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Your Health
& Yoga
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Topical Index |
The 7 Habits of Highly Healthy
People Adopt
these 7 habits and you’ll feel better, look better, have more energy, and
spend less on medicine and healthcare. 1. Eat Well. With
our hectic lifestyles, we often opt for fast or pre-packaged foods. While quick and tasty, such foods are usually
loaded with fat, salt, and carbohydrates, and low in nutrition. Such foods contribute to obesity,
diabetes, heart disease, and tooth decay.
There is nothing sadder than a 7 year-old with rotten teeth due to a
diet of “Happy” Meals, candy, and Mountain Dew. Healthy eating can be just as tasty if not more so than junk
food. In fact, the large variety of
flavor, color, and taste of natural foods can be an ongoing process of exploration
and discovery. For a healthy diet eat
lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, low-fat protein, and fiber. Eat fats and dairy products in moderation. Some fats are better than others. Unsaturated
fats, especially mono-unsaturated, are the healthiest. Partially hydrogenated vegetable oils are
the worst, and now outlawed in some states.
Coconut oil is especially unhealthy even though it is a vegetable
based oil. Salt intake in the US
today is in toxic proportions. While
a reasonable daily sodium intake is 1000 mg, many restaurant meals contain
2000-3000mg. Soy sauce is generally
loaded with sodium. Use it in
moderation or just leave it out. 2. Relax or Meditate. The human brain is amazing: it can compose a sonnet, diagnose an
obscure disease, or build a spacecraft. But as willing as the mind is to work
around-the-clock, it needs regular rest. With our constant work, family and
financial worries, we often struggle to turn it off temporarily. Meditation is the practice of temporarily
turning down the thought process. As
mundane as it might seem, this is the hardest thing for most people to do. Just close your eyes, and see whether you
can go 30 seconds without a thought popping into your mind. But learning how to shut off the constant
mental diatribe is a pillar of good health.
There are many different meditation techniques. The simplest approach, in a nutshell, is
to find a comfortable seat in a quiet environment. Close your eyes. Let
thoughts flow in and out like waves crashing against the beach and
receding. Don’t fight your thoughts,
just try to avoid getting attached to them or developing a story around
them. Even 5 minutes a day of quiet
sitting can improve your health and sense of well-being. What a simple and inexpensive way to
enhance the quality of your life! 3. Exercise Often. Regular exercise improves heart function,
muscle and bone strength, balance and flexibility, circulation, mental
clarity, and the overall sense of well-being. Exercise reduces your risk of heart disease, diabetes,
osteoporosis, depression, and insomnia.
Do something you enjoy, such as walking or jogging, swimming, tennis,
biking, hiking, dancing, weight training, tai chi, yoga, soccer, or softball. Naturally, we have a slight bias towards
Ashtanga yoga, as we feel it encompasses all the necessary ingredients of
healthy exercise. Unlike other yoga
styles, the Ashtanga practice emphasizes cardiovascular and strength training
in addition to balance, stretching, and relaxation. 4.
Don’t Smoke. Tobacco is the leading cause of
preventable death in the U.S. Quitters
are winners. Within weeks of quitting smoking, pulmonary function and
exercise tolerance improve, and respiratory symptoms decrease. One year after quitting, the risk of heart
disease drops by half! Counseling and medications can help you quit. If you
smoke, the single most important thing you can do for your health it to
QUIT! 5. Get Enough Sleep.
Restful sleep is important to proper physical function, emotional
balance and an overall sense of well-being.
Most adults require 7-8 hours of sleep. Insomnia may be temporary or chronic. To improve sleep, limit stimulants (caffeine,
decongestants), exercise a few hours before bed, and do something quiet and
relaxing the last hour of your day. 6. Don’t Treat, Prevent! Many chronic ailments can be treated or cured with early
detection. Effective cancer screenings
include PAP smears for cervical cancer, mammograms for breast cancer,
colonoscopy for colon cancer, and skin inspection for melanoma. High blood pressure, high cholesterol, and
diabetes are epidemic in our society, and are easily detected with simple tests.
