Yoga: Hormones/Endocrine System

I just did this yoga video and enjoyed it so much I thought I’d share it with my readers this morning. I really enjoyed this teacher. Today was the first time I found the teacher, Melissa West. She has a lot more on youtube. I’ll be checking out more of her videos. And here is her website.

I really liked this very gentle but clearly powerful yoga session. It’s also highly educational. Please feel free to modify further than the teacher suggests by stopping if your body feels taxed at any point in time. While this is a very gentle practice, I still needed to cut short some of the asanas as I am still recovering from long-term illness. It’s important to pay attention to your body.

My whole body is incredibly energized having just done this session. These seemingly simple moves are profoundly powerful. Do them mindfully and pay attention to how your whole body is feeling while you breathe.

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Yoga has been and remains fundamentally important to my healing process. Not only did it allow me to slowly rehabilitate my bedridden, atrophied muscles. (it’s rather astonishing what happens to the body after being mostly inert in bed for two years). But it has since started to slowly deeply strengthen me in a multitude of other ways. In this process too, since yoga is also a profound mindfulness practice, I’ve come to learn to deeply listen to my body. Yoga, among other things, serves as a system of somatic release. In this way layers and layers of trauma and pain can be accessed and healed.

Below I’m posting some of the yoga posts that include very easy videos that I started out with as I got out of bed. Look for RESTORATIVE yoga videos when you first start. These are deeply healing to the nervous system and those of us with withdrawal syndrome need to heal our autonomic nervous systems.

Here are some links that can get people started if they’re still ill or if they’re just beginning a yoga practice:

these sequences have also been very healing…belly breathing is also really really good for the calming of the nervous system:

Yoga postures, breathing and waking-up
Belly breathing and a bit of yoga …pick and choose what feels appropriate for you…at bedtime I mostly do legs against the wall.

The above can get you started with baby steps. Don’t feel beholden to do all of any of these videos. Pick and choose from what your body likes and wants.

Here is a longer but very gentle routine as well…again, remember only do that which your body likes.

Your yoga for today

I want to underscore that I rarely do more than 20 minutes of yoga at one sitting even now and I’ve been doing a deep and profound yoga practice for several years now. I did do this whole video as it’s so slow and gentle. I did however shorten many of the holds…so in that respect I didn’t do the whole thing. My body is still healing…this is what it needs. Being a good yogi doesn’t mean necessarily stamina (or great physical flexibility)…it’s much more about listening and attending to the body right NOW. On physically stronger days I may do yoga several times a day. Anything from 5 minute to 20 minute sessions. On better days I may do that several times during the day. On a really bad day I may do nothing at all or more often just really small laying down stretches for no more than a few minutes.

Trust yourself. Trust your body.

MORE: Yoga posts on Beyond Meds

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