New Year’s resolutions often focus on loosing weight and exercising, usually for the purpose of improving our health, but also in order to look our best. It often becomes a struggle to eat less and move more during the dark and cold weeks and months of winter. The stress that comes with this struggle usually makes us feel worse, rather than better. Hope for success is lost and resolutions are abandoned. Those who engage in a regular practice of yoga often break this disappointing pattern.
Weight loss and improved appearance are often achieved through yoga even though these are not yoga’s original purpose. Many thousands of years ago yoga was created with the intention or purpose of re-connecting. The desired reconnection was of the body and the mind, of the body and the mind with the heart and the spirit. A welcome outcome of this joining together is physical, mental and emotional health and well-being.
One important reason why the re-joining of body and mind brings health and well-being is that in this state of wholeness there is no struggle, stress is reduced or eliminated. Reducing stress is very important today because up to 80 percent of illnesses are stress-related.
Yoga teaches ways to reduce stress and brings optimum health and well-being. Its techniques have endured throughout the ages and offer hope for reducing conflicts between the body and the mind, the head and the heart. By reducing these struggles, yoga allows individuals to look, feel, and be their best. This makes yoga a great New Year’s resolution.
Sally A Barber MS
Certified Amrit Yoga Instructor
Advanced Level
Co-owner of the Westfield Yoga Center
