A Blessing from John O'Donohue

When it comes to stress relief, we need all the help we can get. When you are centered, your students and clients also benefit. Whether you teach a group of people or one-on-one, the following guided relaxation script is a great way to lead others in a full-body awareness exercise.

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The intention of this practice is to dissolve restrictions of the heart—both around the physical heart center (of your chest, lungs and rib cage), and the symbolic heart center (which is associated with a sense of connection and compassion).

You can practice this exercise in any seated or standing posture. It can be done on its own as a mini-meditation to awaken the heart, and it is also a wonderful way to begin a yoga practice.

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Over many years we have found that preventing or reducing inflammation is all about listening to your body. From that listening you can begin to learn first-hand what increases or reduces your body’s inflammatory response. Remember as you begin to adopt natural anti-inflammatory habits to move in stages at a pace that feels right to you. You have many options for reducing inflammation, and we don’t want you to feel overwhelmed by your choices. You can cool your body’s inflammatory response and keep it healthier over time by taking the bite-size pieces that feel right for you. This is the approach we have found to be most effective over the long term.

Many of the suggestions we have to offer can be implemented on your own. But if you have chronic inflammation, or moderate to severe symptoms of inflammation, we encourage you to work with an integrative healthcare or functional medicine provider to devise a plan that suits your unique needs.

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Would you like employees in your organization to be stronger, more flexible, healthier, have clearer minds, and be calm and focused in the face of challenge?

Yoga is an intelligent approach to physical and mental health, well-being and personal growth. It is a discipline through which we experience, explore and challenge our minds and bodies, and the nature of our Being.

One of the many benefits of Yoga, is developing an awareness of the effects of stress in our lives. These benefits naturally extend from the individual participant to the work environment in which they are contributing. Regular practice is known to bring improved health in mind and body, increased energy, well-being and productivity.
 
The benefits of yoga are substantial and are gaining national recognition by Fortune 500 companies including Nike, HBO, Forbes, Google, and Apple Computer. These companies and others consider yoga an important regular employee benefit.

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Neck pain can be a crippling ailment for many patients. The cervical spinal region is the second most problematic area and is only beaten by the troublesome lumbar spine. There are a wide range of conditions which can cause cervical pain due to injury, disease or degeneration.Luckily, most structural painful neck conditions respond well to appropriate back pain treatments.

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Yoga can be put into 4 categories: Jnana Yoga – the way of wisdom; Bhakti Yoga – the way of emotional rapport; Karma Yoga – the way of dedicated works and Raja Yoga – the way of spiritual practices. What is popularly known as Yoga in the West is called Hatha Yoga and involves physical disciplines including various postures (asanas) which are conducive to healthy life and a strong body.

Living as we are in an age of great stress and turbulence, the regular practice of Yoga can help us enormously in our physical and spiritual development. Physical Yoga, in fact provides a foundation for a deeper enquiry into the working of the human mind, the most intricate mechanism in the cosmos. As referred to in the Vedas: Shariramadyam Shalu Dharma Sadhanam –the body alone is the basis of all other achievements. We must strive to treat the body as our temple.

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The practice of yoga is an art and science dedicated to creating union between body, mind and spirit. Its objective is to assist the practitioner in using the breath and body to foster an awareness of ourselves as individualized beings intimately connected to the unified whole of creation. In short it is about making balance and creating equanimity so as to live in peace, good health and harmony with the greater whole. This art of right living was perfected and practiced in India thousands of years ago and the foundations of yoga philosophy were written down in The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, approximately 200 AD. This sacred text describes the inner workings of the mind and provides an eight-step blueprint for controlling its restlessness so as to enjoying lasting peace.

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The following is the first in a series of articles on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. With nearly 20 million Americans practicing yoga, now is a good time for students to explore the roots of this evolutionary system that leads to freedom and bliss. To google “Yoga Sutras” on the Internet is to open a doorway to 176,000 Web sites, scores of translations and hundreds of interpretations of the four brief chapters in this elegant book. Each yoga teacher who finds a way to share a few of these sutras in class from time to time indeed bestows blessings to those who wish to deepen their yoga practice. And, in turn, each student with an open heart who hears or reads a few sutras receives mystical yoga grace.

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People who suffer from ongoing or recurrent bouts of back pain often have to try a number of different forms of exercise to find the most appropriate therapy to manage their pain. For many, yoga has proven to be a safe and effective way to finally alleviate many forms of back pain or neck pain and help prevent ongoing problems.

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Annals of Internal Medicine

Most treatments for chronic low back pain have modest efficacy at best (1). Exercise is one of the few proven treatments for chronic low back pain; however, its effects are often small, and no form has been shown to be clearly better than another (2–5). Yoga, which often couples physical exercise with breathing, is a popular alternative form of “mind– body” therapy. An estimated 14 million Americans practiced yoga in 2002 (6), including more
than 1 million who used it as a treatment for back pain (7, 8). Yoga may benefit patients with back pain simply because it involves exercise or because of its effects on mental focus. We found no published studies in western biomedical literature that evaluated yoga for chronic low back pain; therefore, we designed a clinical trial to evaluate its effectiveness and safety for this condition.

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