Does Yoga Help With Diabetes?

In one word… YES! Yoga is excellent for people with type 2 diabetes. This disease is affecting millions of people around the world daily and the number is steadily rising. Our sedentary lifestyles, poor food choices and pace of life are all causes of this disease which can be avoided and even reversed.

Diabetes is controlled by maintaining stable blood sugar levels and keeping cholesterol levels low. This can be done with regular yoga sessions. There are many yoga poses that help to regulate the functioning of the internal organs. Yoga burns calories and improves metabolism. All these are factors which mitigate the cause of diabetes.

Since the yoga poses help to stabilize digestion, absorption of nutrients and proper elimination of wastes from the body, anybody suffering from diabetes will benefit from regular yoga sessions. Yoga is not a stressful discipline and may be done daily.

Thousands of people suffering from diabetes mellitus have reported that yoga reduced their stress level, increased their flexibility, reduced inflammation in their bod and generally made them feel healthier and more at peace. Once all these took place, keeping their diabetes in check seemed much easier and less stressful.

There are a few poses that have been reported as being extremely useful specifically for diabetes patients. These poses are - big toe pose, downward facing dog, hero posture, triangle pose, half lord of the fishes, western intense pose, fish pose and corpse pose.

The important thing to note here is that you will need to get a qualified instructor and tell them about your condition and ask them to recommend poses that will be suitable for a diabetes patient. Not all yoga poses are beneficial. So, it helps to have a qualified instructor to guide you every step of the way.

If you cannot afford one, you may do your research online and view how the poses are done on YouTube. You may be taking a risk doing it yourself and is not recommended. However, if you’re really determined to do yoga but are constrained by your budget, do your due diligence and research everything properly before engaging in any yoga on your own.

In order to benefit from yoga, you must be consistent and have regular sessions. Then and only then will you see and feel the benefits. Yoga will calm your mind and reduce your stress levels. When your stress is decreased, your blood sugar levels will be stable and will not result in heart disease.

You must practice the correct breathing techniques and meditation. This will help control cortisol levels too which are also responsible for affecting blood glucose levels.

Yoga is an ancient discipline which originated in India thousands of years ago. Though it is practiced by millions of people all over the world and its benefits cannot be denied, the medical industry does not look at yoga as an approved way of treating diabetes.

Do not let that deter you. Consult your doctor and check if you can do yoga. If you can, go ahead and do it while carrying on with your usual way of treating your diabetes. With time you will see the benefits of yoga and will need to rely less on medication. Always exercise good sense and judgment.

Discover How Yoga Can Help You If You're Pregnant

Yoga is one of the few forms of exercise that is beneficial to women who are pregnant. During pregnancy, no woman wants to be doing hard cardio or resistance training. It’s just too stressful and might even be considered unsafe. Yoga, however, can be beneficial and improve a pregnant woman’s health.

There are a few conditions though. Always consult your gynecologist and check if you should be doing yoga. Secondly, you only want to do pre-natal yoga and not other more challenging forms of yoga such as Ashtanga or Bikram Yoga. You should only start doing yoga in your second trimester. Generally, the first 3 months of a pregnancy are crucial and yoga or other high impact exercises are best avoided. Slow walks are ideal.

You’ll also need to do your yoga under the watchful eyes of a qualified teacher. Do not try doing it at home on your own. Pre-natal yoga will actually help you have a safer delivery because it will make you more flexible, improve blood circulation, keep your blood pressure stable and strengthen your pelvic muscles which are the most important muscles during childbirth.

Yoga also burns calories and tones up your muscles. You will be more flexible, limber and your balance will improve. It does not place undue stress on your joints. The calories burned will also keep you from gaining excess fat during pregnancy. With any pregnancy, some weight gain is to be expected. This is normal. However, there is a limit. Yoga will help to prevent you from gaining more weight than is necessary.

Yoga helps relieve lower back pain. This is an extremely common problem most pregnant women face. The weight of their belly places stress on the back muscles which are constantly at stress trying to maintain a straight posture. The back muscles then get tight and strained. Yoga will help to stretch the muscles in the lower back and strengthen them. Once the back muscles are stretched out, muscular tension will be reduced and concomitantly so will the pain associated with the tight muscles.

