Yoga - Have You Tried it Yet?

One of my most intense passions in life is yoga. I sometimes daydream that when my children are all in school and my full-time-mom days are at an end, I will become a personal yoga instructor and share the splendor with others in the world who could use the release and uplifting experience of being a yogi. Maybe someday doing yoga will instill in me the confidence to actually do it. Sometimes yoga makes me think anything is possible. At the very least, I can share about it from the shy confines of Associated Content.

I know people have been doing yoga for a long time now. It was-what-a decade ago, that it became the new popular trend in fitness? And of course yoga as a self-art and meditation and ritual has existed for centuries. But I have to say that the fact that I was so skeptical about yoga as a modern fitness routine is a big part of what makes me so passionate about it now that I've embraced it. And the question I really want to pose and address here and now is, "Why haven't you tried it yet?" If you have some experience with yoga (beyond the initial falling over and crashing to the floor in pain and vowing you'll never put yourself through anything so ridiculous and impossible ever again), then you'll know what I'm talking about. Good for you! But if you've never tried yoga, I honestly have to say, you just don't know what you're denying yourself and your life. And no typical American life should be without it. I wish it were the common thing in our country for everyone to have their daily yoga, just like Mexicans have their rational siestas.

Now I'm soap-boxing instead of edifying. Suffice it to say, the body and mind and person benefit uniquely from yoga in ways that I think the average person is crazy to go without. For instance?

I'll start with something that will really surprise you. Sexy feet. Yeah, no kidding. Put your feet through a month of Downward Dog poses and you'll notice the difference. Who ever thought you could work out and shape up your feet? But they gain so much flexibility and tone from the various yoga poses that they actually look beautiful. You do yoga barefooted (one of my favorite things about yoga), and really rely on your feet and toes to ground you on the floor. While we're on the issue of shaping the body, yoga is the best way I've ever tried for sculpting your figure from head to toe. It does absolutely amazing things for your butt especially. Two months into doing yoga and I had the back view I hadn't seen since I was 21 and thought I'd never see back there again. Also, the simplest poses really work your legs and arms (and the complicated poses REALLY work them!), so that you build lean but very defined muscle. Your body is sleek and skinny, but you also have great tone that automatically shows itself off, no flexing required.

Every move you make in yoga is linked to your breath. The breathing technique itself is beautiful and helps you relax even when you're not doing yoga. If you can keep from freaking out during natural childbirth (I couldn't), breathing like this helps calm and relax you. You inhale as deeply as possible through the nose, then exhale through the nose, but force the air into the back of the throat. It makes a soothing, oceanic sound in your head that instantly calms. So in yoga, you draw or release the breath with each new position. You feel very focused, which helps you find and keep your balance and helps tight muscles to ease deeper into the stretch. Your mind clears and your thoughts turn inward so that all you think about is your posture, your energy, and the glory of being alive and having a body to move. After a while your body is terrifically oxygenated and your lung capacity is at its peak. If you do yoga regularly, you'll notice when you're resting that you can breathe more easily than ever before.

Yoga is great for your posture and your back. My husband has a bad back and, alas, no amount of my preaching at him the spine-reconfiguring wonders of yoga has inspired him to take it up. But I've noticed I have a much easier time holding my 35 lb. daughter than I had holding her at 15 lbs. when I'd only just started doing yoga. You do all kinds of wonderful stretching and twisting which help elongate and open up the back and spine. You learn to stand and sit tall and extend the length of the body out the top of the head. I know what it's like to end each day with back pain, and I know what it's like to enjoy life without daily back pain because you have a healthy, lengthened, loosened spine. It's like having a chiropractor without actually having one. Plus, when you twist you not only open up the spine and relieve torso tension, you also detox the organs in your body and tone your waist.

One of the best benefits of yoga is that once you're done (if you make it all the way through your work out and finish with the Final Relaxation portion where you do some great floor stretching, exercise mental release, and finally lie down on the floor and sink into a deep letting go), when you get up you honestly feel like you just had a one-hour massage. No kidding. It's heavenly. I curl up with a cup of coffee after my workout and just bliss out. It feels so good. The body is so relaxed and tension-free and your mind is so eased and cleared, you feel like you're glowing.

