23 Surgeries, Then Yoga

The Times of India reports that after two horrific car crashes and 23 surgeries, 54-year-old Usha Devi was finally able to recover through yoga. There is no doubt that yoga can provide practitioners with extraordinary physical benefits, but this is a remarkable story of physical restoration. If you have any doubts about what yoga can accomplish, check out the article here.

January 26: Yoga Day USA

January 26 marks the ninth annual Yoga Day USA, a celebration of yoga and the benefits it provides. The Waxahachie Daily Light reports:

Just one class can help stop the harmful effects of stress, providing a heightened sense of well being and a preview of additional benefits including improved breathing, strength and flexibility. (Full post here.)

Numerous free yoga classes will be offered around the nation on January 26 in an effort to get more people interested in yoga as a way to prevent stress and get fit.

Make Yoga Part of Your New Year's Resolution

Almost everyone makes New Year's resolutions and most of us don't keep them. But according to Toledo yoga instructor Jenn McCullough, yoga may be the key to keeping your New Year's resolution to get in shape:

It's hard to keep the motivation to ride the bike, go to the gym or take a run, she said. But with yoga you get a “decent workout,” strengthening muscles and stretching, she said, as well as working with your mind. (Full post here.)

Yoga for Multiple Sclerosis

The Pearland Journal reports that the Lonestar Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society funds yoga therapy tailored to the needs of MS sufferers:

Yoga therapy is suitable to all levels of flexibility and strength, because students begin at their comfort level, according to Segal. Wheel chair classes, while the most limited in postures, are aimed to free up the joints and move the breath, blood and oxygen through the body through small movements of the wrist, ankle or neck. (Full post here.)

The limited postures developed for the wheelchair yoga sessions help alleviate joint stiffness and stress that MS sufferers experience.

Andy Murray Turns to Yoga

The Guardian Unlimited reports that British tennis star Andy Murray has taken up Bikram yoga in the off-season as part of his training regime:

"When Andy Murray leaps up from his seat to give an impromptu demonstration of the latest Bikram yoga techniques he has learned, you know that Britain's No1 player is feeling confident about his fitness." (Full post here.)

Bikram yoga was developed by Bikram Choudhury. Typically, each yoga session is 90 minutes long and performed in a 105 degree room with 40% humidity.

Yoga for Weight Loss

We all know that yoga is great for balance, concentration and flexibility. A number of experts are now saying that yoga is also a great way to lose weight. You'd be surprised, though. It's not always power yoga that provides the greatest weight loss potential. Sometimes a slow, gentle session can help you lose a lot more weight than a "hardcore" variety of yoga.

Check out the article here.

How Yoga Can Help You in 2008

Here's an article from USC Health Now (University of Southern California) that you'll want to check out:

In the past decade, yoga has become a popular modality for health promotion, disease prevention and treatment for various physical and mental maladies. Here, USC experts talk about how yoga can help you in 2008.

The article discusses how yoga is used in holistic health settings and how yoga can increase your energy level. Pretty neat stuff.

Teaching Yoga to the Homeless

A group called Street Yoga in Portland, Oregon offers free yoga classes to homeless youth. The purpose of the program is to increase the physical, emotional and spiritual strength of the participants so that they can better meet the challenges of homelessness.

Check out the post on Street Yoga here. It includes an interesting five minute video on the program too.

Fight Stress with Yoga

Stress can be deadly, and if it doesn't kill you it can certainly make you sick: mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. It's no surprise that yoga can help combat stress. After all, exercise and relaxation are to key ingredients to fighting stress. Yoga provides both the physicality of exercise and the calming effect of relaxation.

SharpBrains.com has a post called Brain Yoga: Stress -- Killing You Softly, where Dr. Robert Sapolsky discusses stress and how to fight it. It's an interesting post to check out.

Yoga for Arthritis

Practicing yoga certainly increases your overall health. Yoga benefits to the circulatory system, the nervous system, the respiratory system and the musculoskeletal system. But can yoga help those suffering from arthritis?

Yoga can improve the quality of life for sufferers of arthritis. There are several poses that are particularly helpful. They can be found here.

Yoga on the Cheap

Learning yoga from an instructor ensures that you will perform the poses properly. This not only increases the effectiveness of your yoga sessions; it also helps prevent injuries caused by improper posture. But yoga classes can be expensive.

There's a good article on About.com that provides some ideas for doing yoga on the cheap. If the expense of classes is something that is keeping you from learning yoga, this is something you ought to read.

Build Your Own Yoga Sequence

Many people find the structure and guidance of a yoga class beneficial, if not crucial, during the learning stage. Even so, you can certainly learn and practice yoga on your own. There are plenty of books and DVDs that will take you step-by-step through a yoga session and I'll discuss some of those another time. But right now, I want to focus on building your own yoga sequence.

A yoga sequence is a series of poses. Building a yoga sequence requires you to select poses and decide which order you will perform them. This might seem a bit too much to take on, but YogaJournal.com offers a great sequence builder that makes the process a snap. You simply select your level of expertise and click the poses you want to add to your sequence. Yoga Journal allows you to save your sequences and share them with others if you'd like.

Try it out!

The Benefits of Yoga

Yoga has been used throughout the ages to calm the mind and bring it back into harmony with the body. In recent years, more and more westerners have begun to discover the many benefits of yoga. Athletes use yoga to increase balance and flexibility and to prevent sports injuries. Others perform yoga to reduce stress. And, of course, plenty of people view yoga in its traditional state as a spiritual discipline.

If you're interested in learning more about the physical benefits that yoga provides, check out this brief overview here. But that's not all. Meditation itself provides a number of benefits, both mental and physical. Here's an overview on the benefits of meditation.