Yoga at Home for Beginners: "Yoga is strong medicine but slow medicine"

Stated by Dr. Timothy McCall in his book Yoga as Medicine:  The Yogic Prescription for Health and Healing," the title of this blog means that yoga is not a quick fix.  However, (and this is a big however), yoga practiced consistently (daily in my view) over a long period of time creates tremendous healing benefits that deepen and accrue like "compound interest."

In Western culture, we tend to be impatient and look for instant results.  While it's wonderful to notice immediate benefits from taking a particular action such as beginning a yoga practice, it's best to trust and have faith in the results that the process will bring over time  Just as the jaded but nonetheless accurate analogy of planting a seed, watering it, and having faith it will blossom into a plant or flower over time without digging it up to check on it, I agree with McCall that yoga's benefits should be evaluated over the long term.

Recently the press has reported the results of a 12-week study concerning people with back pain and the experiments conducted to compare a control group who did nothing with two other groups one of which did "regular" stretching and the other which did yoga stretching.  Apparently, little difference was found in the benefits gained in alleviating back pain between the group doing regular stretch and the group doing yoga stretches.

I suspect that more meaningful results would be noted if the results were compared over a six-month or better yet a 1-year or 2-year period.  Also, it wasn't clear if the study compared changes beyond the alleviated back pain between the two groups that did stretching.

Because I have practiced yoga at home virtually daily over an extended time, I have noticed that the energy, flexibility, and serenity I experience exceeds that of friends and colleagues who attend yoga classes once or twice a week and cease practicing when there is a break in the class schedule between sessions. I am not sharing this to brag, but to impress upon the significance of consistent practice.

To gain maximum benefits from a yoga regime, commit yourself to making it a daily, permanent part of your life.  It may be slow medicine, but it truly is powerful medicine.

Yours for reaping fabulous results from yoga over time,

Laura Venecia Rodriguez, The Beginners' Yoga at Home Coach for "Real, Regular People"

Comments

[Lenett Scavo]

I agree with you! That's not quite easy to make some result from yoga. Like any other work requres much time to achive something, the same thing, I think, concerns yoga. I used to yoga regime, make myself do it every day, like my daily routine, and gives me plenty of energy and inclination to make something substantial and prolific.

[Laura Rodriguez]

Thank you, "Lenett!" Do you watch Desperate Housewives - your name is just too coincidental! Anyway, thanks for your feedback!

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nice blog ,thank u for telling about this it will really help others.

[Laura Rodriguez]

Thank you!