Fitness for your mind and body – that is one way to describe yoga. Through a series of physical poses that stretch limbs, torso and imagination, yoga can relieve stress and anxiety, control breathing and build better range of motion and strength. It has been around for more than 5,000 years. Think of the rejuvenating nature of yoga as your own ‘woosah’ moment.
The American Psychological Association says yoga increases body awareness, sharpens attention and concentration, and calms and centers the nervous system. Additionally, yoga’s benefits on mental health make it an important tool of psychotherapy.
Gladys Smith has been a certified yoga instructor for more than a decade. The recent 2016 Salute to Excellence in Education Awardee started practicing yoga while traveling in Asia while serving in the military, and is a proponent of healing feelings.
“I started to love it – I started to notice what it did for stress and stress management,” Smith said. “A few years ago, I became an instructor through Clayton Yoga.”
Smith said she had an opportunity to lead Canfield Green residents in yoga following the Mike Brown killing and unrest in Ferguson.
“It was wonderful, because it helped them relax just for a minute,” Smith said. “It was older people – younger people too; brothers out there doing it – everyone was doing yoga.”
The benefits are powerful enough that she teaches a free weekly midday yoga class on Fridays at Webster University, where, as a psychologist, Smith is drug and alcohol and trauma counselor, a sexual assault victims’ advocate and teaches about gender, culture and violence.
“If the students would continue to do it consistently and not do it just when it is stress management time, which is right before midterms and finals … you learn to manage your parasympathetic [nervous system] and you learn to relax and allow things to happen. And you can still stay the same.”
Among its health benefits, yoga is also known to reduce blood pressure, muscle tension, inflammation and weight.
The American Osteopathic Association states there are more than 100 different types of yoga – and it focuses on the body’s natural tendency toward health and healing.
Smith said long-term stress impacts us down the line – via diabetes, heart disease, stroke and all of the endocrine problems, and physical problems – aches in joints and headaches.
“All of those things can be traced back to stress or trauma,” Smith said. “It becomes toxic when it is untreated … unnoticed. It’s the larger things – sexual abuse, being raised in an alcoholic family … in a one-parent family… in a toxic family; being bullied; thoughts of suicide; anger – all those unresolved emotions.”
If you want to try yoga, consider what works best with your individual health conditions and abilities. Experts say do not go beyond your physical limits, don’t cause strain or injury to an already problem area and if it hurts, don’t do it. Trained yoga instructors should be able to help modify poses or identify ones to stay away from based on your personal health needs.
Smith said breathing while listening to relaxing music is a simple stress buster to clear your head and figure out where you are and what you want to say or do.
“If you keep your sympathetic nervous system engaged, your system soon starts to wear down because all those toxins are in your body,” she said. “As soon as you learn how to be stress-free, or stress less … physically, you’re a little bit better and psychologically, you are a lot better and you start to improve, because you start to make healthier choices.”
