24 Jan Getting Started with a Yoga Practice
by Dr. Matt Fontaine
Yoga> one of the secrets of High Performing Athletes and Successful Individuals
Yoga is not just for athletic, extremely flexible model type women in Spanx. Yoga has been an institution in the Eastern World for Millenniums and here in the West, we are in dire need of the many far reaching benefits of Yoga.
I have been practicing Yoga for well over a decade and continue to recommend it to patients. Former U.S. Navy SEAL Mark Divine’s new approach to teaching yoga in his book, Kokoro Yoga has made a profound impact on my yoga practice and on the practice of many of my patients. For many patients, it has been the gateway and first introduction to the world of yoga. I could go on for days and blog posts on the many benefits of yoga, but I won’t.
Here is a partial list of the benefits of adding yoga consistently into your fitness and wellness routine:
- Improve physical, mental and emotional balance and control on many levels.
- Increase mobility through movement flows resulting in a better moving body while helping to forge and sustain lean muscle mass.
- Find mind body balance and synergy between the physical, mental, emotional, intuitional and spiritual aspects that govern our human body and spirit.
- Yoga provides true active meditation through movement in an unbelievable total body workout that can be scaled down for beginners or scaled up in intensity for the intermediate and advanced practitioner.
Dr. Fontaine shows you how to get started in yoga with this basic flow. Yoga has many benefits for both mind and body, far reaching just the obvious of improved movement and mobility. Yoga is a true form of active meditation. It should be a major component is every human being’s fitness tool kit. Focus on deep breathing, aim for 3-5 deep breath cycles per posture (position).
for a great book on yoga, check out:
Kokoro, the Japanese concept of warrior spirit―or merging heart and mind into action―is the central focus of former U.S. Navy SEAL Mark Divine’s new approach to teaching yoga.