Yoga & Expats: Benefits of yoga & Basic meditation instructions

Chronic fatigue and stress can lead to many different health and emotional problems. Yoga has been proven to be an effective method to reduce stress and anxiety. But how do I get started, you ask? That's what I am here to help you with.

Proven benefits of yoga & meditation
Anyone can benefit from practicing yoga. It not only provides physical benefits, but also psychological and biochemical benefits as well. Yoga cultivates an overall sense of well-being, and spiritual benefits, such as a feeling of connectedness with God or Spirit or Higher Power, or simply a feeling of transcendence.

Health benefits of yoga
› Reduced stress and anxiety
› Sound sleep
› Reduced cortisol levels which increase in women around the belly area
› Increased fitness, strength, and flexibility
› Weight loss
› Nutrition balancing
› Improvement of many medical conditions
› Allergy and asthma symptom relief
› Lower blood pressure
› Smoking cessation help
› Lower heart rate
› Spiritual growth
› Sense of well-being
› Reduced anxiety and muscle tension
› Slowing of the aging process

In conclusion, yoga manages chronic conditions that present themselves in our bodies throughout our lives, especially for those who are not in their native environments. As you can clearly see, yoga’s benefits are numerous and give an extremely high pay-off for the amount of effort one exerts.

Meditation, but I can’t sit still!
While doing my MBA at Nyenrode Business University, I started teaching yoga with some meditation on campus as a part of the Master of Science programme and by choice for the IMBA / EMBA programmes. I crafted the classes to support the students' development and for me to feel closer to home, even if from a distance.

During the first session, I taught a very simple and basic meditation. They focused specifically on breathing, and simply being an observer to one’s thoughts with non-attachment, non-identification to them. This also created a space of learning how to be present to silence.

Podcast
Before I started teaching meditation as part of my yoga classes at Nyenrode, I would teach somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes during all my Open / Intermediate style classes, which are usually longer in duration. I did not consider writing a script or creating a podcast, or a soundcloud until my students asked me for something they could use when they were not at yoga class.

This is the first one, a basic one. I hope you enjoy it. I will share more as I create them!

Previously in this series
› Yoga & Expats: Hatha yoga