The benefits of Yoga and Pilates

A significant part of good health is a happy, healthy outlook on life,as well as keeping active and employing fitness in one's regular routine. In the quest for great health, yoga is an excellent discovery if you haven't tried it before, and is a great way to stay healthy.

Stretching out with your yoga exercises on a colorful, comfortable, thick yoga mat is a habit your body will let you know it enjoys, even when you're feeling pain, are over-tired or are recovering from an illness. Yoga is also great for systemic pain issues such as fibromyalgia and arthritis and can even contribute to healing more serious disease process. Even if a person is very stiff, yoga will help that individual become flexible. With a couple of yoga blocks and a yoga strap, both of which help a person get into poses, anyone will discover an ability to become more supple.

What's wonderful about the tradition of yoga is that it is a system devoted to healthy physical activity that specifically does not involve competition. When a person is in a yoga class, no matter how many or few other people may be there, and no matter what level of yogis they may be, each practitioner is in her or his own space, doing what feels good with the body. Students listen to the instructor's voice, attending only to attaining their own personal best. Some yoga students who have been practicing for awhile may even engage in the entire class period with eyes closed. This internal attention and focus lends itself to a great amount of enjoyable pleasure while gently becoming flexible, stronger and overall healthier.

Studies have shown that one of the major reasons why people lose ground with their health is from experiencing falls. One of the major reasons people fall is because of a lack of flexibility. So, while yoga keeps joints lubricated and healthy, this best-possible joint health is also a relevant factor in diminishing the number of falls.

Any age is the perfect age for yoga. Yoga is great for families to do together. Many classes around the world see grandmother, mother and daughter coming in together, carrying their colorful Mexican blankets and yoga mats if the studio does not provide them. However, many studios do have yoga mats, straps and yoga blocks available for people to use.

Athletic friends go to yoga classes together because they know that yoga stretches and strengthens their tight hamstrings and all the other muscles. Smart athletes know that yoga will make them better at running, basketball, soccer, skate boarding, snow boarding, parasailing, scuba diving, and all the extreme sports. It improves the sports enthusiast with off road motor biking or mountain biking, not to mention regular city bicycle riding. Flexibility can make all the difference in an extreme moment whether in water, on the slopes or dealing with the often-times extreme environment of one's own neighborhood streets.

Couples go to yoga classes and stay young together. Partners in a class can help one another get into yoga poses where a helping hand allows for gentle movement into any of the more challenging poses.

A person might also consider taking pilates classes. Pilates is a somewhat more energetic workout, but the philosophy is the same � with the individual looking to move so that it feels good, is not painful and allows for gradual � but pleasant � improvements in movement,strength, grace, flexibility and, best of all, general health. Pilates is a fitness regime that strengthens muscles without building bulky muscles. It increases body control, coordination, deep breathing, a calm state of mind and flexibility.

Pilates was developed in the early 20th century by Joseph Pilates, who grew up in Germany. His mother was a naturopath and his father an award winning and noted gymnast. However, Joseph was sickly and underdeveloped. At an early age devoted himself to studying yoga,qigong, body-building and gymnastics. By the youthful age of 14 he had not only turned his health around so profoundly that he was used as a model for anatomical charts, but he had also begun to develop his physical fitness system from all that he had studied and experienced.

Joseph Pilates believes that poor breathing habits and bad posture are the initial causes for bad health. As a young man he developed fitness equipment, as well as the entire specifications for his health system designed to strengthen muscles, improve posture and, as a result of those two components, improve breathing habits. He named his training and exercise system "Contrology." Uniting mind and body are, he believes, the best way to attain excellent health. This is the premise of yoga as well, which is a system of mind-body health and wholeness that is thousands of years old.

Joseph Pilates immigrated to the US after World War I. He met his wife on the ship on the way to the states and together they set up their fitness studio in New York City and began teaching Contrology. It caught the attention of dancers Martha Graham and George Balanchine and soon was all the rage with the professional New York dance community. Any system that proved to build strength and flexibility while not developing bulky muscles, was, and remains, very popular with dancers.

Joseph Pilates knew that building a strong core was the way to improve both posture and breathing. At first he invented and patented a number of workout machines that would develop a person's core through the means of resistance training. However, in current times, pilates classes have evolved to require only exercise balls, foam rollers and disks as equipment to build up the core. Pilates classes also use standard yoga accessories � the yoga mat, yoga blocks and resistance bands .

Joseph Pilates referred to the core muscles as a person's "powerhouse." Yoga and pilates will develop your core powerhouse in a gentle and progressive manner, making you and the loved ones who join you, strong, fit and healthy. Breathe deeply!