Love – the word that evokes a beautiful feeling, the word that negates everything that is ugly and hateful in the world, and the word that’s used without much thought. Let’s explore some more and also dwell on how yoga can help with heart health.
We celebrate love with great fanfare on February 14th of every year. There are many stories that surround the history of how this day came about, the most popular one being about a Christian martyr named Valentine around 270 CE. This person apparently wrote a letter to his jailer’s daughter and signed it “from your Valentine”. As they say, rest is history😊
Some of the first commercial cards appeared in the1800s in the United States. Who knows, may be these are the cards that made Hallmark company thrive and flourish. In any case, it has become one of those widely celebrated commercial festivals.
Love is an emotion that is strongly tied with human heart. Heart is the symbolic holder of our emotions. But is there science behind this concept/belief? Interestingly, I found several articles in scientific magazines as well as National Institute of Health publications agreeing with this.
The heart-brain connection - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7075501/
Here is another article from Harvard Health which is real interesting about the topic – what is love?
Full article here - https://i0.wp.com/sitn.hms.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Table-1.png
Any which way we see it, it is important to take care of our hearts – our cardiovascular health, so we can keep loving for many more years.
Instead of focusing only on gifting roses and chocolates, let’s gift ourselves and the important people in our lives with something more long lasting and significant. Of course, if you do want to give roses, why not also give a rose plant that will bloom for many years?
One of the best ways to take care of our heart health is by reducing stress and improving the muscle tone of your cardiovascular systems, namely, heart, blood vessels and arteries, and chest cavity which houses ribs, breastbone and spine.
Research shows that yoga can impact heart health in a very positive way.
With yoga we can:
exercise our heart by static (holding the poses for a longer time) and dynamic (moving from pose to pose) poses
rest the heart by relieving stress with restorative poses
improve circulation by a well-rounded yoga practice which contracts and relaxes most of the muscles
So how often should you practice to reap the benefits of yoga that make your cardiovascular system more robust? Ideally 5-6 days a week. You can make 2 or 3 days for vigorous practice and the rest for slower, restful practice.
The good news is that about 36 million Americans practice yoga. The bad news is that it is still only about 10% of the total population☹ Let's partner to change this number and spread the goodness of yoga. Take care of your heart, will you??
As my Valentine’s day gift, please accept this 20 minute heart focused yoga practice
Hope you can practice with the video as many times as you can to get your heart into its optimum health.
What else do you do to take of your heart??