes since.

Her first study focused on 90 cancer patients -- one group that went through the eight-week program immediately and a second group that faced a delay in enrolling. The research found the patients who immediately participated had a 65 per
cent decrease in mood disturbances such as anxiety, depression and anger. Patients who had to wait showed few improvements.

The study also found patients in the first group had more energy and fewer symptoms of stress, such as sleep problems.

Since that first study, Carlson's followup research suggests the benefits of yoga and meditation aren't only psychological. A paper published in a 2003 edition of Psychosomatic Medicine found 59 cancer patients who took part in the program had favourable immune system changes.

Patients with elevated levels of stress hormones late in the day had improvements. More recently, Carlson's research found a group of female cancer patients with high blood pressure returned to normal levels during the eight-week meditation and yoga program. She is presenting the study to the American Psychosomatic Society meeting in March. Yoga is known for relieving stress and Carlson believes that is part of the reason the program has shown positive physical benefits for patients. She adds the program improves strength and stamina and can help patients reconnect with bodies that have changed from weight loss and surgery.

"Cancer patients have a real sense of loss of control about the future," says Carlson, who recently won a new investigator award from the International Psycho-Oncology Society for her work. Carlson believes more research is needed. She is recruiting 300 early stage breast cancer patients to take part in a Calgary and Vancouver study in January comparing the yoga and meditation classes with another program, known as expressive therapy. But Chandler says he doesn't need further research on yoga. "The one day I go grounds me for the other six days I have to deal with," he says.

mlang@theherald.canwest.com

PUBLICATION Calgary Herald - DATE 2006-11-06 - SECTION/CATEGORY City & Region - PAGE NUMBER B3 - BYLINE Michelle Lang

Yoga : A state of mind

Yoga is accessible to everyone. In fact it is so very accessible because this practical science is best understood by those who manage to release their habitual drive to succeed and excel, and reach a level of acceptance of themselves. The truth is that the results of our efforts are of a secondary importance; in reality, what matters is our state of consciousness. Unfortunately, few practitioners actually recognise its entire philosophical wealth and advantages, which remain entirely sensible and pragmatic, even 4,000 years after Yoga's conception. One of the basic thoughts of yoga asserts that it is essentially non-competitive. To free ourselves from this sense of competition requires a cessation of judgments towards ourselves and certainly towards others. We can find here a fabulous apprenticeship which, when properly understood, will give our exercise period a sense of utter calm and fulfillment. However, the human mind tends to feel the need to be driven, to want to prove to itself that it can push further, that it can do better. We find in yoga a science of life based on a different fundamental attitude. Are we able to simply stretch with softness, with freedom from our tendency to overachieve? Are we able to harmonise with our own breath, and with motion, to maintain a simple posture while remaining in a calm and introspective state of consciousness? If so we will be bringing a good flow of oxygen into our lungs, our blood, our muscles and even to our brain through profound and slow inhalation. This attitude will allow us to fully appreciate the postures, as they are considered perfect, no matter our degree of flexibility.

It is possible to stretch softly with a state of total respect for ourselves and for others. To practice this type of fundamental thinking leads us towards a great wisdom, perhaps the most ancient wisdom, the one of true compassion and detachment –even towards ourselves, first and foremost, and then naturally towards everyone and all life. Yet, the materialistic rhythm of our society leads us to want to execute, makes us dream of success, of name and fame, of promotions, of respect and of individual power. We are haunted by the results of our actions, whether consciously or subconsciously. Yet this haunting obsession makes us forget one of the most important elements of all: the present moment and the splendour that rests in it. So we catch ourselves running after thoughts, trying to adhere to them, to fill the conditions that our minds impose on us without managing to live in the fullness of the present moment.

TOP

Tomorrow won’t be better!

Yoga mentions that an adequate attitude is to consider that tomorrow wont be better! Indeed, the present moment is filled with bliss, but do we realise it?

To constantly postpone our happiness and our satisfaction leads us further away from our objective which is to be happy, day after day. In fact, what if tomorrow wasn't better, and what if today was a better day then tomorrow, wouldn’t it be a shame to lose this wonderful day, dreaming about tomorrow?

We are not insinuating here that tomorrow will necessarily be difficult or worse, but our objective is to live fully, now! Consequently, if we are established in the fullness of the present moment, our body becomes our apprentice, and we can patiently stretch, breathe deeply, even sometimes while closing our eyes, and allow our body to become flexible, naturally. When we cease to judge, when we look at our body with acceptance and contentment, this period of simple exercise becomes sublime. Judgment is what pulls us away from this element of inspiration.

So to grasp this subtlety in the practice will lead us toward a fundamental change of attitude toward everything. Freed from judgments toward ourselves, free from the wandering of our mind, which tends to dream about tomorrow, we can study the present situation with gentleness. If we respect without judging the limitations of our body, we will be able one day to do the same on the level of our mind. This attitude leads towards a state of humanity and benevolence, of inner presence and receptivity. This premise animates happiness and dynamism, instead of a possible state of dissatisfaction and mental rigidity.

Our attitude is of such importance that we find in it a potential of happiness and unhappiness. Our attitude penetrates each pore of our body and mind; it has the capacity to weaken us, and can even make us regret words and actions.

Our whole universe is coloured by our individual consciousness. This idea of being freed from our obsessions and complexes has the capacity to transform our life radically. Acceptance and detachment are indispensable elements to our modern society. In it lies the necessary lucidity for us to make adequate choices. The postures developed by ancient yogis lead our attention to our bodies and its subtle mechanism; from this proximity we will discover it more easily. We will manage to relax it progressively, to breathe deeply during the postures and in this way to feed our entire body from a good and healthy oxygenation. Certain breathing exercises deepen this detachment and free us from conscious and unconscious emotional tensions. Meditation also enlightens us through the very power of attention. We can closely observe the cerebral activity, and we are often surprised by its endless activity. Here too, we wish to maintain our position of detachment and acceptance. A regular practice and a proper attitude can transform our life, integrally.

The yoga stretches lead our attention closer to the body so that we can relax it and strengthen it; meditation deepens those same concepts to perfect them, to the very core of our being. Sitting in a calm atmosphere, we can observe our thoughts with detachment. Certain meditation techniques will lead us toward a standard of life that will have been acquired naturally, an incomparable standard of peacefulness, wisdom and contentment.

Indeed, our potential is limitless; it is up to us to draw from its wonders.

Lynne Cardinal ©
Kaivalya Centre, Ottawa

Contact us for more information at

info@kaivalya.ca

TOP