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Namaste

Some of you have noticed my recent love of yoga and asked specifically how it helps me as a person with Cerebral Palsy so here goes a little background on me and a little lesson of why I chose yoga. 
How I Got Into Yoga

I started my yoga journey back in my senior year of college. My two roommates and I became members of a local gym that offered yoga classes. I had heard yoga was good for me so I decided to try it and fell in love with doing it and would go 3 times a week. It was something that I felt like I could do and made me feel stronger. Then I graduated and I joined LA fitness and would go to some of their yoga classes but I just couldn't really find a good instructor like I had in college and I wasn't as dedicated.

Fast forward to April of this year. I decided to join CorePower yoga because it is in the same center as my apartment. Ever since that first hot yoga class I fell back in love with yoga and I felt like the teachers were genuine and really noticed who I am and how I have been growing. Now I am addicted I try to 4 times a week and I have noticed so much growth in my focus, balance, and strength. It truly has changed my life.

Benefits for CP

For the first 21 years of my life I went to physical and occupational therapy through CCS and they only service you until you are 21. I knew that I needed to find a way to still service my muscle needs and that is when I decided to try yoga.

Now when you exercise you want to build muscle and this is great but when you have Spastic CP your muscles are often tensed up (this is also why I burn a lot more calories then the average person because my muscles work a lot harder) and they crave the need to relax and be stretched. Yoga can reduce high muscle tone which means there is a lot of tension in my muscles just when I am at rest aka even when I am just chilling on the couch my muscles are tight and tense. 

When you hold a yoga pose it helps my muscles to stretch and achieve relaxation that helps to relieve the tightness in my muscles. However, these yoga poses also help to strengthen the weaker muscles in my body. Thus making for benefitting both high and low muscle tone aka overall amazingness.

The yoga that I participate in is hot yoga which is where the room is set to 103 degrees with a combination of adding humidity. Now so many people freak out when I say that because they cannot imagine working out in that kind of heat. However, the heat actually helps to warm up my muscles and allows for me to stretch a lot easier and the difference between doing yoga in a cool studio versus doing yoga in a hot studio is great. I can do a lot more in a hot yoga studio.

So there you go a little lesson behind why I choose yoga and how I love yoga because of the benefits and for the simple fact of it is something I can do and something that I finally feel successful at. 

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