Yoga is great. It’s great for our mental health and spiritual well being. It’s great for business. It’s great for conversation. (“I tried yoga once, but was scared off by the headstands.” “I love my yoga teacher!” “I once knew an 80 year old lady who did yoga everyday, starting in her 50s.”) It’s also great for our bodies. This is probably the reason most Americans get into yoga, or at least the reason they’re most willing to admit to.
As a physical therapist, I love all things physical. Physical fitness, physiology, physical medicine, even physics of mechanics. So of course I was initially interested in yoga as a means of physical exercise. I was not impressed by my first yoga class. It felt like nothing more than a simple stretching class. Nothing magical, nothing life altering about it. But my interest was not completely foiled. I knew there must be more to it. I got the book, “Yoga for Dummies.” I started doing “The Daily Dozen” prescribed by the book to wake up and move my bones in the morning. One day, I was bedazzled by a guy at the local rock climbing gym doing a series of exercises I now know as a sun salutation but at the time I only saw the beauty of his circular, fluid movements. I bought a DVD, “Power Yoga for Strength” with Rodney Yee. Now that was my kind of yoga. I felt my muscles contract and stretch simultaneously (we PTs call that eccentric strengthening). I felt rejuvenated from all that deep breathing. And I thoroughly enjoyed the physical challenge of the sun salutation. From then on, I was hooked.
That was ten years ago. Since then I have had an evolving understanding that yoga really is nothing more than a multi-faceted tool that can help one to achieve a variety of goals. I have learned to use yoga for treating patients that I would have considered very challenging cases in the early days of my career. I have used yoga to achieve my own peace of mind. And I have even used it to have fun. I have learned that the magic of yoga comes not from achieving esoteric knowledge or superhuman levels of strength and flexibility but from the ability of ordinary folks to apply ancient knowledge to our modern lives to help us improve our posture, our respiration or our outlook on life.
Read more about author Lisa Minn