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Using Basic Yoga Techniques to Reduce and Manage Life's Stress

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Using Basic Yoga Techniques to Reduce and Manage Life's Stress

Did you know professional athletes like football players basketball players and baseball players incorporate yoga into their workouts? Why? Yoga makes your mind and body stronger.

Yoga requires an immense amount of strength, focus and just plain flexibility. It reassures you that you can do things that seem impossible. For just a few moments, you focus on nothing other than breathing, strength and stillness.

After a lengthy session of strengthening, toning and meditating with yoga, life's problems often seem more manageable. Which can be especially helpful during a busy time in your life, like back-to-school season.

"Yoga has been used as a stress-buster for 6,000 years," says Glenda Twining, Yoga Instructor at Cooper Fitness Center Dallas. "The practice of yoga includes a powerful and deep relaxation technique. The deep, slow and rhythmic breathing incorporated in all yoga practices carries oxygen through your system and relaxes your muscles."

Body and Mind
"The definition of yoga is the union of the body and mind," says Twining. "The breath is the connection between the two."

As yoga helps you expel the stress from your body with each breath, it also is thought to help lower the risk of health conditions related to stress. Yoga may help to prevent or manage health conditions such as elevated heart rate, high blood pressure, depression, anxiety and insomnia. That said, you have to treat your body well in ways beyond yoga to be and feel healthy, including eating a sensible diet and getting a variety of physical activity. Enjoy yoga and any exercise you choose—and simply enjoy life.

"Rather than exploding from pressures of day-to-day living, you can use yoga as your stress release button," says Twining. "Yoga brings a wonderful gift of peacefulness to your body and mind, banishing stress."

What Yoga Does for You
Yoga helps instill a feeling of peace and tranquility that can spill over into your everyday life.

When practicing yoga, you will have a renewed outlook on the world, your body and your mind that is derived from taking the steps to mindfully take care of yourself," says Twining. "The calming effect of yoga will reduce stress, giving you an improved quality of life."

Stress, Energy and Yoga
When you're suffering from stress, it's likely you also feel too tired to deal with your stressors—and especially too tired to exercise. But yoga and other exercise can battle your stress and boost your fatigue.

"Movement generates energy, lethargy increases the stresses of life and stress is a major impediment to energy flow," explains Twining.

Yoga is yet another way to add balance to your life and incorporate something that’s good for you into your daily or weekly routine.

"Only when we feel physically and mentally balanced are we best capable of dealing with stress," says Twining. "Yoga assists in developing a state of calm, strength and confidence. So while you build a strong, flexible body, you will simultaneously build a strong, flexible mind."

For more information about becoming a member at Cooper Fitness Center Dallas, click here or call 972.233.4832.

Article provided by Cooper Aerobics Marketing and Communications.