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Yoking together mind and body

By Gaveliers, The Gavel Media Team, on October 27, 2009 12:13 AM

By Emily Maley -

Although its popularity has skyrocketed in recent years, yoga is a form of exercise dating back over 5,000 years.

Yoga is defined as “to join or yoke together.” According to the American Yoga Association, yoga joins or yokes together the body and the mind. Mentally, spiritually and physically, practitioners say that yoga helps in all aspects of everyday life. From personal experience, I have seen a great change in my body and mental clarity from my practice.

Class starts with basic individual stretching – getting your body prepped. In vinyasa, you move into your ‘flow’, which is a sequence of poses including sun salutations that become more and more difficult as repetition occurs. I find my hands are always shaking during sun salutations; my body is working on balance and focus. During yoga all the thoughts in my mind somehow drift away, I become focused on my presence, my now and my practice.

“Yoga opened up so much for me, my spiritual growth, general happiness and having a place to go when in stress and knowing it is always going to be there,” Krystin Hicks, a Vinyasa yoga instructor at All One Yoga in Packard’s Corner, says.

Hicks turned to yoga while recovering from a broken and sprained ankle. After years of professional dancing and being very involved with theatre, she needed relief, and says that she cannot believe how much yoga helped her recover.

“I’m 90 percent better, but it was and is still a constant battle,” Hicks says. “If I decided to stop doing yoga, I would absolutely regress back.”

Hicks, who has been teaching yoga for two and a half years, uses yoga both as her exercise and as her mental grounding.

“It’s something to go to when you need it, and you can put what you want into it,” Hicks says. “I personally use it instead of going to other vices like drinking and smoking– it’s my ‘go-to.’”

There are many styles of yoga, including Vinyasa, Bikram, Heated Power, Ansuara, Forrest and Hatha to name a few. Some of these classes are available at the BC RecPlex although without any heated element.  They offer Ashtanga, Hatha, Iyengar, Kripalu, PiYo and Vinyasa.

What style is right for you? It is important to try a few, because they all vary and can really change your opinion of yoga. My favorite happens to be the first I tried: Heated Power Yoga. I also practice Forrest, which works a lot with letting your neck stretch and involves a low of low belly work.

Teaching styles can make or break your experience. For example, if you don’t like doing yoga in the light or you like it with music or if you enjoy humor in your teacher or you prefer them to be more serious and ‘get down to business’, it all depends on your personal style and adaptation to these surroundings according to Hicks.

To heat or not to heat: that is the question. Hicks says she believes that for younger people, heated yoga can be beneficial because one can actually get into the ligament of the joint and work from there, which can be good but also poses potential issues later in life. Heated yoga artificially warms the muscles so it seems as if you’re more flexible than you really are, therefore creating a window for injury. A heated yoga room generally is around 103°F, but depending on the number of people in the room, it can get up to 109°F.  Although heated yoga has a greater ability to relax you and put you in a different state of mind, you also sweat a lot, which can be very cleansing.

Most recently at All One Yoga, they have added a Community Class, which Krystin teaches on Tuesday mornings. The class is $5 and allows for people who can’t afford the normal $15 dollar class fee to participate. Hicks loves this class because the title allows flexibility, and she is able to cater to needs of the energy in the room.

“[All One Yoga is an opportunity] to touch people who haven’t experienced and explored physical body and an avenue to help other people,” Hicks says.

As far as weight loss is concerned, yoga can help tone, but is not necessarily a tool to lose a lot of weight.

“Any style of yoga helps tone, lengthen, and strengthen the muscles, which can contribute to the sculpting of the body, but not necessarily to weight loss,” Baxter Bell, M.D. says. “Remember that muscle is, after all, denser and therefore heavier than an equivalent volume of fat tissue.”

Hicks says that although it is important to continue with cardio to attain weight loss, yoga can contribute a great deal to overall fitness and mental clarity.