Pregnant women also tend to have swollen and inflamed joints caused by water retention. Yoga promotes better blood circulation which will reduce the inflammation in the knees, ankles, feet and hands. This will definitely be a relief to many women.

Pregnancy can be a stressful time to many women. The physical changes, the approaching responsibility of motherhood and upcoming childbirth can cause worry and concern. Yoga will help these women to calm down and relax their mind with its breathing techniques. This is one of the major benefits of yoga that so few other physical disciplines have.

Yoga heals the body, mind and soul. The benefits are priceless. Peace of mind and a sense of well-being will do wonders for a pregnant woman. The breathing and relaxation techniques will balance their hormones to a certain extent and make them feel better.

To sum it up, most women will benefit from yoga and should give it a try. Even if she has never done yoga before, this need not be a worry. Pre-natal yoga is not demanding. Even a beginner can do it and reap benefits. If you’re pregnant, sign up for a pre-natal yoga session and see if it makes you feel better. It most probably will.

Discover How to Ease Lower Back Pain with Yoga

Chronic back pain affects millions of people around the world. The main reason for this is the sedentary lives we lead. People in our current day and age exercise a lot less than they used to. They also engage in activities that our predecessors never dreamed of.

We sit at our desks the whole day staring at the computer. We sit while driving to work. We sit more than ever before. Sitting for too long is one of the major causes of back pain.

To understand why we have back pain, you’ll need to have an idea how our spinal column is structured. The vertebral column is comprised of vertebral bones and soft, spongy discs. These gel like discs are between the hard bones. They act as a cushion to prevent the bones from rubbing against each other.

When you are seated for too long or lean forwards or backwards too often for long periods, the gel gets squished disproportionately to the front or back. The cushion is no longer well aligned. Once this occurs, the disc will get swollen and hurt. If the swelling presses up against a nerve, the pain is much worse.

Due to a lack of exercise and stretching, our muscles also become tighter and less flexible. When your hamstrings are tight, the muscles on the lower back become strained because they have to compensate for the tight hamstrings just to keep the back straight. This constant strain will cause back pain.

Yoga is excellent for solving all these problems, making you more flexible, ensuring that your body is well aligned and balanced.

Your yoga session must have a balanced proportion of poses. Those suffering from back pain will want to avoid overdoing the forward bends or other moves that hurt the back further. Pain is not gain here.

It would be a good idea to inform your yoga instructor and let them know of your condition and they’ll be able to recommend specific poses that will ease the pressure on your beck and alleviate your pain.

By practicing these poses daily, you will strengthen your core muscles and stretch out your other muscles. Strong core muscles will mean that your back muscles are not constantly strained trying to maintain your posture.

Yoga will also help you to lose weight in the long run. If you are carrying excess weight, this will always be beneficial since less weight will be on your joint and spinal discs. The joints will not hurt or be susceptible to injury easily. When the discs are in good order, your back pain for the most part will slowly disappear.

The different poses and breathing techniques will help improve circulation to send nutrient rich blood to parts of your body that badly need it. Like between your joints, discs, etc. Toxins will also be flushed out. Your health will get better with yoga.

The beauty about yoga is that even those with back pain can do it slowly and in a controlled manner. The same can’t be said of other forms of exercise such as cardio or resistance training. So, if you have back pain, yoga is your discipline of choice. Do it and reap the benefits.

Common Difficulties You May Face With Yoga

You may face a few difficulties when first starting out with yoga. This is the norm with anything. Teething problems that will go away with time or by changing your strategies.

The first difficulty that most beginners face is the discomfort and pain that may come from practicing yoga. This is to be expected because most of us are not accustomed to the poses that are done in yoga. To make matters worse, some poses require the practitioner to hold the pose.

An example would be the warrior pose. If your thigh muscles are weak, even holding the pose for a minute may have you quivering like a leaf. The muscles are not strong enough to maintain the pose. Rest assured that with time you will get strong enough to do it. The pain and discomfort will go away. Just make sure that you do not push yourself beyond what is considered safe.

Another difficulty would be the cost incurred. Yoga can be expensive if you let it be. Nowadays, yoga is big business due to its popularity. There are tons of yoga equipment from mats to bolsters to DVDs and books. Commercial yoga classes can be expensive and private instructors can be even more costly. This may place a strain on a beginner’s finances.

But the question here is… Do you even need all these?

