Class extras for rexburgyoga.com

Shelly and Leslie and Gaylene have both recently certified in two different techniques and they would like to announce that both will be available for private yoga sessions using these modalities.

Restorative Yoga

“Taking time out each day to relax and renew is essential to living well.” Judith Lasater, Ph.D., P.T.
Restorative yoga is based on supported physical postures that when practiced regularly, assist in helping to heal the effects of chronic stress.

Stress is the product of the “fight or flight” response. When unchecked the sympathetic nervous system responds by increasing cardiac output, blood pressure, tension in muscles and shallow breathing. Continuous exposure to this kind of chronic stress is harmful to the body’s natural healing proprieties.
The parasympathetic nervous system or relaxation response allows your body to lower blood pressure, heart rate and respiration. This response is also known as the “rest and renew” stage when the body has time to heal and restore.

Shelly feels strongly that we must give ourselves permission to slow down, to get off the “gerbil wheel” or habit of daily stressful living and recover. This can be accomplished by learning skills to begin to take responsibility for our health and regain abundant and purposeful living again. Both Shelly and Gaylene have recently received their Relax and Renew teaching certificates under Judith Lasater, Ph.D., P.T. Both are available for private and group sessions.
Please call 356-6307for Shelly and 356-0404 for Gaylene

ER Yoga

ER yoga is pain relief yoga. Physical pain is many times caused by stress – emotional stress. Isn’t your headache worse when you think about dealing with that difficult person at work? ER or Emotional Recovery Yoga is a three step process: identify individual emotional stresses, remove them quickly, then practicing gentle yoga postures and breathing to help relax the body and anchor the new balanced energy in the body. If the body is relaxed, the body is not in pain. This is how ER yoga works as pain relief.

An ER yoga session is a private individualized session because each person perceives experiences different than anyone else. Leslie is certified in the Emotion Code and this is the protocol used for releasing trapped emotions. A permanent discount for an ER yoga session is available for all students of Rexburg Yoga. $15 for a 45-50 min session. leslie@rexburgyoga.com or 356-9163 for an appointment.

I made some mp3 audio files for some family and I will share them here too. There will be 3 eventually. Each one is about 7 minutes long of a guided breathing practice. It was made to help remind the body, thru a calm and centered breath and gentle movement that the world is a safe place to be. I hope you enjoy

Go here.
Its called Guided Breath 1

A request has been made for suggestions for music. A page will be permanently created for that. The link is over on the right-hand menu bar. The link will always be available and easy to find, even after this blog post goes into the archives.

What are some favorite music that we recommend?
Here’s some choices.
A great place to download music at a reasonable price is legal sounds. You pay a fee up front and then download until your money runs out. So I would only choose that option if you are regularly getting lots of music downloads. If you just want a few, then just go with Amazon music downloads.

You can listen to clips of the music here to see what you like. These are chosen particularly for relaxation pose

What we feel as stress, is the product of the sympathetic nervous system or the “fight or flight” response: an almost instantaneous surge in heart rate, cardiac output, blood pressure, sweating, shallow breathing, combined with a tensing of muscles. Internally, the “fight or flight” response shuts down digestion and elimination and reduces blood flow to the internal organs. Short term, this stress reaction is a good thing. The “fight or flight” response prepares us to respond to any environmental threat by fighting against it or fleeing from it. But long term, continuous exposure to stress is harmful, placing excess wear and tear on the body’s systems and severely limiting the body’s natural maintenance and healing abilities.

With chronic stress this can cause adrenal exhaustion since you never allow the body to restore and relax.  This could be felt as a fatigue that is not helped by a good night’s sleep, and a lowered immune system which then leaves you open to all sorts of diseases including the winter colds, flues and blues.

Too vigorous exercise is part of this chronic stress.

The opposite of that fight or flight response is the relaxation response, or the  para sympathetic nervous system.

When activated, the parasympathetic nervous system lowers blood pressure, heart rate and respiration (the pace of the breath). Digestion and elimination are allowed to be stimulated, and blood is free to travel to the digestive, reproductive, glandular, and immune systems — systems necessary for the promotion of long-term health. The “relaxation response” is also known as the “rest and renew” stage, when the body has the time and resources to heal the body and to respond to illness. Obviously, by increasing the frequency, time and depth of the “relaxation response” we not only allow our body to recover from illness and disease, but we also practice preventive medicine by allowing the body to perform all of its essential maintenance tasks. Yoga practice teaches you to activate this relaxation response.  It is the balance needed in an exercise plan that includes cardio, and weights.  Both of these have potential to be overly stimulating to the nervous system.

75% of our nerve fibers form the sympathetic system and only 25% form the parasympathetic system which is the relaxing branch of our nervous system. That means that our body is designed for fast and efficient stress arousal through the sympathetic nervous system.  But it also means it is more difficult and takes longer to bring the body away from the emergency and back to rest and restore.   Yoga practice teaches the methods to restore balance and lets you be in charge of the health of your nervous system.