Yoga as Medicine: The Yogic Prescription for Health and Healing

Introduction In this book, i'm asking you to think of yoga as medicinea concept which is perhaps new and quite foreign to you. Because it is a kind of medicine that can benefit the healthy as well as the sick, I'm going to suggest that you consider starting a regular practice, no matter what your current state of health. You may have seen pictures of yoga contortionists or heard about grueling "power yoga" and "hot yoga" classes that convinced you this isn't something you could possibly do. If so, I hope to show you that virtually anyone can do yoga, including those who start out with little strength, energy, or flexibility, and those who are ill or injured. I say this not as a lifelong yoga teacher or someone who can readily bend his body into the shape of a square knotI'm not, not by a long shot. I am a physician, a board-certified specialist in internal medicine, who came to yoga in middle age and found itand continues to find itincredibly challenging. But in this challenge, I have seen steady growth in what I can do and how good I feel. My body has changed in ways I wouldn't have believedpossible, as has my mental state. The more I put into my yoga practice, the greater the rewards have become. I signed up for my first yoga class in the same spirit that I'd brought to salsa dancing and tai chi. It was simply something interesting I'd heard about and decided to try. I didn't come in with any kind of faith that yoga would change my life, but it did. At first my progress was slow. I studied yoga casually for a couple of years, making it to a class every other week or so. Due to my busy schedule, I never seemed to find the time to practice at home, even though my teacher, Patricia Walden, had said many times that fifteen or twenty minutes every day was much more valuable than a longer session once a week. Like a lot of people who play competitive sports and never pay much attention to stretching, I'd started out incredibly stiff. I had great difficulty with even the most basic poses. With my legs straight, I couldn't touch the floor with my fingertips. I couldn't sit cross-legged without feeling discomfort in my upper back. I had difficulty just straightening my spine, let alone bending it backward. And even though I enjoyed the feeling of peace that class left me with those first two years, my body never became much more flexible. Then I made a decision: I was going to take a leap of faith. I resolved to get up every morning for one year and practice yoga. I bought a mat, a strap, and a book describing the basic stretching, strengthening, and relaxation poses known as asana (pronounced AH-sah-nah). Even if my schedule was crazy and I could only fit in a few minutes, I'd do it. I started inserting yoga into the cracks in my day. If I was sitting at the computer or had a break between patients, I'd take a minute to stretch my arms over my head or bend forward, place my hands on the desk, and lengthen my spine for a few seconds. If I was on the road, I'd do asanas in my hotel room. I started to pay more attention to my body, noticing the way my shoulders tended to slump as I sat behind the wheel or read a book. With regular practice, amazing things began to happen. After a few months, my chest started to open up. My friends and family noticed that my chronically slouching posture, from years of studying and computer work, was improving. The knots that I had thought were a permanent fixture in my upper back slowly melted away. I didn't get injured as often as I used to. In the five years before starting yoga, I gave up basketball due to heel spurs and I lost a year of playing tennis due to an inflammation of my elbow. I'd noticed the twinYoga Journal is the author of 'Yoga as Medicine: The Yogic Prescription for Health and Healing', published 2007 under ISBN 9780553384062 and ISBN 0553384066.