Corporate Yoga Saves Companies $

Modern life takes a toll.

50% of corporate profits now go toward health care claims, versus 7% three decades ago (McKinsey & Co.)

60% of employer health care costs result from diminished productivity due to fatigue, stress, allergies, headaches, depression and illness (Harvard Medical School).

2.5 million workdays are lost to companies annually due to stress-related illness (American Institute on Stress).

Companies with engaged employees outperform those with disengaged employees by 17% (Towers Perrin).

Forward thinking companies are looking at the rise in health care cost, absenteeism, the moods and energy level of their employees, productivity, and work compensation claims. The smart ones are taking a proactive approach and looking for solutions to support their employees in living healthy, balanced lives. Yoga is recognized as a means to alleviate stress, increase job satisfaction, and support healthy balanced lives within the corporate environment.

Companies who have in-site yoga programs programs include Nike, Forbes, Apple, Google, Chase Manhatten Bank, MTV Networks, NYNEX, HBO, George Lucas' Light and Industrial Magic, Ritz Carlton, Loews Hotels, J. Paul Getty Museum, Pepsico, General Electric, IBM, UCLA Nursing Association, UCLA Medical School, Northridge Hospital, Kia Motors, AT&T, New Line Cinema, Univision,and PacifiCare Health Systems.

--Michelle Myhre

Corporate Yoga Works

People who exercise on work days are more productive, happier and suffer less stress than on non-gym days, scientists revealed today.

University of Bristol researchers found that employees who enjoyed a workout before going to work - or exercised during lunchbreaks - were better equipped to handle whatever the day threw at them.

It also found that people's general mood improved on days of exercise but they became less calm on non-exercise days.

The research, published in the International Journal of Workplace Health Management, is the first of it's kind to prove that exercise during work hours has mental, as well as physical benefits.

Jo Coulson, Research Associate in the University's Department of Exercise, Nutrition and Health Sciences, said: 'Our statistical results were very important.

'On exercise days, people's mood significantly improved after exercising. Mood stayed about the same on days they didn't, with the exception of people's sense of calm which deteriorated.

'Critically, workers performed significantly better on exercise days and across all three areas we measured, known as mental-interpersonal, output and time demands.'

The study group was made up of 200 university staff and employees working for a pensions company and an IT firm.

Each employee completed a questionnaire about their mood, workload and performance on days when they exercised.

The data was compared to answers from days participants opted not to exercise.

The workers, who were already in the habit of exercising, chose their own mode, frequency and intensity of workout to better reflect a real-life situation.

Most used a gym and did classes while some did weight training and team sports.

The key findings were:

Seventy two per cent reported improvements in time management on exercise days compared to non-exercise days.

Seventy nince per cent said mental and interpersonal performance was better on days they exercised.

Seventy four per cent said they managed their workload better.

The questionnaire scores were 27 per cent higher on exercise days in categories such as dealing calmly with stress and 41 per cent higher for feeling motivated to work.

Those who exercised were also 21 per cent higher for concentration on work, 25 per cent for working without unscheduled breaks and 22 per cent higher for finishing work on time.

Feedback from focus groups found that people who built exercise into their workday were re-energised, calmer and more able to solve problems.

Ms Coulson added: 'It's generally well-known now that there are many physical and mental health benefits that can be gained from regular exercise.

'If people try to fit an active break into their working day, they might also experience the added bonus of their whole day feeling much more productive.

'And that always feels good in our busy lives.

'The study also begs the question whether employers can afford not to be encouraging active breaks.

'The suggestion is that employers who are ahead of the game in offering proper on-site facilities actually get less from their employees on days that they don't exercise.'

Link: Daily Mail

Yoga Benefits Keep Workers At Work

Do you know of a multi-tasking co-worker who could use a yoga class?

Corporate Yoga, BC provides on-site yoga and corporate rates to businesses. Corporate Yoga, BC help enhance employee satisfaction by directly addressing three of the leading causes of employee absenteeism and reduced productivity; back pain, stress, and fatigue. Yoga has also been shown to improve headaches, hypertension, depression, and joint and muscle injuries.

