Balance, Strength and Flexibility

Reading from Tuesday, February 26, 2013 yoga class

The following is from the book:  Yoga, the spirit and practice of moving into stillness by Erich Schiffman.  He is a great yoga teacher and the book is a great resource. 

One of the most obvious things about having a body is that it tends to stiffen and tighten the older you get, much like a plant that is tender and supple when young and becomes hard, dry, and woody with age...  As you body tightens, not only is it less comfortable to be in, like a shirt that has shrunk and is now too small, it actually becomes less efficient and more prone to disease and degeneration.  As your body tightens, it literally begins to choke itself.  This internal constriction inhibits the circulatory system, not only of your blood and other fluids, but of the essential life force.  And when the circulatory system (which irrigates, oxygenates, and feeds the cells) is inhibited, the cells' food supply is diminished. 

With yoga you can dramatically retard, even reverse, the tendency to stiffen as you age.  The three most obvious are the immediate increase in your balance, strength, and flexibility. 

BALANCE***  Improved balance refers not only to the heightened physical coordination you will acquire, but to the balance of power between the left and right, front and back, and high and low aspects of your body.  Most of us are not balanced and therefore do much of what we do asymmetrically.  We may be stronger on our right side, for example, and weaker on our left.  We can turn our head or twist our spine farther in one direction than we can the other.  We can cross our legs with the left leg on top, but not the right.  We can bend forward with ease but not backward.  None of this would matter much except for the fact that being asymmetrical and unbalanced creates a certain inevitable level of stress and strain throughout your body.  Yoga creates symmetry throughout your whole body, making you strong and flexible in a balanced. way.

STRENGTH***  When you feel tired and weak, you also feel heavy.  You literally feel heavy, a burden to yourself, as though you had to drag yourself around.  When you feel energetic and strong, however, you feel light, and life doesn't seem so difficult.  The weaker you are, the heavier you will feel.  The stronger you are, the lighter you will feel.  A consistent yoga practice will make you strong and light.  This may not soundlike much.  But if, for example, you were twice as strong as you are right now, you would feel twice as light. It would seem as though you were half your current body weight.  Imagine weighing half your present weight.  You would feel very light and buoyant, and your everyday experience of who you are would be dramatically different.

FLEXIBILITY***  As you free your body and become more flexible, you not only restore lost movement, you actually erase all the tensions and internal conflicts that would otherwise accumulate and eventually erupt as pain.  The more flexible you are, the harder it is for pain to lodge in your body.