Posted Aug. 31, 2004

As the age-old practice gains new converts, yoga benefits go beyond peace of mind

By Toni Hoh
For The Post-Crescent

If you don’t know the difference between a tree pose and a sun salutation, you may be missing out on some good things in life. So say yoga experts, who use the basic poses — along with many others — in helping their students and themselves to better health.

While the practice took a rap in the 1960s as a “hippie thing,” or perhaps even a cult activity, today yoga is gaining new respect in the fitness world. The 5,000-year-old practice has proven its value in helping to relieve everything from back pain to sinus trouble and high blood pressure to depression.

And almost unilaterally, practitioners say they sleep better and have more energy.

If these claims sound too much like the proverbial “snake oil,” a session or two of yoga will likely change your mind, local enthusiasts say.

“People always say they have more energy,” said B Alford, who runs The Yoga Studio in downtown Appleton. “A lot of them come in with neck, back and shoulder issues and find relief.”

Students also comment on an increased ability to focus, Alford said, and most say they sleep better at night. None of these claims come as a surprise to long-time yoga practitioners, who can’t imagine life without yoga.

“A lot of people think yoga is just about relaxing and meditating,” said Cynthia VanderWielen, who has practiced the art for the past 16 years. “But with power yoga, the kind I like, it’s so invigorating. You sweat the whole time you’re there, but you have all this energy for the rest of the day.”

Slow down

Simply learning to relax and slow our bodies down can have a strong impact on our physical health, said Gib Koula, social worker and certified biofeedback practitioner with ThedaCare Behavioral Health in the Fox Valley.

Often people don’t recognize the physical symptoms of stress — muscle tension, hand-sweating, increased heart rate, faster breathing — or the fact that they can learn to control their physical responses to any given situation. Yoga, with its focus on deep breathing and inward concentration, helps people to do just that.

“A lot of mind-body therapies are gaining scientific support because if you change any system in the body and move toward balance, you set the right conditions naturally (for relaxation),” Koula said. “Once you slow any system down, the rest of the body starts to follow — brain waves, blood chemistry, even immune functions improve. The mind does have a lot of power over health.”

Meditation and prayer as well as the practice of yoga are useful tools for people wanting to improve their health through relaxation, according to Koula. Yoga is being used as part of “mindfulness training” for patients at Appleton Medical Center’s Heart Institute.

“There’s a lot of evidence that it’s really helpful for many health problems,” Koula said. “When you have heart disease, it’s really important to change your emotional responses to life.”

Among the plethora of ailments health experts say can be caused by stress are headaches, back or neck pain and digestive problems.

Yoga can be approached from myriad ways, making it beneficial — and practical — for nearly everyone, Koula said. One of the things the practice teaches is postural awareness, which helps train the mind to use the right muscles for the right things.

“Yoga can be approached as a way to lessen stress, to slow down and just become more aware of the body,” he said. “People don’t pay attention to our bodies until they’re screaming in pain.”

While the concept of being able to set aside a half-hour twice a day to practice yoga or other meditation is great if you can do it, Koula stresses that just learning what it feels like to relax and keep that feeling in mind throughout the day also has benefits.

“I don’t want to dismiss regular, deep relaxation practice, but people have to learn to take care of themselves moment-by-moment,” he said.

“Science doesn’t say that there’s an exact result, but it’s more of general approach where people learn to relax, and by doing that regularly, they start to get health benefits.”

Feel the power

Power yoga, which is non-stop, is done in a heated setting and involves aerobic exercise. The activity has greatly reduced her chronic sinus problems, VanderWielen said.

VanderWielen takes classes at Midwest Power Yoga of Appleton, where she soon will teach as a registered yoga instructor. A physical therapist by trade, VanderWielen incorporates some forms of the practice into the regimens she uses with patients.

“I’ve incorporated it into my balance programs for geriatric patients,” she said. “The tree pose (a basic yoga pose) is excellent for balance. I use a lot of modified yoga poses.”

VanderWielen is employed by Kindred Health Care and works with residents at Appleton’s Colony Oaks Care Center and Neenah’s Vallhaven Care Center.

At a class earlier this year, VanderWielen learned about the use of yoga for people with osteoporosis. “A lot of people think that after a certain age, you can’t increase flexibility, but you can,” she said. “The breathing has a lot to do with it. That’s what gets everyone into a particular pose.”

Indeed, breathing is as crucial to successful yoga as is proper alignment and poses.

“People don’t realize how important it is to breathe slowly and deeply and to sigh deeply,” said Debbie Williamson, owner of Midwest Power Yoga. “In other cultures, like Eastern cultures, they teach their young children how to breathe properly.”

Side benefits

In an article published last September by the University of Iowa Health Science Relations Department, yoga was credited with reducing the need for medications in treating mild asthma and hypertension, and has had a noticeable impact on conditions such as diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, cerebral palsy and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Dramatic relief has been reported by people who use yoga to help manage depression. Yoga exercises put pressure on glands and organs, helping them to produce a soothing, healing chemical balance needed to feel well, according to the Web site yogafordepression.com. The moves improve circulation, sending oxygen to the brain and all muscles in the body.

A study of yoga’s effects on patients with multiple sclerosis, published on Webmd.com, says that yoga may be just as good as more conventional forms of exercise in reducing fatigue caused by the disorder. Fatigue, one of the most common symptoms of MS, can be disabling.

Researchers concluded that people with MS who participated in either yoga or exercises classes showed “significant improvement” in measures of fatigue compared to a non-exercising, non-yoga control group. The study also appeared in the June issue of the journal “Neurology.”

Stress relief

The reasons people give for practicing yoga are as varied as the individuals themselves, Williamson said, but for the majority, stress is a driving factor. “You could ask every person who comes through the door and they’d all have different reasons for being here,” she said. “They just want to feel better.”

With yoga’s growing popularity comes a slow but steady change in the demographics of students — from nearly 100 percent women just a few years ago to a 70 percent female/30 percent male population today. Williamson sees at least one man in just about every one of her classes.

“Men are finding out that it’s quite a workout. It never used to be that way,” she said. “Once they come, they find out they really enjoy it. You slow your breathing down and it gives you more strength, more flexibility, better balance, better focus and reduced stress.”

VanderWielen’s husband, Paul, and her stepdaughters also have taken up yoga. Paul has noticed improvement with a chronic back problem. “He was always doing basketball or golfing before — always something vigorous, but he never really stretched or anything like that, or took the time to concentrate on his body,” VanderWielen said.

Perhaps one of yoga’s greatest assets is that the majority of its 70,000 poses can be modified for all ages and abilities without compromising its benefits. Parents and children come to learn stress reduction together. People with fibromyalgia — a painful disorder that affects the entire body — often find relief from their discomfort. New moms come to the studio to rejuvenate themselves. A 90-year-old woman once stood on her head in Williamson’s class, much to the amazement of everyone, including her own daughter. “She had done some things in practice with us, and there she was,” Williamson said of the feat. “Her daughter said to her, ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this.’”

Cardiologists, emergency room nurses and other medical professionals who study yoga are surprised to find how physical the activity is. “They thought it was just meditation,” Williamson said. One nurse has since decided to become trained as a teacher.

On average, people attend yoga classes twice a week. Some go as often as five times a week. Most students practice some form of the art at home as well, seeking to bring them back to that tranquil state learned in the studio.

While a bit of “good” muscle soreness can be expected at first, “Yoga should never hurt,” Williamson said. “When you leave, you should feel 10 times better.”

- close this window -