| Yoga poses, asanas (pronounced ah-sa-nas), function in traditional hatha yoga as a rung on a ladder to somewhere else. The ladder of Hatha yoga techniques leads to refined awareness and ultimately, if one continues long enough and arduously enough, to awareness that sees beyond the ordinary filters through which most of us look at reality. That state of clear seeing is called samadhi and it is the goal of all traditional hatha yoga asana practice. (Hatha yoga is the school of yoga from which all asanas originate.)
 Yet many people practice yoga poses, asanas, for the fitness or health benefit they provide. Asanas’ benefits are so noteworthy that the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is the principal government research agency concerned with medical science and health, has devoted part of its budget to researching the health benefits of yoga asanas and breathing. By 2004, NIH had funded eight studies using yoga exercises since the establishment by the U.S. Congress of the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) within NIH in October, 1991. (See sidebar.)
Yoga poses have become a popular fitness regimen and means of restoring health because they are unique in the world of exercise systems. So, how do yoga poses work? What makes them unique?
The benefits of yoga asanas result from the ways the various poses achieve strength, elasticity, increased sensation, relaxation and focused attention.
Asanas engage your muscles and joints, the hinges of your skeleton. The average body contains approximately 600 muscles which constitute about 50 percent of the body’s weight. About 40 percent of your body weight is comprised of skeletal muscle, that is, muscles that move you, muscles that you can feel and control. The other 10 percent of your muscle weight is internal organ muscles which in most cases you can’t feel, and which you can’t control. Obviously, any system of body transformation, whether your goal is power and stamina, capacity to relax, or ability to focus mentally, needs to focus on muscles. Yoga asanas do just that, in specific ways.
One specific effect of practicing yoga asanas is muscular strength and extensibility. Contracting a muscle intensely over and over strengthens it; and elongating a muscle over and over makes it more extensible, increasing your flexibility. These two, strength and extensibility, are the properties of healthy muscles. (This is called “toned” muscles.) Healthy muscles help you achieve improved breathing, a stronger heart, better blood circulation, stronger bones and stronger attachments of ligaments and tendons to your bones.
Model: Crystal Hinton, Photography: Leslie & Daniel Goodman
Another effect of practicing asanas and developing healthy muscles is more feeling, more sensation. This is because the nerves and nerve endings in your muscles are stimulated along with your circulatory and respiratory systems. This effect is obvious when you are exercising a muscle: you can feel it working or feel it stretching. But the increase in feeling lasts long after you stop exercising. When your body’s most important muscle groups are toned, as they usually are in a yoga class, you can feel more sensation throughout your body for hours. As you learn to sense yourself more intimately, you can relax the parts of your body that you habitually tense up, such as your shoulders or your lower jaw. And you may be motivated to choose healthier food, to exercise more days per week and to sleep longer.
| The NIH and yoga
The division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) concerned with yoga is now called the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). Clinical studies funded by NCCAM have included: Evaluating Yoga for Chronic Low Back Pain, Yoga as a Treatment for Insomnia, Yoga: Effect on Attention in Aging and Multiple Sclerosis, Yoga for Treating Shortness of Breath in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). Source, NCCAM website (http://nccam.nih.gov/), or call 1-888-644-6226. For a complete list of NIH studies and clinical trials involving yoga go to: http://crisp.cit.nih.gov/crisp/crisp_lib.query. |
Another benefit of learning to sense yourself more intimately is that you can feel your emotions more clearly. Emotions function in us as the “juice,” like electrical juice, that makes us feel alive and connects us to other people and to the world in which we live. Contrastingly, living in our minds and thoughts, without feeling in our bodies, feels dead, flat and lonely.
When you use your muscles in asana practice you deeply relax. Here’s why this happens. When you gently stretch a muscle, it relaxes. If you properly stretch a majority of your skeletal muscles, as often happens in an hour-long yoga class, you will feel relaxed all over. Relaxed muscles use up less oxygen, discharge less carbon dioxide and use up less glycogen (sugar), resulting in your feeling more energetic. Relaxed muscles also allow more blood to circulate through them.
Since the ultimate goal of yoga asanas is seeing who you are and your place in the universe, all of yoga’s intermediate goals are concerned with increasing awareness. You accomplish this by focusing your attention when you practice asanas. You put your attention on what you are doing, what you are feeling. This way you become more deeply in touch with yourself. And this, feeling in touch with your self, is greatest gift to you from your yoga practice.
Ravi Dykema is an adjunct professor of yoga at Naropa University. He offers four short yoga classes for “reducing stress at your desk” at www.Holistic.com. |