Yoga Cures: Simple Routines to Conquer Over 50 Common Ailments and Live Pain-Free by Tara Stiles Read Free Book Online

lives. We are more productive about work when we are less emotionally involved, tense,
    and worried. We can cultivate lasting and meaningful relationships when we have a little space from our
    emotions and so are able to communicate with compassion, focus, and ease.
    Australian researchers at Deakin University in Melbourne conducted a study using yoga as both a
    preventive therapy and a treatment for symptoms of mental illness. Participants went through a six-
    week yoga program that included breathing techniques, yoga poses designed to enhance strength,
    vitality, and flexibility, and guided relaxation and meditation. The aim was to see if participants would
    increase their resistance to emotional distress by developing greater calmness, self-acceptance, a more
    balanced perspective on life, and enhanced concentration—all things the researchers believed could
    potentially be gained from yoga. They compared symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression across
    three groups: regular yoga practitioners, beginners practicing yoga as therapy for depression and stress
    for the first time, and a control group that did not practice yoga. The study also looked at the
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    participants’ sense of intrinsic spirituality (an inherent sense of spiritual connection or fullness) before
    and after the six-week yoga practice.
    REAL-LIFE CURES: Dave’s Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

    Meet Dave, a Strala regular (one of the early adopters, from the time I led yoga classes out of my apartment). For quite some time, he suffered from OCD, an anxiety disorder in which a hyperactive mind finds often arbitrary
    obsessions and rituals to keep itself occupied. Those who have OCD relate that at times the brain feels a bit like a pinball machine: pinging from one subject to the next, out of control.
    Dave says he has experienced a 60 to 70 percent improvement in his OCD symptoms over the last two years of
    sporadic yoga practice. Dave says he feels breathing and meditation are the activities that are most directly useful in slowing down his brain.
    If you search online, like Dave did, for connections between OCD and yoga, you may find information on the
    benefits of meditation and alternate nostril breathing (a technique that is a huge cure for anxiety among other things), but likely not all that much on yoga’s usefulness with this disorder. You will find a slew of medical sites, and a slew of medications available as the first suggested treatment for the disorder. What’s the harm in giving yoga a try, like Dave did, and seeing if this “old school” treatment can’t help?

    When the three study groups were compared at the end of six weeks, the people in the beginners’
    yoga group on average had lower levels for symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress than before the
    beginning of the study. The people who already practiced yoga and the people in the control group, not
    surprisingly, showed no change. In addition, the participants in the beginning yoga group showed
    growth in their self-reported level of spiritual connection.
    YOGA CURES: ACHES AND PAINS

    From day-to-day body aches that result from too much office or desk time—and neck, shoulder, hip,
    and wrist tension—to more chronic issues like back pain, sciatica, and sports injuries, or even problems
    caused by improperly practiced yoga, a regular yoga practice has improved symptoms and often
    reversed these conditions. Even arthritis and fibromyalgia and their resulting pain, discomfort, and
    decreased range of motion have been helped by yoga.
    Scientists from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore divided a group of thirty sedentary adults with
    rheumatoid arthritis (RA) into two groups: one participated in an eight-week program of yoga and the
    other was put on a wait list and served as the control. The people in the yoga group