You At Your Best

Down dogging it By Karen rIce nWa DeMOcraT-GazeTTe If it seems like every one is talking about yoga these days, it's probably because they are. According to a report from the Center's for Disease Control's National Center for Health Statistics, 50% more U.S. adults hit the yoga mat in 2017 than in 2012. And that 2012 number was double the number from 10 years earlier. The latest figures from thegoodbody.com put the number of Americans practicing yoga at 36 million. Approximately one in three Americans has tried yoga at least once. How is it that a 5,000-year-old practice designed to rejuvenate the body continues to grow in popularity at such a staggering rate? Flexibility and stress relief are the most popular reasons people say they start yoga. Yogi Lorraine Harper of Fayetteville has been practicing yoga for more than 25 years. A retired art teacher, she now teaches community classes at the First United Methodist Church in Prairie Grove and occasionally at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Fayetteville. Lorraine believes the gentle stretching in yoga is a great antidote to our sedentary lifestyles. "A lot of people sit at jobs. And we just need to stretch. Even if you're retired, you may have been sitting at a job for years," she says, mimicking a hunched over posture, then pulling her shoulders back and straightening up. "You feel so much better when your insides are working better, because they're not all crunched up. Yoga makes you sit up taller. And mentally, it just helps relax you." One of the more attractive aspects of yoga is that it requires little or no financial investment. Many yoga studios do not require long-term commitments or memberships. There are donation-based community classes along with free online classes. In addition, yoga requires just a mat and comfortable clothing. In addition to flexibility and stress relief, there is increasing awareness of yoga's other health benefits. Yoga can help build strong, toned muscles and protect against muscle imbalances. Yoga requires various muscle groups to work together to perform certain exercises. This can reduce the risk of muscle imbalances that can develop with workout routines that target specific muscle groups. Yoga can improve stamina. In 2005, researchers at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, found that the regular practice of Hatha yoga provided a significant boost to chest and abdominal strength and endurance. Yoga can also help people maintain healthy weights. The Harvard Medical School notes that researchers discovered that people who practiced yoga for at least 30 minutes once a week for at least four years gained less weight during middle A 5,000-year-old practice offers wellness for modern life 6 | YOU AT YOUR BEST | nwAdg.cOm/YOUATYOURBEST mARch - wEllnESS | SATURdAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2019

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