Tag: yoga

  • The Health Benefits of Yoga in School

    The Health Benefits of Yoga in School

    School breeds stress, and stress can be the cause of a whole array of health issues. While finding time to exercise can seem impossible it is important—but so is taking care of your mind. Luckily, yoga has many benefits. This practice has swept North America at a stunningly fast rate as more and more people realize it not only helps fitness and personal health, but also fights depression and provides learning and coping attributes. First, let us go through the main long-term benefits of regular yoga practice and how it applies to YOUR health while in university of college.

    Taking on life in a calm and relaxing manner while applying yoga techniques to learning

    Yoga practice promotes relaxed feelings while expanding meditative skills and easing the body. In most forms of yoga patience, concentration and repetition are necessary and a main focus for the instructor and students. The skills you learn here will seep into how you handle the stress of school, balance work and studies, and how you memorize and approach work and study time lines. As a calm mind lends itself well to focus, yoga uses this to help pave the way to improved memory, IQ scores, reaction times and coordination. You’ll find that the patience and breathing skills learned in yoga will help immensely with problem solving.

    Sleeping Better

    That relaxation we talked about above…that will not only impact your yoga sessions and school life but also your sleeping time. Yoga loosens you up and positively affects your health—a tense body and troubled mind disrupts sleep. The more you progress with yoga, the deeper you will sleep. This will leave you rested and ready for school and all the troubles that come with it.

    Fewer colds and illnesses, relieves depression

    According to YogaJournal.com, regular yoga practice drains your lymphs—through the stretching of muscles and moving around of organs, it progressively boosts immunity. This helps your lymphatic system kill cancerous cells, battle infection, and rid the body of the toxic waste produced by cellular functioning. Regular yoga practice ups your heart rate, and this is instrumental in relieving depression. Not only does it promote a healthy mind, but it is also common for those involved with yoga to develop healthier eating lifestyles. This dietary change and the constant movement of yoga prevent digestive problems. If all of these problems sound familiar to you personally, it is because university is a particular breeding ground for all of it. Let yoga help you.

    Improving flexibility and intake of oxygen

    All the movement and bending you do in yoga goes a long way to improve your quality of life. The unavoidable improvement of flexibility will help with posture, and this actually helps you to feel good and more focused in school and when studying. Regular patterns of breathing help with focus and relaxation, both of which will make learning a lot less stressful.

    Different types of yoga and their focuses:

    • Restorative Yoga—Focuses primarily on relaxation. Let yourself drop out of your troubles.
    • Anusara Yoga—Heart-opening poses.
    • Iyengar Yoga—A strong focus on alignment and prop use including blocks, harnesses, straps and cushions.
    • Ashtanga Yoga—Push your body with this extreme power yoga.
    • Kundalini Yoga—A core workout that focuses on the area around your lower spine.
    • Vinyasa Yoga—A flow yoga that can be called the most popular type—begin with a sun salutation.
    • Hatha Yoga—A wind down. Slow and gentle movements.
    • Bikrram Yoga—Hot yoga! 26 poses that often focus on alignment in 105-degree heat and 40% humidity.

    Source: www.yogajournal.com

  • The Importance of Finding Peace Within

    The Importance of Finding Peace Within

    Finding peace within is sometimes a mysterious topic. One may often wonder what it even means within the hustle and bustle of daily life; is it possible? Can it ever be achieved? We are overloaded with a seemingly endless to do list and people to please. Being aware of not feeling at peace can be a motivation to find it again, and to overcome the challenges that are presented to us.

    The first question for overcoming the feeling of being ill at ease is to identify why you feel ill at ease. Perhaps your to do list has not been worked on and is becoming quite frightening, or perhaps the problem is with the to do list itself. Maybe the thought of everything on that list gives you no satisfaction at all. If the problem is that you have not done any work on your to do list in a long time, the solution may be very simple; break the list down into smaller steps. For example: If you have a presentation due on the topic of women’s rights in Canada, you might want to break the project down into doing an introduction on day 1, the body of the presentation on day 2, and the conclusion of the presentation on day 3. Doing this with the various items on your to do list will help to make things less scary, and more approachable.

    On the other hand, if your to do list is filled with things that are not rewarding, then you may need to conduct an evaluation of your goals and desired end results for your various pursuits. Sometimes we avoid doing work because we do not truly care anymore about the results. For example, if I want to get a high school diploma, I will go to class and do the homework and act generally respectful of those around me in order to facilitate my success. If you do not want a high school diploma anymore, you may consider dropping some of the items off your to do list. In this case, I would recommend speaking with a guidance counselor who may be able to re-light the motivation to complete the diploma. If you are knocking off things on your to do list, you are closer to achieving the goals you originally set out for yourself. The question is how you can regain a sense of inner peace amid seemingly random, negative emotions?

    There are many strategies for regaining peace within:

    • Take some time to reflect upon all of the things that you are grateful for.
    • Do some meditation or conduct concentrated moments of silence.
    • Talk with a friend about positive things in your life.
    • Get a little exercise to increase your brain’s natural feel good chemicals.
    • Do some yoga, or engage in an activity that makes you feel good.

    Finding peace within is something that is always in your control. You are always able to regain it; it just takes some investigating to find solutions that will work for you. Good luck!