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April 6, 1999 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d So what exactly is yoga?<\/p>\n
Let’s first begin by identifying some things that yoga is not.<\/p>\n
Yoga is not a little green man.<\/p>\n
Yoga is not a dairy product.<\/p>\n
Yoga is not a religion.<\/p>\n
And, yoga is not a bunch of hippies sitting around, chanting and contemplating their navels.<\/p>\n
“I think your classmates will tell you that it’s not quite as easy as that,” my yoga instructor Cheryl Zak informed me with a peaceful smile.<\/p>\n
Our feet bare, my four classmates and I sat on individual blankets in the studio portion of Zak’s north Forsyth County home, headquarters of the Forsyth Yoga Center.<\/p>\n
A band of soft sunlight danced off the room’s mirrored walls. Soothing sounds of new-age music sang from Zak’s stereo. And outside, along the waters of a private lake, a calming chorus of birds joined in.<\/p>\n
An ideal setting for what yoga actually is: a system of exercises practiced to promote control of the body and mind, and train the consciousness for a state of perfect tranquility.<\/p>\n
Yoga is said to improve flexibility, increase strength, heighten concentration and reduce stress.<\/p>\n
Does it work?<\/p>\n
Well, the Denver Broncos hired a yoga instructor to help them prepare, mentally and physically, for this year’s Super Bowl. And we all know what happened there.<\/p>\n
Yoga has a pretty solid track record, as well. It’s been around for more than 2,000 years. Not even Tae-Bo can make a claim like that.<\/p>\n
Longtime yogis, like the 46-year-old Zak, are walking advertisements for yoga’s benefits. That’s why she began practicing yoga 25 years ago.<\/p>\n
“I took a look at the teacher; I was 21, she was 50,” remembered Zak of her first yoga class. “I looked at her a went, ‘Now I want to look that good when I’m 50.’ She not only looked good like she was fit, but she also looked peaceful. She just had this glow about her.”<\/p>\n
Closing in on 50 herself, Zak is taking on that glow \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and she’s still as flexible as a teenager.<\/p>\n
Now the rest of us, well, we needed a bit more work.<\/p>\n
Zak started our session with some breathing and stretching exercises as a warm-up. As Zak whispered instructions, we isolated, relaxed, and loosened individual body parts. And we breathed.<\/p>\n
Inhale. Exhale.<\/p>\n
After more stretching, and breathing, we began a series of “asanas,” or yoga-defined postures, each meant to stretch or strengthen a certain body part.<\/p>\n
Remember the part about yoga being old? Well, the names for these postures are in Sanskrit, a language long dead for most of the non-yoga world.<\/p>\n
Luckily, poses with names like Baddha Konasana and Adho Mukha Svanasana are also known less intimidatingly as cobbler’s pose and downward-facing dog pose.<\/p>\n
That doesn’t make them any easier, however. But loyal yogis know any discomfort they might feel is worth it \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and that their concentration will be rewarded with relaxation time at the end of the session.<\/p>\n
“It builds strength and it also balances and relaxes the muscles in the body,” said Cumming’s Louanne Howard, 47, a massage therapist and a regular in Zak’s classes. “The work I do is very physical, very one sided. So this really balances out my body and takes out the kinks and the aches and the pains.”<\/p>\n
Zak, who estimated that more than 90 percent of her clients’ physical ailments are the result of poor posture, said chiropractors are beginning to refer their patients to yoga instructors in an effort to augment and expand their treatment.<\/p>\n
“Some folks use yoga as a primary exercise resource; a lot of people use it to help them in other things,” said Zak, who has clients that use yoga to improve their tennis and golf games. “But you can use yoga your entire life, whereas with some fitness programs as we age we’ve got to alter or drop them. Yoga will just stay with you.”<\/p>\n
I’m not sure if it was the music or the birds or the soothing sound of Zak’s voice, but there was a feeling I had midway through my yoga class that will indeed stay with me.<\/p>\n
I was totally conscious of my body \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and nothing else. Every muscle. Every bone. It all seemed to make sense. I was aware of everything and nothing at the same time. It was a powerful feeling.<\/p>\n
“Yoga is about awareness,” said Zak, who has been teaching yoga since 1978. “Really being aware of what you’re doing in the movement. We try to understand how we sit, how we stand, how we do everything.<\/p>\n
“Listen to your body.”<\/p>\n
I think my body was saying, “Thanks.”<\/p>\n
Sometimes we don’t listen to our bodies enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
April 6, 1999 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d So what exactly is yoga? Let’s first begin by identifying some things that yoga is not. Yoga is not a little green man. Yoga is not a dairy product. Yoga is not a religion. And, yoga is not a bunch of hippies sitting around, chanting and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":441,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions\/441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/sportinglife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}