Yoga Meditation Benefits For Veterans PTSD

Yoga meditation benefits anyone seeking self improvement mentally, physically, and spiritually. Yet, there are those who have suffered an injury, be it either physical or psychological in nature. These individuals would benefit even more from yoga meditation were they to start practicing it with the proper guidance and instruction. There is one group in particular, and unfortunately this group is growing in number each month. They are our ex-military who suffer from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). There is quite a backlog at the VA (Veterans Administration) for them to get approprite treatment. Studies have shown, however, that practicing yoga and meditation can bring significant relief of the sometimes overwhelming symptoms of PTSD. A recent article by Elizabeth Jones at PCS-Lodging.Com describes what is happening with our returning veterans and how yoga meditation has been able to bring some benefit to them.

Yoga Meditation Benefits For Veterans PTSD

Yoga meditation benefits female soldiers with PTSD.

PTSD can affect an individual in many ways. It can manifest as hyper-vigilance, causing one to be on edge and alert to the environment at all times. Symptoms also include flashbacks and nightmares, emotional numbness, and the inability to feel love, according to the National Institutes of Health.

The Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences published a study that found a group of female patients who completed eight hatha yoga classes showed great improvement in their symptoms, including the frequency of intrusive thoughts and anxiety levels.

"This is a really promising area that we need to examine," says Rachel Yehuda, a professor of psychiatry at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and the PTSD program director at the James J. Peters Veterans Affairs Medical Center in the Bronx, according to Yoga Journal.

Soldiers returning from Iraq have high rates of PTSD and other mental health problems at one in five. Veterans from other wars continue to suffer from PTSD, at times worsened by news from Iraq that reminds them of their own experiences, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Read the original article here at pcs-lodging.com:

Yoga meditation benefits for military veterans affected by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder could help to alleviate the backlog of care needing to be provided. While more research is certainly needed, preliminary results seem very encouraging and worth pursuing. Our veterans deserve nothing less than the best care we as a nation can deliver to them.

Please leave a comment below and share your opinions and your thoughts on this topic.

Warrior pose battles inner weakness and wins focus. You see that there is no war within you. You're on your own side, and you are your own strength.                          -- Anonymous

Yoga Meditation Nation

I have to admit, I can identify with the author of this article. I much prefer yoga meditation alone as opposed to doing it in a group. I guess that's b/c I'm not an extrovert. Then again, there are many who enjoy doing things that we don't necessarily like to do ourselves. Here, author Anna David relates her own experiences with group meditation in her recent article on the Huffington Post.

Yoga Meditation Nation

Yoga meditation group. Photo by Comstock c/o Photos.Com.

Until this year, the words "meditation" and "retreat" did not go together in my world, in any capacity. Truthfully, the word "retreat" never entered my vocabulary much at all, unless it somehow involved a spa treatment. But suddenly, in 2012, it seemed as if people were retreating. People were becoming retreat-ers. It was time for me to join the fray.

Especially because the retreat I'd decided to sign up for was being led by Thom Knoles, the man who'd taught me meditation nearly a decade ago. The form of meditation he teaches, Vedic meditation, is a derivative of the Transcendental Meditation technique taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and I've been practicing it for roughly 20 minutes every morning and 20 minutes every afternoon most days since I learned

Still, meditation, for me, has always been a solitary act: Something I do, in a cool, quiet room--preferably my bedroom--with the windows closed. During Thom's visits to Los Angeles over the years, I've occasionally joined in the group meditations he's led, where I've encountered hordes of people who have told me how much they love meditating in a group setting. I've nodded and then contemplated murder as I tried meditating next to them but found myself horribly distracted by their coughing or rustling around or loud breathing

Get the entire article here at huffingtonpost.com:

So there you have it. Yoga meditation doesn't necessarily make you any less irritable if you find yourself in the wrong environment. Then again, you can learn to perceive your surroundings in a different light and appreciate the better aspects of what has been there all along. After all, the better aspects of those around us have been there the whole time, we just never saw them before.

Maybe we could all start to better appreciate the more positive aspects of those people and situations around us. We might one day discover our world can become a much nicer and more tolerant place in which all of us can live.

What do you think? Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.

Our raga/dveshas make us prisoners to the mental lenses through which we view the world. No matter what actually appears before us, our vision is always skewed, and as a result we suffer.
                                                                           --   Leonard Perlmutter

Best Yoga Meditation Techniques Without Posing

When I heard about the possibility of learning yoga meditation techniques that didn't involve also learning complex poses, let's say I was more than casually interested. Here author Jill Lawson who writes in her blog Diets in Review.Com that there are four branches of yoga, and only one of them involves physical manipulation of the body to achieve enlightenment.

Best Yoga Meditation Techniques Without Posing

Photo by Shannon Keegan c/o Photos.Com.

When people think of yoga, the first thing that comes to mind is an image of someone doing a yoga pose on a sticky mat. But did you know that only one of the four main branches of yoga involves poses, and poses are just one fraction of that branch? This means that the yoga poses you are familiar with are a very small part of yoga.

If you study the origins of yoga, you will learn that yoga began as a way to reach enlightenment. Of the various methods, only one involved the deliberate and systematized use of the physical body. The others were centered on the path of selfless service (Karma yoga), love and devotion to God (Bhakti yoga), and the study of the intellect (Jnana yoga). In the fourth branch, Raja yoga, steps were taken to prepare the body (and the mind) for long hours of meditation for the purpose of attaining union with the divine.

Read the original article here at dietsinreview.com:

There are yoga meditation techniques that do not in fact emphasize physical body positions. I do know that I enjoy Raja yoga and derive great benefit from practicing yoga and meditation together. The practice and discipline necessary to achieve physical control over one's physical body also leads one on the more difficult journey to master one's mind and spirit. I'm just going to keep going.

What do you think? Leave a comment below and let us share in a discussion about this topic.

When I started doing asana, the yoga postures, I had a very strong feeling of many unnecessary things dropping away - especially tension and inadequacy.                      --  Patricia Sullivan

Yoga Meditation Benefits Many Olympic Athletes

There are many ways in which yoga meditation benefits the 2012 Olympic athletes. Whether it's to enhance their performance, recover from injury more quickly, or even to mentally prepare themselves, yoga and meditation are some of the best ways for all athletes to operate at their peak performance level. Here is an article by Emily Haglund-McMillan writing for OrcaHealth.Com that helps to illustrate how useful yoga and meditation together can be for this or any athlete.

Yoga Meditation Benefits Many Olympic Athletes

Yoga meditation benefits many Olympians. Photo by OSTILL c/o Photos.Com.

Olympic athletes often seek ways to give their aching bodies and tired minds relief from their rigorous training efforts. Yoga gives them exactly what they are looking for and more.
Yoga has innumerable benefits for all types of bodies and activity levels. For Olympians, the benefits not only help them recover from their sport, but will also enhance their athletic performance.

Read about all the ways athletes benefit here at healthdecide.orcahealth.com:

There are many yoga meditation benefits for world class athletes, so why not for you too? If the power of yoga and meditation can help to make someone who is at the world class level of athletics even better, imagine what it can help you accomplish.

Please leave a comment below if you have something you'd like to share with us about this topic.

Basketball is an endurance sport, and you have to learn to control your breath; that's the essence of yoga, too. So, I consciously began using yoga techniques in my practice and playing. I think yoga helped reduce the number and severity of injuries I suffered. As preventative medicine, it's unequaled.                                                          --  Kareem Abdul Jabbar