Yoga is not Just About Stretching

Yoga is not just about stretching…

If you’ve never tried a yoga class before, you might be intimidated by what you don’t know. I can still remember going to my first yoga class and literally wondering- “which side of the yoga mat is up?”.

To some, yoga may seem like an elitist club that you have to be accepted and baptized into before you can call yourself a “yogi”.  I certainly did.  But after finally getting the courage up to try my first yoga class -to stretch those damn tight hamstrings!  I was very surprised to learn that yoga is more than just stretching.  After the first class, I was surprised at how it made me feel both in my physical body, while it also lifted my spirits.  To this day, I continue to be amazed at the magic of yoga.  If it were all about stretching, we could figure out a way to do that on our own.  But yoga is so much more; and here are a few added benefits that yoga can bring to your life if you decide to take that first step into class.  

Releasing Tension

So, yes, yoga can make you more flexible.  And, if we imagine stiffness and tightness in the joints and muscles as tension, then a yoga practice can help you learn to release tension in your body.  But the greatest tension release is in the mind, which controls how much stress we physically keep in our bodies.  

If you think about when you are worried, your body responds by tightening up.  Worry is just one state of stress that we find ourselves in more often than not.  When you come to your yoga mat and the teacher asks you to take a deep breath and release it, the intention is for you to signal to your body (more specifically, your nervous system, to let go of the chronic holding patterns you are in).  If you continue to focus on your breath throughout the yoga practice you might notice the mind growing quiet and your body naturally relaxing.

The way breathing works is that the inhale naturally brings in energy (literally in the form of chemical oxygen). And the exhale helps the body get rid of toxins and waste products.  But it’s way more complex than that.  The nervous system controls the breath when we aren’t actively thinking about breathing.  This means if we get scared or anxious or angry, our nervous system can increase or decrease the pace and strength of our breath.  When we are happy and relaxed, our nervous system can also change the pace of our breath.  And when we feel the need to let something go, we let out a big sigh. Once you know what types of breathing are triggered by emotional states, you can in turn, trigger the emotional state by simply controlling your breath. 

So, if you want more energy in your body- focus on the inhales, and if you need to relax and ease the stress in your life, focus on the exhales. Try this exercise- take a moment to close your eyes and take a few deep breaths, holding for a moment at the top of the inhale and at the bottom of the exhale. You can likely feel, on the inhales, that the tension increases a bit (this is a natural function of your biology), but on the exhales, when your body has released the breath, there is a quiet, peaceful feeling.   And if you are focused on the sensations felt in your body, you can feel your physical body relaxing with each exhale.  This will go a long way to release the chronic holding patterns that are deeply ingrained in our bodies.  

Learning to Breathe Through Stress and how to Release that Stress

Something about yoga that people realize after their first class is that Yoga is not easy.  Some of the really challenging “poses” or asanas take not only strength and flexibility, but also stamina. At times, students are asked to hold poses for a minute or longer.  When the student is in an intense “asana”, the teacher encourages students to focus on breathing steadily to support the energy needed for the pose, but also to avoid resisting the uncomfortable feelings.  After holding the pose, the teacher might bring the students into a calm, resting asana such as the child’s pose.  This is where the student learns to let the stress go.  So, in one instance you practice feeling tension and breathing through stress, and in the next moment, you are letting your body rest.  We cannot avoid stress in our lives, nor would we want to.  Stress makes us stronger in many ways.  Stress on the body can grow both physical and emotional strength. Stress on the mind encourages creativity and resilience.  The important piece is to learn how to let the body release stress after experiencing a stressful situation.  Animals do this well.  Horses yawn to let their bodies release stress.  Dogs shake the stress off.  

Waking up Muscles and Keeping Mobility in Joints

Not only does yoga teach you to manage your stress both physically and emotionally, but it goes a long way to support the adage, “use it or lose it” in a way that encourages all muscles and joints to move in all the ways they were designed to.  Most of us move in the same ways all day long.  We stand up, sit down, pick something up, put something down.  In general, there’s not a lot of lateral movement in our daily lives; we don’t stretch our arms overhead much at all, if ever, and we literally spend most of our day sitting on the biggest muscles in the human body- which tends to put them (the glutes)  into hibernation for the foreseeable future, never to be used again. 

Am I exaggerating? Perhaps, but really what I’m talking about is that our bodies like to be as efficient as possible. And when you use things like chairs to support the weight of your body, the back muscles relax and so do the glutes (those big muscles that we sit on all day long). When you stand up to get out of the chair, your body uses the least amount of energy that it needs, so that only the most essential muscle cells fire up.  When we practice yoga, the teacher might encourage you to squeeze or activate muscles so that you not only create more mind-body connection, but that these muscles (and their cells) get turned on (avoiding atrophy- or as I like to call it- hibernation).  Conversely, in the joints, the body will start to tighten up muscles surrounding joints that are not moved often enough to their full range of motion.  Efficient bodies are not necessarily healthy bodies. When you practice yoga, you learn how to activate the muscles, move the joints and keep the machine running strong so that you can have mobility and strength as you get older. 

Is That ALL??

These are just a few things that I’ve learned over the last 20 years of practicing and teaching yoga. As you start on your yoga journey, you will find out for yourself what a yoga practice does for your body, mind and spirit.  Maybe it will mean something different for you.  The good news is that there are many styles of yoga, and almost as many yoga teachers!  Find the style and the teacher that works for you.  The MOST IMPORTANT thing to know is that you DO NOT have to look like, or do the things that the yoga teacher, or the person on the yoga video, or the model on the cover of the yoga magazine is doing.  You have to find the shape and the pose that works for your body, and honor that. The body is a wondrous machine, and it is the vessel that we experience this life through.  Taking care of it, listening to it and learning to keep it healthy is not only our responsibility, but it is the gift that we give it, in gratitude.