Question 1

Weight Loss

Accepted Answer

Yep, you heard me! Hard to believe that you can lose weight without running yourself dead tired...but it's true. How?
 
Regular yoga builds muscle strength, which increases your body's ability to burn more calories while at rest. 
 
Certain Yoga classes help elevate your heart rate!  An elevated heart rate while doing activity means your body is working harder than normal and needs more energy.  Your body will use more calories as it's energy and continue to burn them after your heart rate has returned to it's resting state.  
 
Regular yoga can lower blood sugar levels by lowering cortisol and adrenaline levels, and improving sensitivity to the effects of insulin, thereby encouraging weight loss. 
 
Yoga encourages a healthy lifestyle in general. As stated, regular practice will get you moving and burn calories.  The spiritual and emotional dimensions of your practice may inspire you to become a more conscious and mindful eater, and even encourage you to address any eating and weight problems on a deeper level. 
 
Yoga also can lower LDL ("bad") cholesterol and boosts HDL ("good") cholesterol, contributing to weight loss and maintaing healthy weight. 
 
Regular practice will help you sleep better! A restful sleep for longer periods can contribute to weight loss! Yoga encourages a turning inward of the senses, which provides downtime for the nervous system, helping to improve your sleep. 
 
When we are sad or depressed, our serotonin levels decrease and our cortisol levels increase (cortisol leads to fat production).  Regular yoga practice has been shown to increase happiness and positivity, decreasing our cortisol levels and increasing our serotonin. Corisol is also secreted by the adrenal glads during stress. High cortisol has been found to cause certain food seeking behaviors that drive you to eat when you're upset, angry, or stressed. The body takes those extra calories and distributes them as fat, contributing to weight gain and the risk of diabetes and heart attack.
 
Certain medications can cause weight gain. Regular yoga practice could solve many of your health problems that you take medications for, allowing you to be able to reduce the amount of medication you take (please consult with a health care practicioner before changing/reducing medications - this is not to be used and professional medical advice against your perscribing physcian)
 
Do you have any weight concerns you are wondering if Yoga can help you with? Send me and email with your question and we can discuss!

Question 2

Disease Prevention

Accepted Answer

Yoga contributes to building stronger muscles and preventing cartilage and joint breakdown. Improving our muscular strength can protect us from conditions like arthritis and back pain, and help prevent falls. Joint cartilage is like a sponge; it receives fresh nutrients only when its fluid is squeezed out and a new supply can be soaked up. Yoga asanas take your joints through a range of motion to help bring fresh nutrients to those joints and cartilage. 
 
Yoga improves poor posture that may be contributing to back, neck, and other muscle and joint problems. As you slump, your body may compensate by flattening the normal inward curves in your neck and lower back. This can cause pain and degenerative arthritis of the spine. Yoga can prevent and even help correct this. 
 
Yoga can help ward off or slow down osteoporosis. Most yoga classes throw in some weight-bearing postures that can help build bone strength. Yoga may also lower the stress hormone cortisol thereby helping keep calcium in the bones.
 
Yoga can decrease blood clots that may contribute to DVT's, risk of stroke and risk of heart attacks. Yoga improves entire body blood flow and circulation (especially to extremeties), as well as boosting levels of hemoglobin and red blood cells, which carry fresh oxygen to the tissues.  Certain postures such as inversions can help bring venous blood from the legs and pelvis to flow back to the heart, where it can be pumped to the lungs to be freshly oxygenated. 
 
Yoga can help boost immunity to prevent sickness and disease. Yoga increases the drainage of lymph fluid, thereby disposing of toxic waste products quickly. As well, yoga can help reduce the amount of cortisol in our blood (a hormone secreted by the adrenal glands in response to stress) If your cortisol levels stay high regularly,it can compromise the immune system. High cortisol levels have also been found to cause certain food seeking behaviors that drive you to eat when you're upset, angry, or stressed. The body takes those extra calories and distributes them as fat, contributing to weight gain and the risk of diabetes and heart attack.
 
Regular yoga can lower blood sugar levels by lowering cortisol and adrenaline levels, and improving sensitivity to the effects of insulin, thereby reducing our risk of diabetes, or even helping to maintin proper insulin levels in those who already have diabetes. 
 
Yoga encourages a healthy lifestyle in general. As stated, regular practice will get you moving and burn calories.  The spiritual and emotional dimensions of your practice may inspire you to become a more conscious and mindful eater, thereby improving the nutrients, vitamins and minerals in your body to help fight disease and infection. Diet is a major contributor to overall disease and bad health. 
 
Yoga also can lower LDL ("bad") cholesterol and boosts HDL ("good") cholesterol, contributing to better overall cholesterol levels. 
 
Are you one of many who suffer from high blood pressure? High blood pressure increases our risk to heart attacks, strokes and blood clots. Yoga can help with that too! The focus on the breath, and relaxation found in yoga classes helps reduce blood pressure.  You may also learn relaxation techniques in class that you can bring into your every day life to help reduce your blood pressure even more!
 
Yoga can help prevent and reduce depression! Regular yoga can lead to a significant increase in serotonin levels (hormones that tend to make us happy) and a decrease in the levels of  cortisol (as explained above). Yoga also employs techniques for self-forgivness, focusing on the present, and relaxation, which all contribute to improving and preventing negative mental health. Our mental health is just as important as our physical health, and can easily be overlooked until it's too late (anxiety attacks, etc). Yoga is fantastic therapy! 
 
