Many people including myself would never even consider Yoga a form of effective exercise. Come on how many calories can you burn sitting cross legged on the floor. It's to slow and boring. Well let me be the first to tell you I was 100% wrong.

I started practicing Yoga several years ago as a stress reliever. While I was deep breathing and running through Sun Salutations (this is a series of poses were most beginners will usually start), the benefits of Yoga started to become clear. My body was actually becoming somewhat flexible, breathing was easier and the little every minute stresses in life where disappearing.

I continued to warm up with Sun Salutations as I did my 3 to 5 K run. (I mean real runners sweat, Yogis don't). Wrong again. As a back injury stopped my running for a while, I again turned to Yoga to stretch out my back about two years ago. I have never felt better. The boat pose in Yoga for abs is a killer, downward and upward dog with plank thrown in has made up upper body stronger and my lower body is very flexible. The running is on again because my back is now properly stretched thanks to our Yoga teacher. My golf game actually has a swing in it.

Try it what have you got to loose. This is were all the old runners hang out. It is popular, fun, easy and very inexpensive. All you need is a mat and great Yoga teacher like ours.

Learn more about this author, Mary Begin.
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