7. Socialize Often. We humans are social animals, and naturally crave the company of others. Reach out to friends, neighbors, and family to stimulate your body, mind and heart. Join a club, church, gym or community center. Sign up for adult classes or volunteer for a local charity. Share your life with others--after all, we’re all in this together! Start living healthy
today by bringing awareness to your old habits. How do you relieve stress? Do you smoke, drink, eat, or get
grumpy? How do you pick your food? Do
you grab whatever’s cheap or convenient, or do you read the nutrition label?
Once you’re aware of your bad habits you can replace them with healthy
ones. Set realistic goals. Making
many changes at once is dramatic, but likely to fail. Make a list. Only when you’re comfortable
with one change should you tackle the next.
It took years to develop those bad habits, so give yourself time to
change them. Stress,
Stress Management, and Relaxation Stress
is the body’s reaction to any situation that causes emotional or
physiological imbalance. Also known
as the ‘Fight or flight response’, stress is hardwired into the human body,
and has enabled adaptation and survival of the species. When
reacting to stressors, the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system
becomes dominant. It releases hormones that begin multiple reactions intended
to protect the body from imminent danger.
The body reacts to stress in the same way whether it is real or
imaginary. The same physiological
processes are invoked whether we confront a grizzly bear in the woods or whether
we are stuck in stop-and-go traffic on an LA freeway. Typical stressors in modern urban society
have little to do with immediate survival, and are mostly based on time
management, relationships, multiplexing activities, urban congestion &
related feelings of helplessness. Contrary
to “Fight-or-flight” response associated with the sympathetic branch of the
autonomic nervous system, excitation of the parasympathetic branch is
associated with the relaxation response.
The principal role of the parasympathetic nervous system is to bring
the body back to homeostasis, or balance. The
following table lists the primary differences between sympathetic and
parasympathetic responses.
The
physiological reactions associated with sympathetic excitation occur as a group
– if one function is excited, then all the others are turned on as well. Furthermore, it takes the excitation of
just one parasympathetic reaction to turn off all sympathetic reactions. This fact is of particular relevance to
yoga, because yoga practice
includes the intentional manipulation of the autonomous nervous system so as
to control its mode of excitation. For example, by working with our
breath in pranayama so that it becomes parasympathetically excited,
sympathetic reactions are turned off, leading to overall relaxation. Similarly, depression can be relieved by a
yoga routine that stimulates sympathetic dominance leading to an alert state
of mind. One’s
state-of-mind has a direct effect on the bio-chemical reaction of the body to
stress. If the stressor is perceived
as a threat, the adrenal glands increase production of both catecholamines
(epinephrine & norepinephrine) and cortisol. If the stressor is perceived as a challenge but not a threat,
cortisol levels do not increase. Catecholamines
are associated with dilation of the blood vessels to improve respiration,
muscle oxygenation & toning, and increased alertness. These are all functions that are desirable
for exercise and yoga practice.
Secretion of cortisol is associated with stress reduction, muscle
contraction, elevated blood pressure, and mental alertness. These are all positive reactions in the
right state and proper duration. Chronic
emotional stress can lead to ongoing stimulation of the stress reaction in
the sympathetic nervous system and to excessive and prolonged elevated levels
of cortisol. The physiological
reaction may lead to ulcers, hypertension, cardiac arrhythmia, indigestion,
headache, backache, poor sleep, anxiety, depression, autoimmune disease,
reduced resistance to cancer, and cognitive impairment in old age. While
numerous studies have shown that yoga practice can be an excellent tool for
stress relief, there is limited scientific evidence as to the direct effect
of specific techniques, postures, or sequences. The fact that a wide variety of yoga styles and techniques
relieve stress may lead one to believe that the positive effects of yoga are
actually more generic: exercise (hatha postures), socializing (classmates
& teacher), and mentally letting go of pre-occupations while focusing on
the practice. Also, the moral restraints & observances (Yamas &
Niyamas) provide the practitioner with guidelines for healthy living,
promotes compassion, and cultivate a sense of community, all of which are key
factors for happiness. This is not a “cop-out” for the scientifically minded,
rather an admission that the western approach of anatomy & physiology,
dissection, and analysis is still limited in its ability to describe whole
body phenomena. It is not all that
different from the general acceptance that gardening is a powerful stress
reduction tool. It doesn’t much
matter whether it’s a vegetable garden or a flowerbed, whether you are
trimming hedges, weeding, or seeding.