The answer is probably not. The earliest yoga practiced in India thousands of years ago didn’t require money or fancy equipment. It was very simple and just as beneficial. You will need a yoga mat. You may get one at a relatively inexpensive price. Next up you need a guide. This could be a book or an instructional DVD. If you can’t get a DVD, guess what? You always have YouTube.

You can learn tons just by doing your research online. Learn the finer points and the correct methods. All the information is available if you do your research. You do not need to sign up for classes or get private instructors. This brings us to the next point.

Unqualified instructors. Yes, this is another difficulty many yoga students have without even realizing it. There are many yoga instructors with dodgy certification or who are unprofessional. Currently, there is no requirement for instructors to be certified by a reputable body or school. So, there are instructors with just a basic knowledge of yoga coaching people. This can be dangerous.

Insufficient rest is another difficulty many people have. We live in a fast paced world where a hundred and one things demand our attention. The spouse, the kids, TV, your boss, your friends, your job… It just does not end. In many cases people sacrifice their sleep just to meet all these demands. If you’re starting out with yoga, you will have a new demand to meet.

One way to achieve this is to cut out or limit the unproductive activities. Less time spent in front of the TV, less time wasted going clubbing with friends, etc. You must make sacrifices to do what’s important. Do not let a lack of time make you all stressed out since you can’t do yoga.

Yoga is meant to relax you and not make your stress levels worse. Be happy, be peaceful and be relaxed.

Can Yoga Help You To Lose Weight?

This is an excellent question. The answer is yes. Yoga can and will help you to lose weight, on one condition. You must be eating at a caloric deficit. Weight loss only occurs when you expend more calories than you consume.

There is no exercise on this planet that will help you to lose weight if you are eating at a caloric surplus. So, are you at a caloric deficit? You are? Awesome. Then yoga will definitely help you lose weight, get stronger and be mentally and spiritually balanced.

While yoga will help you to lose weight, we must be practical and understand that the weight loss will be slow and gradual. While workouts like interval training and resistance training are high impact and burn more calories, yoga is low impact and burns less calories. So, if you’re looking for fast weight loss, yoga is not for you.

Many obese and overweight people often have painful joints and muscles. This could be due to the fact that the large amount of weight they carry is placing undue stress on the joints. Another reason is that a poor diet could have made their body suffer from inflammation.

In cases like these, yoga is one of the best forms of exercise. There is a famous example on YouTube of a man named, Arthur. He had severe joint pains and was overweight. He couldn’t do most forms of exercise because of his condition. However, with yoga, he turned his life around and is now a living example of the power of yoga. You may wish to go on YouTube and search for ‘Arthur’s Inspirational Transformation’. The video will banish all doubts you may have about yoga’s efficacy.

In order to lose weight with yoga, it will help if you do it daily. Since this is a low impact exercise, you can do it every day. There is no need for rest days or recovery time. However, in the initial stages, if you are in pain and need a day or two to recover, go ahead and rest. But, get back to it when you’re ok.

As you progress with yoga, you may wish to do the more challenging forms of yoga. Ashtanga yoga consists of more challenging poses and routines. When your routine is more challenging, you will burn more calories and lose weight faster. Furthermore, your muscle tone will improve and you may even gain some muscle mass. When that happens, you’ll burn more calories even at rest. This is the ideal situation to be in.

What you must understand is that this is a journey. We live in a world that demands instant results, fast, quick, immediate, etc. Everything is expected at the speed of light. This will just not be the case with weight loss. It is a slow process. Even with harsh cardio sessions and weight training, weight loss is not immediate. With yoga it’s even slower. You must be mentally prepared to be in this for the long haul.

If you can accept that, then yoga will definitely help you lose weight. Give it time, be consistent and you will see results.

6 Reasons Why You Should Make Yoga a Part of Your Life

Yoga originated in India thousands and thousands of years ago. Yet, it is still practiced by millions of people all around the world. In fact, yoga’s popularity shows no sign of waning and in fact, it’s on the rise because of the numerous health benefits that one may attain from this ancient discipline.
This article will highlight benefits that you will derive from making yoga a part of your daily routine. If pressed for time, even doing yoga for 3 or 4 times a week will yield much positive effects on your mental and physical well-being.

