Posts Tagged ‘holiday stress’

20 February

Be Good to Your Heart try yoga
Ancaster yoga may be good for your Heart
Yoga is an important component of the Dr. Dean Ornish Program, internationally noted for successfully treating heart disease by showing patients how to make critical lifestyle changes through exercise, low-fat vegetarian diet, stress management and emotional support.
“Yoga is a huge tool in the fight to prevent, stop or reverse the heart disease patterns we are seeing,” says Vicki Lindberg, yoga instructor and coordinator with the Dr. Dean Ornish Program for Reversing Heart Disease at Alegant Health, Bergan Mercy Medical Center in Omaha.
The Ornish program uses Hatha yoga, which involves specialized breathing and a series of poses — in combination with complementary techniques — meditation and visualization, for example — to help lower pulse rate, cholesterol level and blood pressure, improve respiration, endocrine function and circulation, normalize weight, enhance flexibility, and impart deep relaxation. Yoga, like resistance training, increases muscularity, but without making excessive demands on the body.

“We use gentle yoga during the first half of the program and gradually bring in more challenging poses, but never anything the participants can’t easily breathe through,” says Lindberg, a registered nurse who also uses yoga for pulmonary patients. She suggests one hour of yoga a day to achieve best curative and preventive results.

“Sixty minutes of gentle yoga and the body feels as if it’s just had three or four hours of rest,” she says. Research suggests yoga elevates serotonin levels, leading to a greater sense of serenity and well being, which is critical to controlling dangerous stress levels.

“Heart disease is progressive,” says Lindberg. “Despite all the treatments we have, all the modern technology, why is heart disease still the number one killer of Americans? Because they’re not making the lifestyle changes they need to once they’ve had the procedures. One of the changes is controlling the stress in their lives…once they’re in the program they learn to identify stress and how to handle it.”

Even when adapted to accommodate the special needs of heart patients, yoga appears to directly affect internal organs and their efficient operation. Specific poses effectively reroute blood to the heart, while traditional yogic breathing exercises have a calming effect on the agitated heart muscle.

Take A Deep Breath:

“I stress the importance of learning different breathing techniques — the three-part breath and alternate nostril breathing — so important for the mind, body, breath connection,” says Lindberg.

Alternate nostril breathing is an excellent daily exercise for lowering blood pressure, relieving insomnia and alleviating anxiety:

  • Choose a quiet spot, sit erect and breathe deeply through your nose.
  • Using your right thumb, press on your right nostril; exhale through your left nostril. Then inhale slowly, breathing deep into your stomach and chest.
  • Don’t strain. Breathe gently and smoothly. Repeat using the other nostril.
  • Try to make exhalation twice as long as inhalation i.e., breathe in for five, breathe out for ten
  • Finish by deep breathing through both nostrils.
  • Do two rounds, once or twice a day. Increase gradually over period of weeks.

“The cardiac patients who take advantage of the yoga class offered through regular rehab feel it’s been a lifesaver,” Lindberg reports.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Yoga Ancaster News | No Comments »

23 November

Yoga Ancaster and Holiday Stress

Taking The Stress Out Of Vacations With Yoga

Even during vacations we are still attacked by outside stressful factors which can ruin a very promising vacation. Vacation stress is a rather antagonistic expression but it is real and it can cause serious upset. There are countless reasons to get angry during your vacation: poor services, bad weather, high prices, noisy tourists, annoying insects and the list can go on an on. Yoga offers several methods of reducing the effects of such negative elements in the form of meditation, sakshin, pratyahara and pranayama.

Meditation is also a recommended practice when vacation stress factors become active. Meditation helps you prepare for any potential stressful situations and is invaluable during and after these obstacles are gone. A detached state of consciousness that allows you to get a better understanding of the realities around you is referred to as sakshin. Pratyahara is a state of peace obtained by reducing to a minimum all outside intereferences. The mind gets calm and relaxed, focusing towards the inside of your own body. By using pranayama you are able to calm yourself in almost any difficult situation by regulating your breathing and thus harmonizing the energies in your body.

Being prepared for any stress factors is vital for a successful vacation. Anticipating a potential problem doesn’t mean worrying about it before hand. It means that when the problem does occur you should already have a good understanding of why it happened. You will always get much better results by addressing an issue with a clear and calm head, rather then acting on an impulse.

When a situation occurs try to “step out” of your body and see yourself in that particular setting. Objectivity is hard to reach, especially when it comes to your own self, but it helps to get a neutral perspective on things. Directing an action by the guidelines of an objective mind will prove more successful than jumping in head first into a situation. Concepts like “I couldn’t help myself” should be constantly discouraged from your own vocabulary and thoughts. Take control of your inner self and you will have better control of what’s outside your body in the surrounding world. You should first feel you body’s reaction to an outside element and only react afterwards, when a clear judgment dictates what to do. Breathing techniques are of great help when it comes to relaxing an impulsive spirit and bringing calm to a particular event or situation.

You need to interrupt the actions of your subconscious mind before you are able to take control of a situation. Initial responses are hasty and often very hard to avoid, but it is essential that, through practice, you get a constant feeling of control over your reactions. The first reaction to a negative element can be either that of fighting back or that of fleeing. In any of the two cases a considerable amount of tensions fills you body, and it could be days or weeks before you manage to get over this unfortunate event. A calm and balanced response has chances of eliminating any sort of tension before it even gets a chance to start growing. Remember that most vacations are short and you can’t afford to spend half of your stay in a negative mood. After all, you are there to try to recharge your energy, not to try to waste it on meaningless tensions.

Tags:
Posted in Yoga Articles | No Comments »
Please visit WP-Admin > Options > Snap Shots and enter the Snap Shots key. How to find your key