Change Your Brain, Change Your Life—Do Yoga

I am fascinated by what is going on in brain research these days. I just read Change Your Brain, Change Your Life by Daniel G. Amen, M.D. and learned that doing yoga and mediation are two ways to change your brain. Not long ago, scientists said the brain couldn’t change. When we reached maturity we had a certain amount of brain matter that would diminish as we aged and there wasn’t anything we could do about it.

Fortunately for us, research has proven that there are things we can do to change and improve our brains for our entire lives. How, you ask? Well, we all know we should eat our spinach and get adequate sleep, drink water and move our bodies. I’ll let you deal with your nutrition and sleep. Let’s talk about yoga and meditation for our minds and bodies.

Studies show that meditation actually builds new brain cells. Yoga is a meditative practice as well as a physical one. Yoga builds brain cells, too. One of the benefits I find is that yoga lifts my mood. The gray days of winter in Utah Valley influence me less than they used to before yoga and meditation. You can be sure that I will fight for every little brain cell I can build and use to keep me from sliding into dementia and lethargy any time soon. Join me in the fight and come to yoga with me at Bodhi Yoga in Provo. www.gobodhiyoga.com  Or you can call me for a private session.

All I Did Was Start Playing...

I started playing at doing yoga over ten years ago, maybe fifteen.  I witnessed a charismatic yogi fold and stretch at a conference I went to.  I knew we were meant to meet.  We met off and on for six or seven years without my being committed to practice.  Finally, at age sixty eight, I decided to give myself a chance to really do it.  Since then I have learned to fold and stretch much further than I would have without the help of Syl Carson at Bodhi Yoga.  

For some reason, what reason I know not, I am training to be a yoga teacher.  Fancy that!  I am now nearly 76 years old and moving well.  I definitely feel and act my age from time to time.  The rest of the time I am telling folks how much I love yoga and what a difference it has made and continues to make in my life.  

The thing I love about training to be a teacher is that I am learning things I didn't know I wanted to  know; like, what the gunas are.  You know, the way we move our bodies forward and backward.  That is called the rajas guna.   The next one is the tamasic energy, the way we move upward and downward.  Sattvic energy moves side to side.  Those three energies are part of everything we do.  I am expressing sattvic energy, outward, in the image above in Warrior II (Sanskrit: Virabhadrasana II).  I love learning and doing more yoga.

When we meet at one of my classes, you will be surprised by how ordinary I am and how gray my hair is.  It is never too late to become good at something you love.  I am on my way.

www.gobodhiyoga.com