One of the major benefits of yoga is that it promotes better sleep. Millions of people around the world suffer from insomnia. This could be due to mental stress or a body that is not relaxed. Yoga will ease both mental and physical stress and help you hit the sack like a baby.

The reduction of mental stress is crucial to one’s good health. We live in a very fast paced world and are bombarded by images, news, etc. on a daily basis. One needs time to sit and calm down. The daily stresses of the world will take a toll on our health and sanity if we do not have any down time. Yoga provides that release. With its poses and breathing techniques, you will be able to relax de-stress and find some peace and mental clarity. This is priceless.

Yoga also makes you have a better posture and keeps your limbs and joints flexible and supple. As we age, we get stiffer muscles and joints. Gravity makes our spinal vertebrae get compressed. Yoga will help you to stretch your joints and allow blood to flow between the many crevasses within your body. This will not only provide blood flow to much needed areas but will also wash out any impurities. Your core muscles will get stronger too from holding the yoga poses.

Yoga will help you lose weight if it is used in conjunction with a sensible diet while you are on a caloric deficit. Morbidly obese people may find difficulty running or doing strenuous cardio because of the heavy weight on their joints. Since Yoga is a low impact exercise, it will help these people out tremendously. They will be able to burn calories without enduring too much pain. However, you do not have to be obese to do yoga. If you prefer a slow rate of comfortable weight loss, yoga will be ideal for you too.

Yoga increases strength and muscle tone. However, do not expect similar results as resistance training. With yoga, since you will be holding the poses and using gravity and your body weight as a form of resistance training, you will become stronger and leaner. You will not be muscle bound but your strength will improve greatly.

Yoga is an exercise that you can do all the way into your senior years. Unlike high impact sports such as interval training, kickboxing, etc. yoga is a milder, low impact discipline that is great for senior citizens too. So, even when you reach an age where other sports seem too tiring, yoga will still be your one true friend and you can always do it.

5 Popular Yoga Poses You Must Try!

Yoga is taking the world by storm. Millions of people around the world practice this ancient discipline which is from India. There are many mental, physical and spiritual benefits that can be derived from yoga.

You may have seen people on TV doing certain yoga poses and you may not have any idea what these poses are or what they are called. Each pose has a purpose to either strengthen a muscle or gently massage your internal organs. There are several other reasons for each pose.

The 7 yoga poses below are some of the most popular poses and you should strive to be able to do them and hold the pose if necessary. As with all things, there is a learning curve with yoga too. It may take you time to get accustomed to the pose if you’re new to yoga. Persist and you’ll be able to do them in no time at all.

1. The downward dog

Definitely one of the most popular and most often see poses. To do this pose, you will be on your knees in a baby crawl position. Your palms will be directly below your shoulders on the floor and your knees just below your hips. From this position, with your fingers wide open, you will move your palms a few inches forward and raise your knees so that your hips are lifted off the floor. You should be in an inverted V shaped position. Straighten knees but do not lock them. Your head should be between your arms. Do not let it hang.

2. The mountain

This is a relatively easy pose. Stand straight and keep your feet close together. Keep your arms by your sides and your shoulders relaxed. Slowly raise your hands till they are above your head. Breathe deeply as you do this and both palms must face each other. Keep your arms raised as you try to reach for the sky. Breathe deeply and in a relaxed manner.

3. The warrior pose

This is the pose that you see on the cover of most yoga books of DVDs. It’s a stylish pose to look at and very beneficial for the body. To do this pose, you need to stand with your feet apart wider than your hips. Next, you turn your right leg 90 degrees and slowly lower yourself till your right knee is bent at 90 degrees. Extend both your arms by each side with the palms facing down. Hold this pose for a minute and breathe in a gentle manner. After that, change sides and repeat.

4. The tree pose

Another common pose. You will stand straight with both your feet together. Slowly shift your weight to the left leg and raise your right sole and place it against your left thigh. Then raise both your arms above your head and place both palms together as if you are praying.

5. The bridge

Lie flat on the floor. Keep your knees bent. Your hands must be by your sides and your back must be flat on the floor. Slowly raise your hips till the angle your knees form in almost 90 degrees. Your arms will press against the floor for stability and keep your thighs parallel to the floor. Keep your chin tucked to prevent injury to your neck.

These are some of the most common and beneficial poses that any beginner should aim to do. They will build your strength and balance. As you progress, you can learn the more difficult poses.