Yoga improves lung function and increases the excretion of toxins through our perspiration and increased breathing. You may find your allergies don't bother you as much with regular yoga practice. We practice deep breathing which helps contribute to the increase the maximum volume of the breath and the efficiency of the exhalation. Yoga also encourages exhalation through our nose which filters the air, warms it, and humidifies it, removing pollen and dirt and other things you'd rather not take into your lungs.

Question 3

Relaxation and Tension Release

Accepted Answer

In all Yoga, we turn our senses inward and focus on our breath, shifting our focus to the present. This provides relaxation by bringing our nervous system to the "rest and digest" state rather than the "fight or flight," decreases heart rate & blood pressure, and slows down our breath. This helps restore our body, bring calmess to our mind. 
 
We also bring awareness to how our body feels. We may notice we have a lot more tension in our body than we realize that could be causing us pain. Do you ever notice if you clench your jaw, tense your shoulders foward, grab the steeringwheel too tight? This can contribute to not only muscle fatigue, but doing this chronically can contribute to increased stress and pain.  Yoga allows us to focus on releasing that tension in each class, and provide techniques for being aware of our habitual tension tendenacies, to provide relief on a daily basis...not just in yoga class!

Question 4

Mental Health

Accepted Answer

We may not think of this often, but mental health is just as important as physical heath. We really should practice on training our minds and our bodies. We may exercise to streghthen our heart and lungs, we stretch to streghten and relax our muscles, but what do we do for our mind?
 
Anxiety: Yoga provides our mind with a rest from stimulation.  It allows us to focus on our breath, and be in the present moment...this is a start to meditation. Yoga can be your meditation. Yoga can help our mental health in just as many ways as it can help our physical health.  Yoga quiets the fluctuations of the mind by slowing down the loops of frustration, regret, anger, fear, and desire that can cause stress and anxiety by showing us how to quiet the mind. 
 
Depression: Regular yoga can lead to a significant increase in serotonin levels (hormones that tend to make us happy) and a decrease in the levels of cortisol (hormone released during stress). Yoga also employs techniques for self-forgivness, focusing on the present, and relaxation, which all contribute to improving and preventing negative mental health. Our mental health is just as important as our physical health, and can easily be overlooked until it's too late (anxiety attacks, etc). Yoga is fantastic therapy!

Question 5

Digestive Issues

Accepted Answer

It seems these days everyone has digestive problems!  With the amount of additives, processing and "bad stuff" in our food, digestive problems have become extremely common. Aside from cutting out these foods from our diet, yoga is a fantastic way to provide relieft to our overworking digestive system. 
 
For starters, all yoga classes usually combine some form of twisting poses and compression poses to the digestive tract. By constricting blood flow for a moment or two, and then allow blood to rush back quickly, we help increase the digestive tract to get rid of waste products quicker.  
 
Other poses, such as Balasana (Childs Pose) are great for relieving gas! And all forms of physical exercise increase motitily through the diegestive tract, helping to relieve constipation. 
 
As well, we know ulcers, constipation, diarrhea and even IBS can be exacerabted and caused by stress.  If you stress less, you suffer less! And since yoga is such a fantastic stress reliever (see section titled 'Stress Relief'), it can be great at helping to relieve or even get rid of these symtoms and suffering!

Question 6

Stress Relief and Better Sleep

Accepted Answer

Yoga slows down the mental loops of frustration, regret, anger, fear, and desire that can cause stress. Stress is implicated in so many health problems—from migraines and insomnia to lupus, MS, eczema, high blood pressure, and heart attack-. 
 
Yoga can provide relief from the hustle and bustle of modern life. Turning inward of the senses in yoga provides downtime for the nervous system. Another by-product of a regular yoga practice, studies suggest, is better sleep—which means you'll be less tired and stressed and less likely to have accidents.
 
One study found that a consistent yoga practice improved depression and led to a significant increase in serotonin levels and a decrease in the levels of monoamine oxidase (an enzyme that breaks down neurotransmitters) and cortisol.
 
As you practice yoga, you begin to notice where you hold tension: It might be in your tongue, your eyes, or the muscles of your face and neck. If you simply tune in, you may be able to release some tension in the tongue and eyes. With bigger muscles like the quadriceps, trapezius, and buttocks, it may take years of practice to learn how to relax them.
 
Yoga encourages you to relax, slow your breath, and focus on the present, shifting the balance from the sympathetic nervous system (or the fight-or-flight response) to the parasympathetic nervous system. The latter is calming and restorative; it lowers breathing and heart rates, decreases blood pressure, and increases blood flow to the intestines and reproductive organs

Question 7

More benefits

Accepted Answer

Increases strength
Improves balance, posture and flexibility
Prevents disease
Improves lung capacity
Prevents and improves digestive problems 
Builds awareness and mindfullness and compassion 
Improves sleeping habbits/problems with sleep
Reduces anxiety/stress/depression and increases overall happiness 
Improves your focus 
Lowers blood sugar and blood pressure
Helps to maintain a healthy lifestyle 
Improves immune system 
Betters your blood flow 
Prevents disease