Stretch Yourself Healthy
Benefits of Yoga and Meditation
Yoga isn’t just a fad, popular, trend thing anymore; it’s become a healthy, beneficial, and strengthening lifestyle for millions of people around the world. “It started out to be this cool new trend at first, but people eventually realized the real benefit with a daily yoga routine,” Erica Stephens, co-owner of The Lotus Studio, said.
For many, the yoga trend was this new, hippie exercise that everyone did to be part of the next new thing in town. However, as many devote yogis and instructors will tell you, yoga has immediate and long-term benefits on the health of the body and mind.
What kind of benefits? “The relaxation techniques incorporated in yoga can lessen chronic pain, such as lower back pain, arthritis, headaches and carpal tunnel syndrome,” Natalie Nevins, DO, a board-certified osteopathic family physician and certified Kundalini Yoga instructor, said. “Yoga can also lower blood pressure and reduce insomnia.”
So with benefits like increased flexibility, muscle strength and tone, improved respiration and energy, creating a balanced metabolism, weight reduction, and cardio health, who wouldn’t want to do yoga?
“Sometimes it takes a while for a person to see the benefits of a yoga practice,” Stephens said. “Sometimes they’ll feel it right after their first session, but eventually they’ll notice their flexibility has increased, their breathing is better, and they have a lot less stress.”
“Although yoga is much more than a stress-reduction method, stress adversely affects a wide range of health conditions, and yoga is arguably the most comprehensive approach to fighting stress ever invented,” Dr. Timothy McCall said. “Stress isn’t just a factor in conditions commonly labeled “stress-related,” such as migraines, ulcers, and irritable bowel syndrome, but it appears to contribute to such major killers as heart attacks, diabetes, and osteoporosis.”
So now that there’s scientific proof to the benefits of yoga, more people are turning to yoga and incorporating a basic routine into their daily lives. So how does one find a yoga studio that will meet a person’s needs and abilities?
With what could be dozens of yoga studios in town, choosing the right one is like choosing what restaurant to go to for dinner. “Obviously we’re not the only studio in town, but what makes us unique is that we have several different types and levels of yoga to meet your individual needs and abilities, “ Stephens said. “And of course, we offer meditation sessions, too!”
Meditation has been around for thousands of years, but it has only recently become such a popular practice in the West and more and more people are incorporating a meditation practice into their lives.
Like yoga, meditation has several benefits according to the University of Massachusetts Medical School, The Journal of Sexual Medicine, Harvard Medical, and the Stroke Journal, meditation can overcome stress, boost creativity, decrease your risk of heart attack, increase your focus and attention, and lower blood pressure.
Many yoga studios only have one kind of yoga practice or level, so you either have to keep up or give up. At The Lotus Studio, whose opening their second location in the heart of downtown San Antonio, Texas, their many choices of types and levels of yoga and meditation serves as a welcoming and comfortable place for all types of people. Whether you’re brand new, need a refresher, or are an advent yogi, The Lotus is a place to find what works for you and work your way up.