Again, we can find a more generic explanation: exposure to fresh air,
contact with the soil, exercise, letting the mind drift, the connection to
nature, the sense of being creative & productive, etc. We may also choose to accept that our
understanding of the specific mechanisms is not all that relevant. That gardening is simply a wonderful tool
for stress relief, as is yoga practice. The
Buddha is famously quoted as saying: “Pain is inevitable, but suffering is
optional”. It doesn’t take much effort to look around – at ourselves and
others – to realize the truth of this statement. The true “winners” at the “game” of life are those you rise
gracefully above menial irritants, and find joy and beauty where others see
chaos and ugliness. Thus it is
important to develop the ability to modulate our emotional reaction to
stress. This means that we develop
the ability to differentiate between our emotional reaction to a real threat
(impending accident) and a mere annoyance.
Ashtanga practice helps us develop this skill in several ways, as
described next. In
order to change our stress response it is necessary to first become aware of
the level of stress the body is experiencing. Ashtanga practice has the general effect of improving body
awareness because there are so many aspects of each posture to keep track of
– the basic structure, alignment, Drishti, synchronicity with breath, the
quality of the breath, balance, etc.
This creates a habit of free flowing feedback between the mind and the
body. We can utilize this awareness
to monitor the body’s stress level off the mat. Awareness of stress then leads to initiation of relaxation
techniques, such as deep breathing, and increased or decreased physical
activity depending on the person and the situation. The
Ashtanga practice takes us through transitions from intense energic
sub-sequences to ones that lead to lower energy, relaxation, and a sense of
sleepiness. The free-flowing
transitions between dominance of the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches
as a result of our active manipulation of body energy through posture, gaze,
breathing, and locks cultivates our ability to actively manipulate stress
levels in the body. It has been
recoded that some yogis can directly and finely control their autonomic nervous
system, thus enabling them to perform “tricks” like fooling truth detection
machines. A
daily Ashtanga practice can also help stress relief in several other
ways. First, the daily intense
physical activity prevents the “accumulation” of stress in the body. Such accumulation is both physical and
emotional (re-enforcement of negative thought & behavior patterns). Second, it allows us to create a quiet
space away from children, job, chores, and other preoccupations. Third, the practice can serve as a frame
of reference for everything else. Nancy
Gilgoff explained in a recent interview:
“A daily practice brings about a gauge in your life. For me, it’s been a
way to know who I am in the moment. And it’s the only thing in my life that
is something I do everyday; it’s the same practice. So no matter what else
I’m doing, I’m traveling, if I eat differently, everyday the practice being
the same repetitive practice gives me a way to judge myself in not a non-judgmental
way but in a way of seeing, how am I doing? How am I holding up to the
stresses of daily life? It’s also the only time for me that I can take my
mind out of my daily life and become free in a spiritual sense to investigate
myself, my true Self.” To
summarize, there are no “canned solutions”, or recipes that work for
everyone. Yoga practice, regardless
of the style one chooses, is ultimately a personal practice. It is incumbent on each of us to adapt the
generic style and techniques to the practice that works best for us. The ability to make such adaptations comes
with experience, patience, and observation. A
Physiological Handbook for Teachers of Yogasana by
Mel Robin |
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