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I miss yoga.  It has been over 2 months since my last session.  I can already feel the aches and pains in my joints.  I have to start with my sessions again soon.  I don’t want my joints to start becoming stiff again.  Before our family emergency, I was planning to get a new yoga mat.  My yoga mat isn’t bad.  However, there are certain postures that are uncomfortable because it is thinner than usual with very minimal insulation.

To maximize your yoga sessions, accessories should be appropriate.  Yoga does not require much accessories.  Just comfortable clothes, towel, and a yoga mat.  The rest are optional.  The yoga mat I was looking for is one that provides enough support and insulation but not too much that it will affect balance.  I was a bit curious about those sticky mats and if they are really any good for balance.  I feel like it would be cheating if the mat has additional features that aid you in your postures.  Good yoga mats are bit pricey.  So, I browsed through ShopWiki to get a good deal.  I also thought that it was about time I got a yoga mat bag to match.  I had to stop envying my instructor’s yoga bag and get one on for myself.

What I love about ShopWiki is the ability to find the best deals in the entire web.  Unlike other online shopping guides, your search is not limited to merchants who have placed advertising on the site.  ShopWiki crawls the whole cyberspace to get the best deal and savings for the product that you require.  ShopWiki is my trusty online shopping assistant.  And as always, it never lets me down.

Lately, I feel like my body clock is out of order. Sometimes, I have trouble sleeping at night while other times I just drift off from fatigue before it’s even 9 in the evening. It’s probably from the stress and responsibilities I have to deal with at the moment. There are several ways that help in managing sleep disorders. These all revolve around managing the release of melatonin in the body.

Melatonin is a hormone produced by the pineal gland (a small gland in the brain) that help regulate sleep and wake cycles. Normally, melatonin levels rise in the mid to late evenings and remain high all through dawn. These decline in the morning. The natural release of melatonin is partly affected by light. This may be the reason why some blind people have trouble sleeping. As the body ages, melatonin levels begin to change and gradually decline with age. Read the rest of this entry »

I started of with a brief description on yoga in my previous post. Every now and then, I will post information on yoga touching on specific topics of the practice. For now, I will cover the basics and start with the specific benefits that practicing yoga can provide. Yoga provides both physical and mental benefits that improves the overall health of those who practice it on a regular basis.

The physical benefits of yoga includes flexibility, strength, improved posture, and better blood circulation. The stretching exercises gives specific muscles and joints flexibility which further leads to toned muscles and better posture. Balancing poses, on the other hand, gives strength to legs and arms. The push-ups also gives strength to the upper body. Better blood circulation is one of the major benefits of yoga. This translates to improved brain function and better immunity. Toxins are likewise efficiently flushed out which keeps the liver, kidneys, and other organs healthy.

Meanwhile, the physical activities of yoga combined with the breathing and balancing poses provides stress reduction, mental calmness, improved focus, and body awareness. Regular yoga practice will make you aware of which parts of the body is stronger, which ones are weaker, and which parts of the body improves alignment and balance.

Specifically, yoga has been known to help people with allergies, asthma, back pains, migraines, and even heart problems. There is also prenatal yoga which helps pregnant women with the discomforts that come with having a baby. Pregnant women who practice yoga during their pregnancy are also known to have easy labor and delivery. Some even claim that labor and delivery were virtually pain-free.

For me, the best benefit I get from yoga is the improvement of my scoliosis. My allergy attacks has been minimal also since I started yoga. I will start researching a little more to help with some of my other health problems. I have trouble sleeping sometimes and I believe there are exercises that can help with insomnia. Watch out for the rest of my yoga series.

I used to think that yoga practitioners were weird and silly. How could humming or executing difficult poses make you healthy? Absurd! I thought they were no different from acrobats performing in the circus. I never thought I would eventually munch, chew, and swallow my own words.

When I got the job as the assistant of the smartest executive in our company, I found myself working doubly hard and performing difficult tasks. After several years of doing the job, I was highly stressed, exhausted, and in bad health. My asthma worsened and I was always edgy. At a certain point, I knew I had to do something before I ended up with a nervous breakdown or an anxiety attack. I took up sports like badminton and spent more time going out with friends. Fortunately, yoga was fast becoming recognized as the best exercise for the body. After trying it, I have become a yoga enthusiast. It has become a part of my life. I do yoga twice a week and sometimes even on weekends when the opportunity arises.

Yoga is a Sanskrit word meaning “to control”, “to yoke”, or “to unite” and originated in India as a group of ancient spiritual practices. Outside of India, it is known as the practice of “asanas” or postures and a form of exercise. In the modern world, it has evolved into a combination of breathing exercises, physical postures, and meditation. It is also the best reliever of stress. And since studies reveal that most diseases and physical dysfunctions are rooted in stress, yoga has been known to heal numerous physical disorders.

Studies now confirm that yoga provides higher success rates of healing breast cancer, hypertension, heart disease, and back disorders. I practice Ashtanga Yoga, also known as the classical yoga, and it has definitely relieved me of back pains due to my scoliosis (curvature of the spine). Most of my friends even confirm that the angle of my scoliosis decreased. More than that, my asthma attacks are less frequent and my resistance to fatigue during badminton games has definitely improved.

The topic on yoga is quite vast and I am afraid I will not give it due justice trying to summarize everything in one post. Watch out for succeeding posts on the different types of yoga and the benefits each pose provides the body.

It has been a very stressful week for me. And I really don’t like myself when I’m stressed. My composure flies out the window and I keep forgetting the word prudence and patience. My judgment is terribly impaled. It’s not so bad if I just do damage to myself. I always know how to reverse the damage. When you hurt someone else, especially someone you love, it’s a whole different matter all together. I’d rather the earth opened up and swallowed me alive.

I am now researching all the possible stress relievers on the planet. I’ve been doing yoga for about 8 months now and apparently that’s not enough. It seems a single mother with three kids and a perfectionist boss needs something more than just deep breathing and torso-twisting poses to make her calm down. Aside from doing meditation once in a while, I still need some words of wisdom branded on my brain with a hot iron to help me out. Read the rest of this entry »