Yoga postures called asana are what most people are familiar with and use to define yoga as a whole today.  Over the last several hundred years it has grown into the diverse physical practice it is today.  ANY type of exercise is excellent for managing type 2 diabetes but yoga offers excellent extra benefits not found in other traditional exercise.

I have created the yoga4diabetes “hour2empower”© posture series to be practical, user-friendly and a complete form of exercise. This series will build strength, flexibility, balance, focus and concentration. It will work your body in the aerobic and anaerobic zone. It is low to no impact and can be modified to adapt to any fitness level. Contrary to popular belief yoga is not about flexibility! It is about union and connecting to where you are at this moment in time. As it relates to exercise it means accepting and working within the current restrictions you may have in the physical body. If you haven’t practiced yoga postures before, you’ll be amazed to find what a complete form of exercise it can be.

Exercise is essential to maintain a healthy body but if you have diabetes or pre-diabetes it is compulsory. Why? Because exercise acts like insulin! Exercise reduces blood glucose levels. There are many theories as to what happens, but in essence during exercise glucose is more effectively driven into the muscles and used as fuel. With continued moderate exercise muscles can take in 20 times the glucose they normally do. In addition exercise improves ongoing insulin sensitivity, promotes weight loss and helps remove fatty acids from the blood. As exercise builds more muscle mass it becomes a spiral of good getting better as there is more muscle to take in the glucose and less fat to impede the process.

Exercise also improves blood flow, which is very important as many of the complications of diabetes are related to impaired blood flow in the extremities. Blood pressure is reduced, LDL (bad) cholesterol is reduced and HDL (good) cholesterol is increased. But remember, yoga exercise is very different than traditional exercise. Because of the concentrated attention to the union of breath and body movement, the practice eventually becomes a “moving meditation.” A little time applying these exercises each day will act as an amazing stress buster and work in synergy with the other practices in my method!

I use mantra for meditation. The definition of mantra is “to free from the mind.”

In my method I teach mantras I have used for years with great results. In private sessions I will initiate you with a select personalized mantra for your use. Meditation is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself to preserve your health. Why? Stress!

I have no doubt that the biggest factor contributing to the onset of my diabetes was stress. I had fallen away from my yoga practice and was overcome and smothered by my thoughts and reactions to my life situation manifesting stress and anxiety in my body. “Up to 90% of visits to physicians are stress related” I pulled this fact from an article I wrote over a decade ago on the benefits of yoga for stress reduction. The source was the National Mental Health Association, 1996.

So what happens when you suffer from stress and anxiety? The heart rate and blood pressure increase, and high levels of cortisol and adrenaline are released into the body. (High levels of cortisol are a strong risk factor in cardiovascular disease and known to be responsible for weight gain as well.) But most importantly for those of us dealing with diabetes or insulin resistance is the fact that stress causes blood sugars to rise. Stress caused release of blood sugar is a double edge sword. To compound the problem the same stress cycle blocks the body from releasing insulin. The physiological reason is to prepare our body with the fuel for fight or flight. But today what happens? We no longer run or fight and use the fuel to end the cycle. We sit and simmer and our bodies are slowly destroyed and diseased by a mechanism initially designed to help us to survive. The body remains in this constant state of high blood sugar levels. An insulin dependant diabetic can use insulin to eliminate the stress induced high blood sugars. The non-insulin dependent diabetic or those with pre-diabetes cannot. So learning to manage stress is the most important thing you can do to preserve your health.

Pranayama is a term that loosely describes a variety of breathing exercises in yoga. Now I am sure you have not heard that improper breathing is factor in the causes of diabetes, but in my opinion NEW GAME! Did you know that the average person, because of their sedentary lifestyles and posture, uses only 10% of their lung capacity? As a result, they are susceptible to asthma, shortness of breath and dozens of other breathing problems. Now that is just the lungs! The process of fully oxygenating the body and removing toxins is essential to our very existence. Without proper breathing the body becomes a toxic waste dump. Breathing exercises teach you to use the other 90% of your lungs for a deep cleansing and nourishing of the bodies tissues. It also helps to treat such problems as high blood pressure, irritability, disturbed sleep and most importantly to combat the stress that contributes to diabetes and other diseases.

Also because of lifestyle, most of us are usually existing in a state filled with stress and anxiety. The body reacts by staying in the fight-or-flight mode, where the sympathetic nervous system is on overload. With yoga breathing exercises we have the ability to consciously alter and control breath patterns that will allow the parasympathetic nervous system to activate and dissolve, stress, anxiety and balance the central nervous system.

There is one last benefit of these techniques. You have no doubt heard about the energy crisis. Make this practice a part of your day and you will never experience an energy crisis of your own!

Working with the synergy of my method you develop mindfulness. Mindfulness, it is exactly as it sounds. It is a presence, a pure attention to what you are doing, saying or experiencing.  That mindfulness translates into educating yourself and being responsible for the food choices you make. That means read labels and understand the effects that all types of food and additives have on your blood sugars.  It also means reflecting on the ethics and quality of in those choices.  A question that is often posed to me and is often a topic of heated discussion is should I eat vegetarian or eat meat?

I don’t hold judgment on the choice of either and though there have been periods of time in my life that I have lived as a vegetarian, I eat meat. I do however find the arguments compelling regarding the ethical treatment of animals. I think it is time that we as a culture have the responsibility to “wake up”, be mindful and look hard at all of the choices we make on a daily basis and that includes what is on our dinner plate. To me that means “free range” and “organic”. This means not caged and tortured and shot full of growth hormones and antibiotics, but animals given free range to live as nature intended and then terminated ethically. The result is not only the ethical treatment of these animals, but free-range game has far less saturated fat and more essential fatty acids and is in line with a healthy diet close to the one our hunter-gatherer ancestors enjoyed for thousands of years.

This is an important subject covered in my seminars.  For starters, stay away from trans fats, omega 6 vegetable oils, high fructose corn syrup and all refined, processed and puffed grain and flour products. Eat plenty of fiber, choose low glycemic index carbohydrates (most fresh vegetables), lean protein, omega 3 rich foods and cook with olive oil.