A fine article. But we DO know the cause of lost flexibility: free radical damage. Yoga is the best publicly-available discipline for health, hands down. But flexibility of body seems to also relate to flexibility of mind and emotions--the benefits are simply amazing. Health is not "fitness"--it is more primary, and relates to how we feel and function on the most basic level. "Fitness" is about performance. Health is how we live.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
The Flexibility of Your Body Correlates With the Flexibility of Your Arteries
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I've had a few yoga teachers insinuate that I'm not physically flexible b/c of some spiritual or mental failing. I don't think you're doing that, since you're talking about loss flexibility, which I never had. But I would like to say that the flexibility mind-body connect doesn't really apply to all people. I actually have a fairly narrow pelvis. It makes me really not flexible. No amount of yoga will ever change that. I won't become more flexible over time or with practice -- this is the case with a lot of not flexible people.
I do however have an incredibly flexible mind. And I also think that doing yoga though I'm not flexible at all has given me a more flexible mind. Helped me keep my ego in check and also relax by doing something I'm just not very good at. I would hesitate to say that someone who is better at yoga is actually spiritually better than me.
I think yoga is a great practice, but I don't believe flexibility makes or breaks your spiritual nature.
I'd say that moving to the limit of your range of motion is what would constitute the 'mental flexibility' building aspect of yoga, rather than just happening to be double-jointed or the like. The willingness to contort your body into new positions may in some ways equate to a similar cognitive willingness to try new things. I've noticed that mentally inflexible people are also willfully poor in their pronunciation with foreign languages. They /could/ say "Como Estas?" with the proper inflection, but instead mangle it.
Oh, and on an semi-related note, Steve, it'd be a major mitzvah if you could get Coach Sonnon to release Mass Assault for open purchase. I didn't get it through the little co-opt deal they had for a few reasons, but I do lust for it something fierce. Not many good ways of adding on mass that don't involve the very sort of 2-dimensional exercise that I got into CST to ditch!
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