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Discover how to: lose weight, eliminate your stress, increase your flexibility, build your strength using Yoga
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Help you lose weight: Many forms of yoga raise the heart rate into the aerobic range. But you don’t need to exert yourself to lose weight with yoga. Some studies show even gentle yoga and breathing techniques rev up your tired metabolism so you can lose weight.
A study at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle linked yoga and weight loss. This study of over 15,000 men and women showed people who did yoga lost weight while the control group gained weight.
Another study presented last year at the America Heart Association found yoga helped overweight high school students lose weight while the control group gained weight.
And the famed Dr. Dean Ornish encourages his patients to practice yoga to help ensure weight loss. When you do yoga and make it part of your lifestyle, you’ll soon discover it’s power for weight loss.
Yoga helps you to lose the weight in varied ways. It helps you build muscle mass. When you increase your muscle mass, you boost your resting metabolism — and that makes your body burn more calories. You strengthen your body from tip to toe with a regular practice. The thyroid gland normalizes your weight without you having to be in the gym 4-6 days a week. There are a number of factors involved in the normalizing of the weight. Some of the poses in a practice stimulate sluggish glands to increase their hormonal secretions. The thyroid gland, especially, has a big effect on our weight because it affects body metabolism.Yoga goes even deeper by changing the relationship of mind to body, and eventually to food and eating which can have tremendous impact on weight loss.
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Eliminate your stress: Yoga reduces the physical effects of stress on the body. By encouraging relaxation, you help on lowering your levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol is the chemical that is linked to increased belly fat. Big bellies are linked to insulin resistance-a precursor to Type 2 (adult-onset) diabetes – and heart disease. By combating stress, yoga helps to normalize cortisol levels and keep belly fat to a minimum.
Related benefits include lowering blood pressure and heart rate, improving digestion and boosting the immune system as well as easing symptoms of conditions such as anxiety, depression, fatigue, asthma and insomnia. Your lung capacity will improve, and so will the quality and depth of the breath. People who practice on a regular basis, will notice that they will have less upper respiratory infections, this is thought to be because of the quality of your breath one practices in a yoga practice.
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Improve your flexibility: Yoga helps to improve flexibility and mobility, increasing range of movement and reducing aches and pains. Many people can’t touch their toes during their first yoga class. Gradually they begin to use the correct muscles. Over time, the ligaments, tendons and muscles lengthen, increasing elasticity, making more poses possible. Yoga also helps to improve body alignment resulting in and helping to relieve back, neck, joint and muscle problems. Many people think that they need to be flexible or need to be able to touch their toes to do yoga. Not so! You come to yoga with however your body is at the moment, and with working through your practice, work towards a more flexible body!
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Build your strength: Yoga postures use every muscle in the body, helping to increase strength literally from head to toe. When I restarting taking yoga about 8 years ago, I could only do one pushup. After being in a regular practice for three months, I could at the end of those three months do 19 pushups! I was truely amazed at this feat, and was hooked on yoga from that point on.
While the different poses in a practice can strengthen the body, they also provide an additional benefit of helping to relieve muscular tension. Lots of people have upper body tension, due to being at a desk or car or at the computer for a lot of the day. Coming to a session, helps to build the upper body strength, and to relieve tension being held in the body, so you get benefit of increasing strength and easing body tension.
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Remember, you don’t have to be flexible, or in shape to do yoga. If you can breathe you can do some form of yoga. The more out of shape that you are, the more you’ll see immediate results in a regular practice.
Please join me in a gentle beginning yoga class. What happens in a class is for the first time, you’ll register and sign in, I’ll discuss with you any body issues that you may have (back, carpel tunnel syndrome, balance, surgeries, high blood pressure, etc.), Class is typically 60 minutes in length. Each class will begin with warm-up and stretching. The warm-up is then followed by focused breathing, then a series of poses that gently work the entire body. After the exercises there is a period of physical and mental relaxation and reflection.
Participants do not need any prior experience (I love beginners!!) to attend. All skill levels are welcomed. You may borrow a yoga mat, but I encourage you to purchase a yoga mat of your own. Blankets, blocks, straps are provided for you to use during your practice.
Where? At Wesley United Methodist Church in 3515 Helena Avenue, Nederland, Texas on Monday nights at 7:00 p.m. and childcare is provided with 24 hour notice. (You’ll need to call me initially to get this setup, 24 hours in advance.) More questions? Please email YogaWithGaileee@gmail.com or call at 409.727.3177. http://www.yogawithgaileee.com/
As I am getting deeper and deeper into one of the books that we are to read for the YogaFit Therapy course, I am amazed at all the benefits of a regular yoga practice can do for folks. And I’m a yoga teacher. (The more you teach yoga, it seems the more you want to know….and need to know!)