What about the meditation? If you're not agnostic or religiously Eastern oriented, it can be alarming. That's one thing that turned me off to yoga in the first place. Why do people who are merely trying to get in shape and be healthy need to be converted, brainwashed to a rather God-less, sans Christ belief system? You can be relieved to know that there are more opportunities in the U.S. to do yoga without the meditative instructions than there are with it. You can find it if you really want it. But if you don't want it, most gyms, DVDs and TV shows don't include anything beyond simple relaxation techniques as their meditation instruction. You simply hold a pose and a soothing voice reminds you to pay attention to your posture, to the muscles you are tensing and the muscles you are releasing, to link your breath with your thoughts and your movements, to let go of everything and sink into a clear state of emptiness. Some instructors go farther. Steve Ross, for one. I take what I can agree with and benefit from in what he says and ignore the rest. I fathom and appreciate how he describes the lovely buzz after the work out as every cell in your body vibrating, celebrating their individual aliveness.

I enjoy hearing him talk about how open the body is, how it melds with the space around you. But when he starts talking about being one with the entire universe and not confined by the restriction of your body, I leave off. Here's where I find the real beauty of yoga. That tingling sensation when you completely relax at the end of the workout is probably the mere result of the fabulous circulation and oxygenation your body is experiencing from the exertion, stretching, breathing, and relaxing. Yet it does feel very spiritual. It does consume you and fill the mind. It makes the beautiful things about you and life stand out. To me as a Christian, that openness to the space around me and that vibration of energy in every cell of my being is the perfect opportunity to meditate on God. God is Spirit and we must worship Him in spirit. Whenever His presence draws near to me, I get that same tingly, open feeling. So when yoga brings me to that point my mind naturally turns to Him. It makes me recall the passages in Psalms about thinking of God on our bed, those everyday moments when we can't help but recall Him and crave His presence. And lying on my mat in a lengthy pose of Final Relaxation, feeling the tingles and aware of myself so acutely, reveling in the beauty of being alive and being me, I love to lift up my heart to God. It's like automatic, unbidden worship. Effortless. Flowing. Meditative. Easy. Sweet. Even if you're not inclined, for whatever reason, to meditate on God at this point in yoga, you can meditate on yourself. Not like you're God, of course. But you can contemplate who you are better than at any other time. There's something about yoga that oh, so simplistically makes you feel whole, beautiful, purely marvelous. The things you admire about yourself come so easily to mind in this position. You can relax and feel genuinely and simply happy to be alive and be who you are. You have so much hope. There's so much beauty in your mind and it seeps into your heart, and your view of life on earth is brighter and more solid. You don't have to meditate on the universe and finding enlightenment to benefit from the spirituality of doing yoga.

So if you haven't tried yoga yet, I hope you don't mind me asking the goading question of "why haven't you?" My intention was to inspire you, to encourage you to do something truly good for yourself. If I were to recommend one dynamic health move to the country at large, it would be to do yoga. It makes you fall in love with your body, your person, life. You want to find ways in the mind and spirit to get the most out of life and eternity. You begin to respect your body and take care of it. You get in shape and feel really good and that gives you a major boost in the self-perception department. You have more energy and less tension and you sleep better because you learn by doing yoga how to truly relax. And the great thing is, even easy yoga has all of these benefits. You don't have to learn how to stand on your head. (I don't intend to ever stand on my head-I have tile floors in my house where I do my workouts.) Anyone can do it. There's a comfortable level for whatever you can handle. Often people who try yoga and hate it just haven't gotten the point of it yet. It really is a tremendous workout for the body, so don't be fooled by how simple it looks. And don't discard the mind-body link as silly. It means you're focusing your attention thoroughly on your posture and balance and breath and muscles so that you get the most out of the exertion. And the mind-body link is what results in that great just-had-a-head-to-toe-massage feeling after you're done. No one should go through life without knowing that there's a simple way to obtain all of that.