Modifying our lifestyle when you start doing yoga

I started teaching yoga ten years ago, at the age of 56. Because of my age and life experience, what I brought to my class was a little different than what you might find in a local yoga studio filled with the photos of beautiful bodies doing amazing, excruciating poses. In my class what you find are people of various ages dealing with a variety of issues. I try not to concentrate on just physical flexibility and strength. I also share information about alternative methods of healing. This is important for me, I convey to all my Yoga students the importance of understanding that yoga is not just about stretching and strengthening. I also teach about learning to Meditate. Meditation can help you control the stresses in your life.

In order to help deal with these stresses, we need to be consistent in doing the practice of yoga. There are no shortcuts in life. I would often say to my yoga students most of us pay more attention to our cars than we do to our bodies. We do all sorts of unhealthy things to our bodies every day, yet we expect them to function without any problems. When something does go wrong with our bodies we act surprised. How crazy is that? If we want to live happy and healthy lives we have to pay attention to this amazing beautiful Machine we call our body. This will not happen by accident. We are living longer, yet we seem to be getting sicker. What an irony?

What is the point in living longer if we are spending most of our precious time in the doctor’s office or feeling ill? There are new diseases we have never heard of before. We take drugs for every illness. So, what is the solution? It appears the solution is right in front of us. The answer is what we are eating. What we are putting into our body. Some food heals our body, and some food makes us sick.

An Ayurvedic diet is also something you may wish to explore. I have been reading a lot about Ayurvedic diets for the last ten years. Ayurveda was part of my curriculum when I was training to be a yoga teacher. Today more than ever people are open to alternative healing. As a society, we are more willing to consider changes in our diet. An Ayurvedic diet can improve our health and help us to deal with many diseases such as Type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, allergies, and heart disease. Eating a more plant-based diet is good for everyone.

An alternative for people with type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, allergies and more. If an individual can stay on a vegetarian diet combined with fasting for 14 to 16 hours between a meal for 90 days they could possibly reverse the symptoms of their diseases. That sounds amazing and a little daunting but, if it can work what have you got to lose?

We decided to start our New Year by trying out this diet. We are modifying our lifestyle not for 90 days, but rather only 45 days. We wanted to see how difficult it is and what kind of changes we would see and feel. I do not believe in doing anything extreme or drastic. We have allowed room for some flexibility.

I do yoga and meditation every day. I try to live an active and balanced life. If anyone is interested in trying the plant-based diet there are many sources of information out there. One of the good books out there is Dr. Steven Gundry’s book The Planet Paradox.

Since we started this project I have shared with my yoga students and ask them to try out this experiment with me. As we see it, we have everything to gain and nothing to lose. If you decided to try this diet please let me know how it is going? I would love to hear from all of you.