Yoga for back pain..

Do you have back pain? Most of us do...I know I did for 8 years and I was given drugs, and physical therapy, and none of it helped for more than a few days! I was diagnosed with L4, L5 bulging disks and told that they would only get worse!
When I was pregnant with my little girl I started acupunture and that definately helped but after she was born I started doing Yoga and after a year I realized one day I had absolutely no pain! After 8 years of chronic pain, so bad it would keep me on the couch for weeks at a time, and I'm a bit of an athlete and for me to be on the couch was torture!
Why did Yoga help my back? Well, at first I didn't really understand it but now that I have been practicing and teaching yoga for over 5 years I get it! In our society of doing and getting those to do list's finished we live in the future, we don't listen to our bodies! We tend to move from our shoulders, locking our knees and bending at our bellies instead of our hips! In yoga we learn how to move with our largest joints in mind, shoulders, hips and knees and hinge from our hips! Of course there is so much more to it but I do believe that it is the awareness that yoga gives us that begins to heal and strengthen our bodies, and by lengthening our muscles it release's tention!
It's not just the Yoga class that begins to heal your body/back pain it's the awarenss of moving in a way that honor's our bodies and of course learning how to breathe is extremely helpful to reducing stress! Yoga is something I look forward to each day, it's all I do to keep strong and flexible! My back has been pain free for 5 + years and I am a true believer that we can all be pain free, and that Yoga is truly for everyone!! For more info. check out my website @ myuniqueperfections.com

I hated my first Yoga class...

Hate is a strong word so how about couldn't stand it...I had been attending the most amazing pilates class at the gym and one of my girlfriends talked me into staying for yoga afterwards. Well it seemed way to easy, slow, basicly boring, and I'm so tight that stretching was painful, but the worst came at the end of class...final relaxation. You are asked to just lay with your eyes closed, breathe, and that's it for 5 min or more...this was not easy for me, I felt as thought I was going to crawl out of my skin! As I looked around everyone looked so pieceful and relaxed...I thought to myself "why can't I just lay and relax?" You would think I wouldn't have gone back but actually the opposite is true, I went back for the simple challenge to find that piece, calmness...and 6 years later I am still enjoying all the benefits of that challenge. Don't get me wrong final relaxation is usually very easy for me and now I can even meditate for 30 min at a time! The easy and boring feelings I had in my first class soon went away as I learned to move with my breathe and began to feel more aware of my body. Yoga seems to get more challenging as I move forward in my practice, I believe this is due to stronger awareness of my entire body, down the the cellular level...just some words for thought incase you had the same experience but didn't keep going back....