Inner Peace – Balance – Anxiety Management – Confidence

What do all these things have in common? First, they are all things we want to work on improving in our busy Yankee lifestyles. Getting better at these areas has always been recommended by health experts as a technique to increase our standard of living, reduce the chance of injury or sickness, and even to live longer!

Second, these are all benefits of working out with Yoga! Hatha yoga – the physical yoga postures or “asanas” that most of us associate with yoga exercise – is a great way to build muscle, increase the range of motion in our joints, and create an opportunity for calm, balance and relaxation in our daily schedules. Now before you get nervous that I’m going to go all “transcendental” on you, don’t worry! Although yoga traditionally does include a lot of spiritual, meditative and holistic practices, you can get many of the benefits of a yoga lifestyle by just incorporating a little yoga fitness workout routine into your weekly schedule. Whether you can do 60-minutes 3x per week, or squeeze in some Sun Salutations for 15 minutes every morning – even a moderate increase in your activity level through the incorporation of yoga practices can help.

Now – everybody knows we’re supposed to exercise but we don’t! Not enough anyway! Why? Well, one common excuse is the concern over not having enough time in the day to force in a workout. Working out at home with a yoga fitness DVD might be a fine solution to this problem. Just pop in the video and watch a 20 to sixty minute workout you can follow along with.

I know your schedule already feels jam-packed and you’re worried you won’t have time for yoga. As a full-time-mom ( all fogeys are full-time in my judgment – you never stop panicking about your youngsters ) and a business-owner, I find that there are never enough hours in the day to do everything I need to. However, it’s necessary to prioritize your well being and leave time for replenishing your body and spirit on a daily basis. Exercise is a way to do that. When you figure out at home with a yoga fitness DVD, you can slide in your exercise when you have time. Before dawn when the house is quiet, when the kids are asleep or the family’s watching TV downstairs, or as a family activity that encourages everybody in the household to be active and share time together.

Another concern that many people have about yoga exercise is that it’s going to be expensive. Yoga has certainly enjoyed a period of “trendiness” lately and with yoga classes sprouting up all over the country at elite gyms and studios, it’s easy to see how yoga has gotten the reputation for being expensive. However, remember that yoga was developed by ascetics in some of the poorest areas of the world. You have more than they do in terms of material possessions – if they can do it, you can do. Although you don’t “need” anything to practice yoga, and you can even learn it for free with some workout videos from the library or picture books that show you step-by-step what to do, I recommend that you start with two essentials: A yoga mat to enhance your comfort and safety while doing the poses, and a good instructional yoga video to lead you through a workout or two that you can follow and enjoy over and over again.

For the price of a class or 2 at the local yoga studio, you can get everything you need to workout at home.

I hope I induce you to look into yoga exercise as a total body workout, or a supplement to your current exercise routine. The advantages are simply excellent, and the positive impact of your new fitness will routine will only get bigger the more you practice.