Learning yoga poses does not have to be hard. And though yoga can appear quite challenging when looking at the advanced poses, it is important to approach it from the point of view that it should be adapted to your own needs and strengths.
Yoga has a huge range of benefits, from simply toning up the body, to supporting it in its natural healing process.
And yoga poses can be done by people with a whole range of abilities, or even physical difficulties. One lady wrote an article in the Australian Yoga Life magazine describing how yoga had helped her deal better with the chronic pain and depression she had experienced all her life resulting from congenital dislocated hips.
She was 48 years old when she started doing yoga poses, overweight, in need of a walking stick to move around, and disabled. She still uses a walking stick, but writes that within the 6 months she had been doing yoga, her body moves more freely. She has also dropped two dress sizes, and is much more able to cope with the 'bad' days.
Just as important as the physical benefits, she describes how yoga transformed her attitude in life from one of "I can't do this", to "Maybe I can!" So much so that this grandmother of 5 began a yoga teacher training course with the intent of teaching yoga to people with physical disabilities.
The key point from this is that yoga poses can be adapted to suit your own physical needs, limitations, and strengths. Flo Fenton, a yoga teacher from Byron Bay, wrote of how her yoga practice changed with respect to the needs of her body. She became more sensitive to her lower back, which she describes as "delicate and temperamental" (Australian Yoga Life). In her example, she no longer does the more extreme backbends and other poses that previously she always did.In the following articles on individual yoga poses, I have given examples of variations of yoga asanas (postures) where I have found them available.
0 comments