Learn patience with yoga

Learn patience with yoga  source: TOI June 26, 2012
Regular practice of yoga can help us De-stress, develop patience and recover from illness faster, writes yoga exponent and teacher, Umesh Dwivedi
Self-healing works when you have faith and patience. Chemical reactions inside the body are a resuit of our thoughts and mental state, but patience gives us the endurance to fight our troubles with a stable mind. Yoga works on the body and mind simultaneously to achieve perfect balance.Knowledge or unknowingly, we are stressed most of the time because of lack of patience. An impatient mind is always restless. Once you are stressed, psychosomatic ailments, can affect you. As a start, yoga asanas help you become it is easy to focus on the body.
Practice of asanas
Asanas when practiced with full awareness build patience to accept yourself the way you are. Awareness of stretching, pain, breath, and posture, is the first step towards the development of patience. When a yoga aspirant struggles to get into a perfect posture and keeps trying repeatedly, a sense of persistence is created. You need patience to see yourself through after a prolonged illness, when you have to watch and wait. 
In our day-to-day life, it helps in keeping our BP normal and our temperament in control with the family and in the office! Yoga helps in understanding the body and listening to all the fine signals that it conveys, so that you are aware of your situation.
Whether it is a weight loss regime or recovery from disease, developing patience can help you tap into your inner healing mechanism.
Holding on
The philosophy of retention of asana or breath in yoga makes it different from any other form of exercise. It is also advised that you should be as steady as possible while holding an asana. Your acceptance of a situation should be as steady as possible while holding an asana. Your acceptance of a situation should be so rooted in the practice that it becomes a part of your daily life. Balance in asana teaches us how to remain focused. Pranayama moves awareness inward and meditation takes it beyond the mind. Yoga practices help us conserve energy, which can be used to speed up the healing process. Persistence learnt from yoga helps to have faith in the fact that things take some time to manifest and there is no point in hurrying.
Yog Nidra is another technique that links the mind, body and emotions to improve endurance.

Yoga works wonders on both mind and body

Yoga works wonders on both mind and body  resource: The Times of India 3.8.2011
Yoga expert Umesh Dwivedi says the yoga is excellent both for the mind and body. It is also suitable for all ages, but beneficial only when done regularly. Yoga is very good for older people as it is mild and gentle. But with old age, come several limitations and by the time we are old, we have already developed ailments and caused damage to the body.
Starting yoga, early, is therefor a good idea. It keeps you fit through life and evan as you age, you are still flexible enough to continue intermediate and advance level of asanas. It is good to start young as the younger generation is now prone to physical and mental diseases because of sedentary lifestyle.
Yoga is not only asanas, but pranayama and meditation too. Yoga begins with physical action, but gradually, cognitive, mental, and reflective actions are integrated into yoga practice. Normal exercise deals with mostly isotonic muscle activity.

Yoga change the brain

Yoga also brings neuroanatomical changes and balances irregularities of the brain's neuron movements and the endocrine system responsible for hormonal secretion. Yoga works on both mind and body, and gives importance to breathing with changes of posture in asanas.
In yoga, result are a trifle slow, but this is because when you first start yoga, you first have to decondition the body and mind that might be wrongly conditioned for years. Muscle, bones, nerves and organs, therefore, take time to adapt to the new routine.
Pranayama also increases ventilatory capacity of the lungs, and oxygen, then, reaches all parts of the body. Results, however, come only after regular practice of yoga.
Dietary Changes
Yoga helps in weight loss and cures many autoimmune and psychosomatic ailments, but diet change is a must. Without dietary changes, there is no way that yoga can help. Diet directly affects the mind and body.
Yoga is more of a lifestyle than a therapy. It should form a part of your life, just as you do bathing and brushing daily as a preventive action. Many people think that yoga just twice or thrice a week is enough, but in reality, body conditioning(muscle stretching, massaging of organs, and breathing patterns) require continuous practice so that strength are maintained.