Please read on for more information about “Yoga as Medicine” book (excellent!)by Timothy McCall, M.D. http://www.drmccall.com/ ~Gaileee
Yoga appears to be effective in the treatment of a wide variety of health conditions. In Timothy McCall, M.D. Book, “Yoga As Medicine”, he goes on to say: We’ll be reviewing the scientific evidence later but, for now, let’s see what people who’ve tried therapeutic yoga have to say. In 1983 – 84, the London-based Yoga Biomedical Trust, run by Robin Monro, PhD, surveyed twenty-seven hundred(2,700) people, most between the ages of thirty-one and sixty, who used yoga therapeutically. To be included, participants had to have practiced yoga for at least two hours a week for a year or longer. Though the number of people with some of the conditions in question was small, the results (see the table below, and in Dr. McCall’s book, Table 1.1) were impressive:
* 98 percent of back-pain sufferers found yoga helpful
* 90 percent of cancer patients
* 82 percent of people with insomnia
* and 100 percent of alcoholics
The lowest success rate in the survey was for women with “menstrual problems,” two out of three of whom found that yoga helped.
Table 1.1 Conditions Improved by Yoga, Self-Reported
Medical Condition Number of Percentage Helped People Reporting By Yoga Alcoholism 24 100% Anxiety 838 94% Arthritis & Rheumatic Disorders 589 90% Asthma or Bronchitis 226 88% Back Disorders 1,142 98% Cancer 29 90% Diabetes 10 80% Duodenal Ulcers 40 90% Heart Disease 50 94% Hemorrhoids 391 88% High Blood Pressure 150 84% Insomnia 542 82% Menopausal Disorders 247 83% Menstrual Problems 317 68% Migraine 464 80% Neurological & Neuromuscular Diseases 112 96% Obesity 240 74% Premenstrual Syndrome 848 77% Smoking 219 74%
Source: The Yoga Biomedical Trust, London
Imagine how much you’d be hearing about a new drug that could accomplish even a fraction of this. Nevertheless, (it is Dr. Timothy McCall’s)it’s my experience that few in the medical community or the general public have any conception of what yoga has to offer. Part of the problem, (Dr. McCall) I’m convinced, is that many people who could benefit from yoga shy away due to misconceptions about what it is and isn’t, or who can do it and who shouldn’t.
Those subjects to be addressed in a different post.
In the book Yoga as Medicine, the Yogic Prescription for Health and Healing, Timothy McCall, M.D., makes the following statement in his book.
As someone who has been an MD for over twenty years, I can tell you that yoga is quite simply the most powerful system of overall health and well-being I have ever seen. Even if you are currently among what might be called the temporarily healthy, as preventive medicine, yoga is as close to one-stop shopping as you can find. This single comprehensive system can reduce stress, increase flexibility, improve balance, promote strength, heighten cardiovascular conditioning, lower blood pressure, reduce overweight, strengthen bones, prevent injuries, lift mood, improve immune function, increase the oxygen supply to the tissues, heighten sexual functioning and fulfillment, foster psychological equanimity, and promote spiritual well-being….and that’s only a partical list.
For continuing my education in my yoga studies, this is one of the books that we are to read, to get ready for YogaFit Therapy course. As I delved into this book and the others, I’ll be posting a bit of what I’m learning.
For more information on Dr. McCall’s book, visit his site at
Yoga As Medicine – A Yoga Journal Book by Timothy McCall, M.D.
So here is what my booth looked like at the Health Fair. I stood out in front of the booth, in the yoga mat area and talked to folks about yoga, gave out information, had people enter the yoga giveaways, get a snack (very popular), and demonstrated poses.
It worked out very well. I used some of my materials from my scrapbook days (sizzlets alphabets), and corner rounders for the photos.
Had my students write up testimonials and showed a vinyasa of easing upper and lower back pain from RestoraFlow Yoga creator, Sara Varona.
Passed out information from YogaFit too! Additionally, I took my YogaFit Kids cards, and displayed a Sun Salutation, as I thought that people might ask about kids yoga that way (yeah, they did).
I did giveaways for yoga mats, private lessons, free classes and a 3 month family membership to the local YMCA (thanks Port Arthur YMCA!!).
