How You Can Use Yoga & Stretching to Improve Your Health

Aloha,

Spring is here and the weather is warming up! People are getting outside and enjoying the beautiful sunshine. Personally, the warmer weather motivates me to exercise more and shake off my winter’s hibernation. But as I exercise more, I experience more aches, pains, and tight muscles. I constantly need to stretch in order to keep my body mobile, flexible, and injury-free. I find yoga and stretching help significantly with my aches and pains from a bulging lumbar and neuropathy in my feet and legs.

Yoga can help in more ways than you can imagine ranging from relieving stress to protecting your spine. Best of all it gives an overall sense of tranquility. I put together a list of fifteen benefits of yoga after reading two great articles from Yoga Journal (link) and Sports Rec (link) websites:

• Encourages Flexibility

• Increases Range of Motion

• Accelerates Pain Relief

• Induces Relaxation

• Improves Posture

• Builds Muscle

• Protects Spine

• Improves Circulation

• Boosts Immunity

• Elevates Heart Rate

• Lowers Blood Pressure

• Improves Balance

• Releases Tension

• Enhances Sleep Quality

• Improves Optimism

All of these benefits make me want to grab my yoga mat and have a quick session! Yoga is such a great way to start your day and taking the time to release the tension will improve your health immensely. Not only is yoga the best way to stretch and keep my body functioning, it also promotes inner peace during difficult times. Practicing yoga can heal you in so many ways!

From each yoga practice, you develop a sense of patience with yourself and body as you see slight improvements. You will notice how well you sleep after going through a stretching session as your body is relieved, realigned, centered, and relaxed. Most times I don’t go through an entire yoga session, but I use the stretches I’ve learned, and it has become part of my routine before bed to relax my body.

Try doing a quick stretch routine before bed and see how well it improves your sleep quality. I’ve included one of my favorite YouTube yoga instructors I can put on anytime (any level, quick sessions, long sessions, etc.). I would love to hear what you do to help relax and improve your body through yoga in the comments below!

Namaste,

Melissa

How Swimming Can Change Your Life

Aloha,

One of the most important parts of my healthy lifestyle choices I owe all to my mom. She was a high school swim coach and put me in the water when I was only two weeks old. However, my mom’s example goes far beyond just teaching me to swim.

My grandma suffered from strokes and had a hard time walking. I can remember my mom and aunts would take my grandma to the pool to re-teach her to walk. It helped with her coordination, balance, and posture. They would walk up and down the pool which showed me how water buoyancy not only benefits our health at any age, but also how it can be used to heal various injuries.

Suffering from neuropathy after chemotherapy has been one of my biggest physical struggles. The pain of walking along with stiff muscles, I used the same low-impact workout my grandma as I would swim or walk in the water. From the water buoyancy, the gravity on your bones and muscles are reduced creating less pressure on your body’s injuries and a stress-free workout to relieve pain.

What are the other benefits of swimming?

• Elevates heart rate up but relieves impact stress on your body

• Builds endurance, muscle strength and cardiovascular fitness

• Helps maintain a healthy weight, healthy heart, and lungs

• Tones muscles and builds strength

• Provides an all-over body workout since majority of muscles are used

• Induces a relaxing and peaceful form of exercise

• Alleviates stress

• Improves coordination, balance, posture, and flexibility

• Provides good low-impact therapy for some injuries and conditions

While swimming, your entire body is getting a great workout. Unlike other cardio workouts, swimming use both upper and lower body muscles at the same time. According to a Time article:

“Your body is working hard when you’re in the pool. Water is denser than air, so moving through water puts more external pressure on your limbs than out-of-water training, studies have shown. Even better, that pressure is uniformly distributed. It doesn’t collect in your knees, hips or the other places that bear most of the burden when you exercise with gravity sitting on your shoulders.” (Heid, 2017)

My mom would tell me how she swam every day during her pregnancy with me since it is the best low-impact workout during pregnancy. She always said swimming was what made childbirth and recovery so much easier while making her muscles healthy and strong.

If you don’t feel like you are a strong swimmer, remember to relax and be patient. Practice makes perfect and remember you can always walk or join a water aerobics class. There are many ways to incorporate this great exercise into your lifestyle. Start small and work your way up, you won’t be disappointed with the workout you can get and how amazing you will feel! It's my way to rejuvenate, heal, and get a killer workout!

Keep Smiling,

Melissa