Benefits of Yogic Relaxation
Yoga philosophy suggests that what we take in through the senses is food for the brain. If we receive more stimulation than we can digest, we start to get sick. In the words of B.K.S. Iyengar, “the stresses of modern civilization are a strain on the nerves for which deep relaxation is the best antidote”. Relaxation is now recognized as a major contributor to life satisfaction, quality of life, health and wellness.
Relaxation is a state of mind and body. On the mind level, it is the ability to become content in the moment, to let the past be in the past, and the future work itself out. It is a complete state of trust. Relaxation allows our mind to integrate daily experiences and recharge, causing us feel more optimistic, energetic, alert and rested.
On the body level this practice lowers our heart beat and breathing rate and drives up the levels of “happy” hormones in the brain affecting our whole body on cellular level. Our parasympathetic nervous system becomes active allowing the body to heal. Practiced regularly, relaxation strengthens immune system and improves the body overall ability to regenerate. It is essential to our longevity.
Yoga As a Pain Management Tool
Pain management is a rapidly growing branch of medicine that aims to ease a wide range of pain and helps bring back a feeling of well-being and reduce or eliminate the reliance on medication.
Using yoga for pain management can help you lead a happier and fuller life. Recent studies have indicated that practicing yoga causes physical changes in the body that promote healing.
Yoga’s focus on self-awareness helps to prevent pain and reduce or localize existing pain. Regular practice teaches your body to reduce tension in reaction to pain, distracts the mind from pain, and provides an opportunity to “move through” the pain instead of resisting it so it loses its full impact. Yoga also assists the body with the secretion of its own natural painkillers minimizing your reliance on medication.
How Yogic Practices Create Positive Changes In Our Bodies.
Yogic poses (asanas) bring balance and healing to the body. The stretches squeeze toxins from the muscles, decreasing soreness and spasm; inversions enhance heart function as lymph, blood, and other fluids move from lower extremities to the upper body; spinal twists pump out tension and nourish the spinal muscles with oxygen; forward bends massage internal organs and backbends nourish them with fresh blood.
Breath techniques (pranayama) help to achieve slower respiration that produces muscle relaxation, reduces tension, and brings the mind to a beautiful state of calm alertness.
Relaxation, a step-by-step process of relaxing each of the body’s muscles. In times of stress, the body autonomic nervous system activates in the fight-or-flight reaction: stress-related hormones flood the body, heart rate goes up, breathing speeds up, blood vessels contract, and muscles get tense. The practice of relaxation reverses this process and helps to bring the body and mind back to a more peaceful, happier state.
Meditation is instinctive and natural to the body, and occurs whenever the conditions allow it. When we meditate, we are giving into the powerful mind-body healing dynamics that we have within us, giving the brain and senses a permission to tune themselves up and to the nervous system to start the process of healing and recovery. Meditation is a skill that gets greater with practice. Meditating regularly contributes immensely to the state of our health.
Meditation As a Medicine
Meditation is one of the few things in the self-help arena that produces measurable changes for the scientific studies. Over the past 40 years there has been an increase in scientific research on how meditation changes the body, especially the brain. New results point to meditation as producing benefits on many levels of life simultaneously – body, emotions, mental functioning, and relationships.
Scientifically recognized benefits of regular meditation:
– reduction anxiety and chronic pain
– lowered rates of stress hormones, blood pressure, and cholesterol
– reduction in need for medical care and decreased substance abuse
– improved self-concept and improved relationships
– improved perception and memory and increased ability to focus
– increased creativity and productivity
– deeper level of relaxation
– reversal of aging process
Medical Meditation
One of the newest and most cutting-edge advances in the field of integrative medicine is medical meditation, which uses advance meditative techniques in a modern medical setting. These techniques include unique mental focus, specific breathing patterns, special postures and movement as well as mantras. Viewing human body as an interconnection of physical and ethereal, mind and spirit, medical meditation treats it as such. Each Medical Meditation solves a distinct, specific problem by bringing energy to targeted organs, glands, and systems, and also to the specific areas of the ethereal body – chakras. Endocrine system is directly rejuvenated during this process.