Tag Archive for: yoga

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Yoga Rooms Offer Respite at Busy Airports

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Attention yogis! You may think that the airport is the last place you could find a moment of tranquility, but in an effort to make airline traveling a less stressful experience for its customers, a handful of airports are trying to change that perception.

In 2012, San Francisco International Airport made history by being the first to create a dedicated space for the practice of yoga and self-reflection. Since then, a growing number of other airports have caught on to this trend, and we really hope to see it continue!

Air travel today has become more stressful than ever before. 9-11 changed everything, making long lines and multiple security checkpoints the new norm. If you add in the exhaustive media coverage of each air tragedy, canceled flights, long layovers, and the constant and inescapable background noise at every airport, you may find yourself in the midst of a perfect storm of stress and anxiety which can take a toll on your mental and physical well-being. With minimal overhead, airport yoga rooms offer an opportunity for passengers to focus on their health & well-being, a welcome change from the customary options of restaurants, bars, and shopping venues that bombard travelers as soon as they walk through the doors.

3 Great Reasons to Visit an Airport Yoga Room:

  1. You’ll feel happier. A yoga room provides a brief respite from the hustle and bustle of traveling, keeping the mind calm, and helping to reduce stress and anxiety levels.
  2. You’ll feel healthier. Being able to stretch your body before, after, or in-between flights will help you stay limber and increase circulation. (Circulation tends to slow down during air travel, and can cause lower leg swelling, general discomfort, and even more serious issues like blood clotting.)
  3. You’ll feel wiser. Having the option to practice your regular yoga routine will keep you focused on your health and well-being, instead of the less healthy pastimes like the airport bar or convenience restaurant.

Here is a list of airports that currently have a yoga and/or meditation room available to their ticketed passengers:

Burlington International Airport
Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport
Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport
Helsinki Airport
San Francisco International Airport
Raleigh-Durham International Airport
Heathrow Airport
Chicago Midway International Airport
San Diego International Airport

How Yoga Can Help With Your Chronic Pain

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By Julia Westbrook
Improve your brain to stop the pain.

Protect your body from pain by beefing up your mind with yoga, according to research from the American Pain Society. The research found that the areas of the brain that are torn down by chronic pain are built up by yoga, likely due to the meditative aspects of the practice.

“Practicing yoga has the opposite effect on the brain as does chronic pain,” said M. Catherine Bushnell, PhD, scientific director of the Division of Intramural Research, National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, NIH.

Chronic pain has shown to cause brain damage in gray matter, which can lead to memory issues, emotional issues, and decreased cognitive functioning. Chronic pain is also a symptom of inflammation in the brain. “The inflammation causes reversible damage to the brain with a loss of gray matter and disruption in the normal functioning of the brain,” explains Gary Kaplan, DO, author of Total Recovery.

So, the logical solution: Fix the inflammation, fix your brain, and stop the pain.

Dr. Kaplan recommends meditation and yoga as effective ways to combat inflammation in his own practice. “If we could bottle the beneficial impacts yoga and meditation have on the body it would be the best-selling medication around,” he says.

Improved Coping With Inflammation

Dr. Kaplan says this meditative practice may address the root brain inflammation that causes pain. “We do not know the mechanism via which meditation and yoga protect the brain,” he says, “but since we know that both practices result in repair of the brain and growth of new gray matter, it is reasonable that both practices reduce inflammation. You cannot have brain tissue repair unless you shut down the inflammatory process.”

Reduced Suffering

While yoga doesn’t make people less sensitive to pain, yoga and meditation can help boost their resilience when it comes to dealing with their pain. While these practices don’t decrease your ability to feel pain, Dr. Kaplan says that previous research has found that they do improve the time of reactivity to pain and the emotional consequences of experiencing pain. “Both practices unquestionably can reduce the level of chronic pain and again reduce the emotional import of the pain, i.e. the suffering component,” he explains. “They allow you to ‘distance’ yourself from the pain and see it more objectively.”

Boosted Resiliency

Your ability to deal isn’t just a matter of will—it might be a matter of your brain, too. “There are several studies that look at insula mass interrelationship to resilience,” says Dr. Kaplan. “If yoga is also increasing the insula mass, then we might also expect people doing yoga on a regular basis to have a greater capacity to manage stress and adversity.” In his practice, he sees that a meditation or yoga practice can also help with anxiety, depression, improved sleep, concentration, and energy.

As seen on RodaleNews.com.

man sitting outside meditating

Meditation: Can It Help Reduce Your Pain?

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Meditation, which can be practiced in many different forms, has been used for thousands of years to benefit the mind, body, and soul. Medical research proves that meditation not only modifies brain function but can also actually change the way we experience physical pain.

A study reported in the Journal of Neuroscience showed that patients who had received only a little more than 60 minutes of meditation training were able to dramatically reduce their experience of pain. Patients experienced a reduction in “pain intensity” of about 40 percent and a reduction in “pain unpleasantness” of 57 percent. According to the lead author of the study, Fadel Zeidan, “Meditation produced a greater reduction in pain than even morphine or other pain-relieving drugs, which typically reduce pain ratings by about 25 percent.”

The results confirm what we have seen clinically in our own patients at the Kaplan Center for Integrative Medicine. In fact, in the mid-1990s, I had the opportunity to serve on an NIH Consensus Panel that confirmed the effectiveness of relaxation and behavioral approaches in the treatment of chronic pain and insomnia. Meditation training has been part of the Clinic’s comprehensive treatment program for close to 30 years.

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In the meantime, medical research has demonstrated that many difficult to treat chronic pain conditions, such as fibromyalgia syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, celiac disease, and irritable bowel syndrome, are mediated by central nervous system sensitization. It is only logical that meditation, which improves nervous system functioning, would help to alleviate chronic pain.

This is not to say that meditation is the entire answer; but can be a powerful part of an individual’s comprehensive treatment, along with physical exercise, dietary changes, nutritional supplementation, physical therapy, and appropriate medications.

The following are some practical resources on meditation and working with physical pain, offered by experienced meditators:

My hope is that these tools and the encouraging research results listed below will inspire you to commit to your own meditation practice.

  • A study conducted by Massachusetts General Hospital found that mindfulness meditation, over the short period of only 8 weeks, increased the amount of gray matter in regions of the brain involved in learning and memory, regulation of one’s emotions, and self-awareness. This new study is very exciting because it suggests that meditation may be able to help heal the brains of people who suffer from chronic pain, depression, and anxiety disorders.
  • Other studies have shown that regular meditation helps improve immune function and reduces individuals’ feelings of anxiety and fear and enhances their natural creativity and problem-solving abilities.
  • Practicing mindfulness meditation has been shown to increase our empathy for others allowing for improved communication and relations with colleagues, family, and friends.
  • Research indicates that a regular practice of meditation, by facilitating relaxation of the body and mind, also can help improve sleep, lessen the sensation of pain, and lower blood pressure.
  • There is also clinical evidence that meditating can help improve depression and increase one’s overall sense of well-being by providing a method of letting go of fearful thoughts and decreasing emotional reactivity.

We are here for you, and we want to help.

Our goal is to return you to optimal health as soon as possible. To schedule an appointment please call: 703-532-4892 x2