Slow Down For Yoga

So I'm currently in Louisville Kentucky which is such an amazing city I love it more and more every time I come. I always seem to forget something when I go on a trip and sure enough I forgot my prenatal vitamins. So, I made a trip to the vitamin store here and was I amazed! Maybe just because I'm from a smaller town and so our health food stores are smaller but it just seemed like I could find anything I wanted in that store! As I was looking around they had magazines for you to take and I noticed alot of them had something to do with yoga. Turns out, after picking some up and reading, that September is National Yoga month.

This started my interested in yoga again, as I did yoga pretty faithfully through my first trimester of my pregnancy. Most people think if your doing yoga you have to be flexible and everyone has to start somewhere but that doesn't mean you have to be flexible right now! When you pick up an infant out of the crib from a nap that baby stretches and the same as they grow up til they become wrapped up in busy lives like most adults today. Yoga is simply slowing you down teaching you how to breathe and your doing those stretches you should be doing anyways.

Breathing is the most important part of yoga. Our jobs and lifestyles, with the fast pace and hunched over backs, cause us to breathe fast and shallow. Breathing for yoga opens up your chest cavities and expands the lungs like they should be. By breathing this way, you can benefit by stronger lungs, healthier heart, relaxing the body and mind, improvement of health and brain systems, and also revive the skin, which has also been thought to reduce wrinkles.

Of course, the yoga positions are also very important. Poses don't have to be hard especially when your just starting out. You can't expect to go straight to the advance poses just like you can't expect to run a marathon when you have just started running and have no training. You can also focus on what fits your needs. For example, going into my third trimester I have had a lot of back pain so I am focusing on stretching my back and breathing. Within just a couple days of starting up yoga again, I could get through more of the day than I did before with out any back pain!

Now, if you have decided that this is for you to try out, then you need to find the best way for you to do that. If you do better with someone telling you what to do and showing you every step then maybe a class or even the Wii Fit is something you should look into. I did my Wii Fit faithfully for a long time, but for me I think I am better off with some quiet time by myself to help me focus on my breathing and just some simple relaxation, sometimes even outside. Remember to start out slow, pick out what is right for you, and Relax!