Yoga is a spiritual and ascetic discipline and is widely practiced for health and relaxation. Yoga translates to union in Sanskrit. It utilizes breath control, simple meditation and relaxation, and the adoption of specific bodily postures. Yoga is a gentle way to improve your posture, balance, and coordination. Yoga is aimed at developing harmony in the body, mind, and environment. Some believe that the true meaning of yoga is not a noun, but rather a verb. Yoga is the process where we engage our body, our mind and our emotions. With our body, we strive to understand our body, the way it moves, and the way we use it. With our mind, we look to relax our thoughts, find where our mind habitually goes, and how to focus it. With our emotions, we seek to understand what we are feeling and notice how we tend to react.
Benefits of Yoga
Yoga provides both physical and mental health benefits for people of all age levels and abilities. When we think of yoga, we think of the ways that yoga can improve flexibility and posture, increase strength, enhance relaxation, and improve balance. But did you know that yoga can also improve breathing, decrease blood pressure, improve concentration, decrease pain, protect your spine and joint health, help you sleep better, and help decrease depression? Yoga has also been shown to increase your heart rate and blood flow, improve lymphatic drainage and boost immunity, build better bone health, lower blood sugar, increase your confidence and self-esteem, decrease stress, and encourage a healthy lifestyle.
Types of Yoga
There are many different variations or types of yoga, but they all follow one encompassing belief called ahimsa, or non-harming. Yoga should not be looked at with the “no pain, no gain” mentality and is not something that you should push through or take your body past its limits. Yoga can be performed at all ages and abilities. Different types of yoga include;
- Acro Yoga
- Aerial Yoga
- Ashtanga Yoga
- Bikram Yoga
- Hatha Yoga
- Hot Yoga
- Iyengar Yoga
- Kundalini Yoga
- Power Yoga
- Prenatal Yoga
- Restorative Yoga
- Sivananda Yoga
- Vinyasa Yoga
- Yin Yoga
We offer a variety of yoga and wellness classes–contact us at (740) 549-7041 or visit our website for a class schedule!
