First Person: How Yoga Keeps Your Body Young and Flexible

After having a personal yoga practice for over 20 years, the benefits have proven to help in maintaining flexibility and in builing strength. Young or old at some point in time without the proper stretching and exercise our bodies fail to respond the way we want them to. Irrespective of your age, a personal yoga practice offers a variety of poses, also known as asanas, that can provide stretching and strengthening that the body requires to become or remain supple and flexible.

Yoga is an excellent choice for the person who prefers having control of the type of physical moves and the amount of time dedicated to fitness. By creating your own personal at home practice, you are afforded privacy and comfort in learning the poses as well as progressing at your own pace. Most importantly, yoga allows the practitioner to focus on the various asanas needed to keep the body long, lean and strong.

There are certain asanas that focus on the lower part of the body that are ideal for creating balance and lower body strength. Examples include asanas such as Warrior 1, 2 and 3, all of which engage not only the leg muscles, but also the upper body as well as the core or abdomen area. Other simple yoga asanas such as Downward Dog are perfect for an excellent complete body stretch as well as developing strength. Once you familiarize yourself with the various asanas, you can create a customized sequence designed to benefit your physical needs.

By beginning your day with simple asanas such as Sun Salutations, you invite strength, energy and balance into your life, by directing your focus on the alignment of your body, which also helps to alleviate the minor pains of the imbalance and poor posture most commonly carried by today's society of chronic computer users. Fortunately, yoga is mainstream and very popular worldwide. This popularity has increased the accessibility of free yoga classes and instructions online allowing anyone with computer access to embrace yoga and its physical and mental benefits. Easy to understand information regarding the benefits of yoga can be found at popular sources such as the web site for Yoga Journal.

Yoga is an ideal activity for training the body and allows the practitioner to slowly stretch and strengthen the body while preparing it for more intense training. It is up to the yoga practitioner to decide how little or how much training is to be done. Ultimately, yoga provides the perfect tools for anyone looking to keep his or her body, or to train the body, to be young, supple, strong and flexible.

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