health

by Nina New Bay Bridge by Melina Meza As you can probably tell from my post yesterday on non-holding , I'm in a philosophical mood. To be honest, as much as I value the physical benefits I get from my asana practice, I think I value even more the benefits I've gained from studying yoga philosophy. This is why when Baxter and I describe what I might call the pillars of yoga for healthy aging, we always include "cultivating equanimity" along with strength, flexibility, balance, agility, and stress management. And as I was looking for something to write about this morning, I found a quote from B.K.S. Iyengar that perfectly summed up my reason for holding yoga philosophy in such high esteem: Yoga recognizes that the way our bodies and minds work has changed very little over the millennia. The way we function inside our skin is not susceptible to differ either in time or from place to place. In the functioning of our minds, in our way of relating to each other, there are i...

by Baxter Fallen Tree by Brad Gibson We have mentioned  cortisol,  one of the body�s important hormones, a few times in the recent past, but always with the slant of it somehow being a problem child, a bad actor, a rotten apple, as it were. But cortisol, when it is working in harmony with a well-balanced body and mind, is part of a elegant system that tries to help us respond in the best way possible to short term stressful situations that are bound to arise in our daily lives. So on a daily basis, during the early morning hours - around 4-5 am, the body releases a bit of cortisol to get your inner furnace ready for the first foot hitting the floor in the morning. It releases a bit of sugar into the blood stream, sends a bit more blood to the brain and heart, and really gets us ready for action, however mellow or intense our morning will be. Then, if the day is relatively uneventful, the level of cortisol gradually diminishes to its lowest levels around 10pm. When released i...