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Showing posts with the label flexibility

Improving Fitness and Health with Yoga

Yoga was once an obscure practice that attracted bleeding souls, hippies, and sports enthusiasts. Over time Yoga made its way into mainstream activity as the benefits to our body and mind became apparent. Yoga provides a strong augmentation to your current workout and affords greater muscle recovery and healing.   Incorporating an hour of yoga three times a week into your schedule enhances other aspects of sports and fitness that lead to higher levels of satisfaction and health.  Yoga has a positive effect on both physical and mental health. A large study of 15 yoga studios hosting 1045 respondents found that fitness levels were higher among those who practiced yoga with the far majority of respondents indicating that they were in good to excellent health (Ross, et. al. 2013). Furthermore, participants also stated that yoga improved energy, happiness, social relationships, sleep quality, and proper weight.  Not all benefits of yoga are subjective. Another study helps us

Book Review: Yoga Anatomy

Yoga Anatomy by Leslie Kiminoff and Amy Mathews will likely teach you more than you will ever need to know about yoga postures, movements and breathing techniques. It discusses various parts of the body and how their movements impact the internal organs, muscles and skeletal system. The book is for those who desire to take their yoga moves to the next level creating maximum flexibility.  The book will only touch on some of the basics and will quickly move into medical terminology. It will discuss breathing, spine, skeletal muscle, muscular systems and the overall different types of poses and how they impact the body. It is probably way more than the recreational yoga enthusiast will ever need to know.  For example, you may go into a lengthy description of how the muscles connect to the rib cage, how the lungs work and stretch as well as the different types of skeletal systems. After the general medical description there are also descriptions for each movement. Illustratio