Yoga / Meditation

Healing Hands' Body-Mind Wellness program offers a variety of classes, private lessons, and workshops designed to enhance your health not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Our classes give you the tools to get healthy not just during class sessions, but outside of class as well. Read on to learn more about our classes in yoga and meditation.

What is Yoga?

What we think of as yoga today is actually just one small part of a system developed in India over 3500 years ago. In Sanskrit, "yoga" means "yoking" or "oneness" a reference to the desire of ancient sages to unite the body, mind, and spirit into a cohesive whole. Yoga poses (asanas) are one of eight components that the sages implemented to attain this unity. Combined with specific breathing techniques (pranayama), the poses were designed to open energy channels in the body and allow energy (prana) to flow freely.

For modern practitioners, yoga has a variety of meanings. While for many the practice is deeply spiritual, for others it is simply a low-impact form of exercise and a way to increase flexibility. Still others practice yoga to deepen and understand the connection that exists between the body and the mind. Yoga is not a religion. Today it is practiced by individuals from all backgrounds and belief systems.
A regular yoga practice has been shown to ease stress and improve relaxation, to improve both body image and body awareness, even to aid physiological problems like depression and substance addiction. On a purely physical level, yoga postures improve balance and coordination, increase flexibility and muscular endurance, and aid in both the prevention and repair of injuries.
A typical yoga class will include time exclusively for breathing work and relaxation, with most class time devoted to instruction in a variety of yoga poses. The categories and difficulty of the poses performed will depend on the type of class and the ability levels of students attending.

What is Meditation?

Meditation is a mental discipline by which one attempts to get beyond the conditioned, thinking mind into a deeper state of relaxation or awareness.  It often involves turning attention to a single point of reference or spiritual center . Meditation has been practiced by people of all religions for over 5, 000years. However, it is practiced outside religious traditions as well.  
Meditation is an extremely beneficial discipline that encompasses a wide range of spiritual and/or psychophysical practices which emphasize various goals- everything from achieving a higher state of consciousness, to greater focus, creativity or self-awareness, or simply a more relaxed and peaceful frame of mind (Wikepedia).
There are different meditative practices, all of which have one thing in common-they all focus on quieting the busy mind. The intention is not to remove stimulation but rather direct your concentration to one healing element, whether it be a sound, word, image or one's breath.  When the mind is filled with the feeling of calmness and peace it cannot take on worry, stress or depression (www.1stholistic.com).
Two different types of meditation practices are concentrative meditation and mindfulness meditation. Classes at Healing Hands Chiropractic will combine both of these disciplines into a comprehensive meditative practice that students can practice outside of class.  Concentrative meditation focuses the attention on the breath, an image, or a sound (mantra), in order to still the mind and allow a greater awareness and clarity to emerge.  Mindfulness meditation involves opening the attention to become aware of the continuously passing parade of sensations and feelings, images, thoughts, sounds, smells, and so forth without becoming involved in thinking about them.
Some physical benefits of meditation are better sleep, lowered levels of the stress hormones, reduction of cancer causing free- radicals, decreased high blood pressure and cholesterol levels, and easier breathing. Psychological benefits include increased brain wave coherence for better creativity, moral reasoning and higher IQ; decreased anxiety, depression, irritability and moodiness; and increased emotional stability.

We offer private classes

Do you want personal one-on-one attention? You can purchase private classes for yoga or meditation to focus on your specific needs.

Benefits of Yoga

A regular yoga practice has been shown to ease stress and improve relaxation, to improve both body image and body awareness, even to aid physiological problems like depression and substance addiction.

We utilize 2 Types of Meditation

Two different types of meditation practices are concentrative meditation and mindfulness meditation. Classes at Healing Hands Chiropractic will combine both of these disciplines into a comprehensive meditative practice that students can practice outside of class.