Yoga improves both physical and mental health
Written by Yasmin O’Brien — features@theaggie.org
A peaceful atmosphere surrounds each student in a padded yoga studio. Some people sit still with their eyes closed, while others have already started stretching. Tamara Vodovos, who has been teaching yoga for 14 years, stands in front of her room setting out blankets and yoga bricks. She began by instructing the class, in a soft, low voice, to find comfortable seating positions.
Vodovoz teaches groups what he calls “relaxed mindful exercise,” a combination of yoga, mindfulness meditation, and restorative stretching.
“I never thought of yoga as exercise. I thought it was basically just meditation,” said Lindsey Gaul, a fourth-year environmental science major. “But I realize every day how yoga has helped me become more flexible, stronger, and less stressed.”
It’s true – this practice has been done before is shown to have It has numerous health benefits, including improvements in diastolic blood pressure, upper body and core strength, endurance, flexibility, perceived stress, and health perception.
“Yoga gives us permission to feel. It gives us permission to connect with every part of our body. It wakes us up,” Vodovoz said. She explains that yoga isn’t about being able to put your feet over your head, it’s about changing the way you think.
Her connection to the spiritual benefits of yoga goes back to her early experiences in the practice.
At age 17, she was introduced to yoga by her mother, who took Vodovoz to her first yoga class. She was immediately fascinated by it. They started attending classes every week and practicing at home as well. Vodovoz also became interested in meditation as a teenager, “as a kind of personal exploration.”
Vodovoz became a yoga teacher in the late 2000s as part of a group of expatriate women in the West African country of Senegal. The group expressed a desire for yoga classes, but no one was available to teach them. Having practiced yoga for many years, she began serving as a volunteer and leading group yoga practices. When Ms. Vodovoz returned to Davis in 2009, she enrolled in her first yoga teacher training.
She lies on her side, supporting her head on her wrists, fidgeting with the blades of grass. “Yoga has always appealed to me,” she said, her warm brown eyes shining at me.
Vodovoz is a graduate student at the University of California, Davis, where he received his master’s and doctoral degrees. However, this career path of hers quickly caused her to burn out. In 2012, she decided to move on as soon as she completed her Ph.D. She was about to do something she had always wanted to do. That could be traveling the world, taking a yoga or massage course, or completing teacher training.
“Every day we think we have to be better, we have to try harder. We have to strive to be this ideal that our parents and society expect of us.” You may stay in that rat race until you are never satisfied with who you are, what you have, or the relationships in your life,” Vodouse said. “Yoga teaches us to love and accept everything as it is. Happiness is available right now. And rat race anxiety is a complete lie.”
She went on to share that her practice really helped with this mindset.
Needless to say, yoga proven Helps manage stress. Yoga practice downregulates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and the sympathetic nervous system (SNS). This essentially means that yoga reduces a cell’s response to molecules, as the number of receptors on the cell surface is reduced and our response to stimuli is inhibited.
For example, when faced with a stressful situation, consistently practicing yoga instructs the brain to limit its response to the release of stress chemicals such as adrenaline and cortisol, reducing feelings of stress and other physical stress responses. It will be reduced. Vodovoz embodies this result.
“After ingesting either [Vodovoz’s] “Thanks to the class, I can feel my stress and anxiety about school disappearing,” said Simone Haggerty, a fourth-year ecology student. “Yoga helps me maintain peace of mind.”
It is not unusual for Vodovoz to struggle. Her paternal grandparents were Holocaust survivors from Romania who immigrated to Colombia when her father was three years old. Her mother is indigenous Colombian and also has Spanish and West African blood.
Her parents immigrated to the United States, where her father attended graduate school and the two married. Vodovos was born in the United States, but moved to Colombia at an early age, where she was raised. After she graduated from high school, she attended veterinary school, and then she returned to the United States to attend graduate school. She has lived in Davis since her 2005 and frequently visits her parents in Columbia.
“I’m a weirdo,” she laughed. “I’ve never been married. I’ve never had children. I probably never will.”
She shares that her life is fulfilling in other ways and yoga is one of the most important. The mental peace it gives her is unparalleled.
“I don’t have any special beliefs,” Vodovoz said. Honestly, now all I have to do is stand up and do my best. ”
When she returned from a year of post-doctoral travel, she applied for jobs in labs and veterinary medicine, but every interview left her feeling empty and inadequate, and the day she had to work there I was afraid that it would come.
One day, after talking to an old professor, she passed by the ARC and decided to ask about a job as a yoga teacher. Within a few weeks, she was doing just that.
“We can sit here and imagine what could have been, what should have been. But we must first make wise choices to protect ourselves. “Vodovoz said. “Yoga was a way for me to know how to take care of myself.”
Author: Yasmeen O’Brien — features@theaggie.org
