Tapah svadhyaya Isvarapranidhanani kriyayogah. Yoga is a science, art and philosophy that has been in existence in the Indian culture and traditions for more than 5,000 years. The mythic Patanjali is honored as being the first one who encoded the Sanskrit grammar, ayurvedic medicine, and yoga. He is recognized for compiling 138 yoga sutras that are concise aphorisms that touch every level of life-physically, mentally and spiritually. When you first step onto the mat you wonder when the torture will end; you fix your eyes at the clock on the wall. I can do this, you say. You jump to another pose, and whoa! You never knew you had this muscle in your body. Then the teacher places her hands on you and, with a subtle adjustment, everything releases suddenly, you feel balanced and steady, you feel liberated from gravity. You feel good. Yoga does not promise immediate changes in body or mind. It takes patience, perseverance, and practice, practice, and more devoted practice. Many years of it. If you practice but smoke, eat junk food or starve, do something too much or too little, why practice at all? So before anything else, be good to yourself and to the people around you. Then with discipline and devotion, practice the asanas (poses) and slowly observe the changes in you. Here are some benefits yoga has to offer anyone who seeks a deeper practice of yoga. (Timothy McCall, M.D. wrote in The Yoga Journal (Jan, '05): 1. Improved flexibility is one of the first and most obvious benefits of yoga. During your firsts class, you probably won't be able to touch your toes, never mind do a backbend. But if you stick with it, you'll notice that aches and pains start to disappear. That's no coincidence. Tight hips can strain the knee joint due to improper alignment of the thigh and shinbones. Tight hamstrings can lead to a flattening of the lumbar spine which can cause back pain. And inflexibility in muscles and connective tissue, such as fascia and ligaments, can cause poor posture. 2. Strong muscles do more than look good. They also protect us from conditions like arthritis and back pain, and help prevent falls in elderly people. And when you build strength through yoga, you balance it with flexibility. If you just went to the gym and lifted weights, you might build strength at the expense of flexibility. 3. Your head is like a bowling ball -- big, round and heavy. When it is balanced directly over an erect spine, it takes much less work for your neck and back muscles to support it. Move it several inches forward however, and you start to strain those muscles. Hold up that front leaning bowling ball for eight or 12 hours a day and it's no wonder you're tired. And fatigue may not be your only problem. Poor posture can cause back, neck, and other muscle and joint problems. As you slump, your body may compensate by flattening the normal inward curves in your neck and lower back. This can cause pain and degenerative arthritis of the spine. 4. Each time you practice yoga, you take your joints through their full range of motion. This can help prevent degenerative arthritis or mitigate disability by "squeezing and soaking" areas of cartilage that normally aren't used. Joint cartilage is like a sponge; it receives fresh nutrients only when its fluid is squeezed out and a new supply can be soaked up. Without proper sustenance, neglected areas of cartilage can eventually wear out, exposing the underlying bone like worn-out pads. 5. Spinal disks, the shock absorbers between the vertebrae that can herniate and compress nerves, crave movement. That's the only way they get their nutrients. If you've got a well-balanced asana practice with plenty of back bends, forward bends and twists, you'll keep your disk supple. 6. It's well documented that weight-bearing exercise strengthens bones and helps ward off osteoporosis. Many postures in yoga require that you lift your own weight. And some, like Downward- and Upward-Facing Dog, help strengthen the arm bones which are particularly vulnerable to osteoporotic fractures. 7. Yoga gets your blood flowing. More specifically, the relaxation exercises you learn in yoga can help your circulation, especially in your hands and feet. Yoga also gets more oxygen to your cells, which function better as a result. Twisting poses are thought to wring out venous blood from internal organs and allow oxygenated blood from the legs and pelvis to flow in once the twist is released. Inverted poses, such as Headstand, Handstand and Shoulderstand, encourage venous blood from the legs and pelvis to flow back to the heart, where it can be pumped to the lungs to be freshly oxygenated. This can help if you have swelling in your legs from heart or kidney problems. Yoga also boosts levels of hemoglobin and red blood cells, which carry oxygen to the tissues. And it thins blood by making platelets less sticky and by cutting the level of clot-promoting proteins in the blood. This can lead to a decrease in heart attacks and strokes since blood clots are often the cause of these killers. 8. When you contract and stretch muscles, move organs around, and come in and out of yoga poses, you increase the drainage of lymph (a viscous fluid rich in immune cells). This helps the lymphatic system fight infection, destroy cancerous cells, and dispose of the toxic waste products of cellular functioning. 9. When you regularly get your heart rate into the aerobic range, you lower your risk of a heart attack and relieve depression. While not all kinds of yoga is aerobic, it can boost your heart into the aerobic range. But even yoga practice that doesn't get your heart rate up that high can improve cardiovascular conditioning. Studies have found that yoga practice lowers the resting heart rate, increases endurance and can improve your maximum uptake of oxygen during exercise-all reflections of improved aerobic conditioning. 10. If you've got high blood pressure, you might benefit from yoga. One study compared Savasana (Corpse Pose) to simply lying on a couch. In three months, Savasana was associated with a 26-point drop in systolic blood pressure (top number) and a 15-point drop in diastolic blood pressure (lower number)-and the higher the initial blood pressure, the bigger the drop. [Caution: there are certain asana that must be modified for those with this condition, with or without medication.] 11. Yoga lowers cortisol levels. If that doesn't sound like much, consider this. Normally, the adrenal glands secrete cortisol in response to an acute crisis which temporarily boosts immune function. If your cortisol levels stay high after the crisis, they can compromise the immune system. Temporary boosts of cortisol help with long term memory, but chronically high levels undermine memory and may lead to permanent changes in the brain. Additionally, excessive cortisol has been linked with major depression, osteoporosis (it extracts calcium and other minerals from bones and interferes with the laying down of new bone), high blood pressure, and insulin resistance. In rats, high cortisol levels lead to what researchers call "food-seeking behavior" (the kind that drives you to eat when you're upset, angry or stressed). The body takes those extra calories and distributes them as fat in the abdomen, contributing to weight gain and the risk of diabetes and heart attack. (Also see: http://stress.about.com/od/stresshealth/a/cortisol.htm) As you read all the ways yoga improves your health, you probably noticed a lot of overlap. That's because they're intensely interwoven. Change your posture and you change the way you breathe. Change your breathing and you change your nervous system. This is one of the great lessons of yoga: everything is connected-your hipbone to your ankle bone, you to your community, your community to the world. This interconnection is vital to understanding yoga. This holistic system simultaneously taps into many mechanisms that have additive and even multiplicative effects. The synergy may be the most important way of all that yoga heals.