Yoga is truly about the mind/body connection. It’s about enhancing the connection and the control of your mind over your own body. Now we all know that your mind regulates and runs your body and it does so many things without us thinking. The things that happen innately that we don’t think about are what we call the autonomic nervous system – which is basically taking in food (taking all the nutrients that we need and discarding what we don’t need from the food); respiration, making enzymes. All these things are under your nerve system’s control, that mind/body connection.
Practicing yoga really reinforces those mind/body connections and helps enforce those pathways. As a matter of fact, there are stories of yogis that get so good at it that they can control their own heart rate; they can control their respiration rate and bring it down really low. The more control that you have over your own nerve system, the healthier your body is going to be, but it’s truly about that mind/body connection. Don’t get me wrong, there is the exercise component of the yoga poses that people go through. When you go through a yoga class, you’re going through a series of physical poses but there is also a lot more to be learned in yoga.
In all these great Sanskrit texts, they talk about meditation and really connecting yourself to the collective unconscious and really making sure that you’re fully connected. The closer your mind and your body are connected, the better they work together, the better your existence. It’s really about maximizing your body’s function and full potential and connectivity. It’s just like a cell phone. The better the connection you have to the source, the better, clearer communication that is going to come across. Yoga can improve your health from a physical standpoint by giving you strength and flexibility but it also increases that mind/body connection which will improve overall bodily function and improve efficiency in the body and the neural pathways. That is primarily how it’s used and I think it’s a great tool in enhancing your overall health.
Dr. Gregg D. Rubinstein, D.C., is a midtown Manhattan chiropractor with over 20 years of experience providing customized chiropractic treatment services to a wide range of clients in the Midtown Manhattan/West New York City area. Dr. Gregg Rubinstein and 57th Street Chiropractic can be reached at (917) 534-6484 and is located at 119 West 57th St. in New York, NY.
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