Let me introduce Eileen Sembrot, our treasured Yoga Instructor at the JKRC.  She has been teaching Yoga here at the Joseph Kohn Rehabilitation Center since September, but comes to us with three years of experience.  Eileen was diagnosed in 1993 with post traumatic stress, which causes symptoms of stress reaction and depression.  She found that yoga helped

keep the symptoms in check.   Eileen is a certified instructor who is very pleasant, knowledgeable and demonstrates a great deal of patience. She teaches the Hatha yoga method.      

To give you a little history of yoga, there are different types of yoga with different types of poses.  Yoga originated in India about 4000 years ago and came to the United States from Canada in the 1950’s.  Today yoga is practiced more in the United States than in India.  Eileen’s goal is to keep breathing and meditation in yoga, facets which some instructors have omitted.   She enjoys working with the visually impaired since she believes yoga can be beneficial in helping us deal with vision loss.  She feels yoga connects our minds and bodies together and benefits us in many ways, especially with dealing with stress.

There is chanting involved and Eileen tells us there is no religious connotation in the chants; they are all inclusive and involve universal praying, and most importantly the music helps us relax.  Some poses we practice are somewhat difficult, but Eileen tells us that sometimes it takes 4 months before we can do the poses correctly, yet we feel like the pose is helping us.

The foremost reason why people want to start practicing yoga is to feel better, happier and more energetic and peaceful.  Substantial research has been conducted to look at the health benefits from yoga – asanas, pranayama and meditation.  Scientists have shown the benefits from yoga are comparable to the benefits of regular exercise.

From my personal viewpoint, I recently had an MRI test and found the breathing and meditation very helpful in taking my mind off the fact that  I was in a tube that makes you feel claustrophobic. I highly recommend everyone entering the Joseph Kohn center to experience the pleasure of yoga.

Some of the material for this article was taken from www.abc-of-yoga.com

Physiological Benefits of Yoga:

·        Stable autonomic nervous system equilibrium

·        Respiratory rate decrease

·        Blood pressure decrease

·        Cardiovascular efficiency increase

·        Respiratory efficiency increase    

·        Gastrointestinal function normalization

·        Eye-hand coordination improvement

·        Grip strength increase

·        Joint range of motion increase

·        Posture improvement

·        Sleep improvement 

·        Balance improvement

·        Pain decrease

Biochemical Benefits of Yoga

·        Glucose decrease

·        Sodium decrease

·        Total cholesterol decrease

·        Hemoglobin increase

·        Total white blood cell count decrease

Psychological Benefits of Yoga

·        Memory increase

·        Attention improvement

·        Learning efficiency improvement

·        Well being increase

·        Social skills increase

·        Mood improvement

·        Concentration improvement

·        Anxiety and depression decrease.