• Enhanced memory and focus
• A stronger immune system
• Improved posture
• Immediate stress reduction

More Yoga Benefits:

• Build strength
• Improve your posture and flexibility
• Create longer, leaner muscles
• Speed up your metabolism
• Lose weight
• Enhance your balance
• Recover from injury and chronic pain
• Reduce stress
• Have more energy and passion
• Experience a new level of emotional calm and mental clarity
• Open yourself to the process of transformation
• Enjoy life more
  

Sleep Better, Look & Feel Younger With Yoga

Use Yoga to Stop the Clock, A Prevention Magazine Article

Slow the signs of aging and feel younger with a simple yoga regimen

By Marianne McGinnis

Eight years ago, when Sharon Gothard Weisman turned 40, backaches, dark undereye circles, forgetfulness, and fatigue made her feel more like 60. In the hope of finding anti-aging relief, Weisman took a yoga class. An hour later, she felt more relaxed than she had in years. She's been doing yoga three times a week since and says, "I have more energy, strength, and flexibility than most women half my age."She recently ran into an old high school friend who asked, "Don't you get older like the rest of us?"

Many women try yoga for stress reduction, but they stick with it because it makes them feel--and look--younger, says Larry Payne, PhD, a yoga director at Loyola Marymount University and coauthor of Yoga Rx. Unlike traditional exercise, yoga blends anti-aging moves that improve circulation, balance, flexibility, and strength with meditative techniques such as deep breathing. "My students call yoga a natural face-lift," he says. "It cleanses, relaxes, and restores."

The yoga advantage

Here's how yoga helps anti-aging:

Minimizes wrinkles Yoga can reduce stress by nearly a third, reports a German study of 24 women. As a result, clenched jaws and furrowed brows relax, helping to smooth away wrinkles. Yoga may also rejuvenate skin's glow by reducing oxidative stress, which breaks down skin's elasticity. In an Indian study of 104 people, oxidative stress levels dropped by 9% after just 10 days of yoga.

Slows weight gain During a 10-year University of Washington study of 15,500 men and women over age 45, those who didn't do yoga gained up to 13.5 pounds. Those who practiced regularly lost up to 5 pounds. Eases pain Yoga is twice as effective as stretching at relieving back pain, according to another University of Washington study that had 101 people with lower-back pain do either yoga or stretching once a week for 3 months.

Helps you sleep like a baby Levels of the brain's natural nighttime sedative, melatonin, decrease with age, but another Indian study found that when 15 men, ages 25 to 35, practiced yoga daily for 3 months, their melatonin levels increased.

Keeps you sharp Researchers at Jefferson Medical College discovered that just one yoga class helps keep the stress hormone cortisol in line. Elevated amounts may contribute to age-related memory problems.

Wall Street Stays Healthy WIth Yoga

A New York Times Article by Mandy Katz

ON Wall Street, when the going gets tough, will the tough get yoga mats?

Adding classes in yoga, meditation and other so-called mind-body regimens is just one way fitness professionals in the financial district are responding to recent economic uncertainties roiling their corporate clientele. Some are also offering shorter, cheaper personal training sessions and, in at least one health club, quiet discounts for members who lose their jobs.

Amid layoffs, concerns about staying buff could seem trivial. (Imagine the headline “World Markets Near Collapse: Muscle Tone Under Threat.f221;) Yet, businesspeople themselves wonder how a perilous financial climate will affect their physical fitness — and if exercise could help them weather hard times.

Some struggle to squeeze in any workouts at all. But others, like Amy Sturtevant, an investment director for Oppenheimer & Company in Washington, find themselves doubling down on conditioning for relief. “Professionals are doing their best not to panic, but I know a lot of professionals who are panicking” about the markets, she said. “The only way to get away from it is to have some kind of outlet.”

Ms. Sturtevant, a mother of four, is training for her fourth marathon. With brokerage clients needing more hand-holding, she said, she stints on sleep rather than skip her 5 a.m. daily boot camp and 20-mile weekend runs.

But one of Ms. Sturtevant’s training partners, a portfolio manager, said in an e-mail message that she had not been as diligent as Ms. Sturtevant and had been “scarce” at their workouts. The portfolio manager said she had weathered some tough financial cycles, “but this one has been uniquely disabling.”

“Forget the 5 o’clock wake-up to run,” she wrote. “Who is sleeping?”

One business owner, Sheri David, is backsliding for business reasons. As chief executive of Impressions on Hold, a company based in New York that sells corporate voicemail systems, a tougher sales environment has meant Ms. David sees more of her customers and less of her personal trainer. Over the summer, she dropped from five sessions a week to three; by mid-September, she said, “it turned into one day for one hour.”

Her trainer, Chris Hall, chides Ms. David to make time and, when she does, to tune out her BlackBerry, she reported. “But I say, ‘You don’t understand — there’s 27,000 reasons I have to pay attention,’ ” referring to her accounts.

For his part, Mr. Hall — whose clients have included Catherine Zeta-Jones— is now offering 30-minute, “high-core, high-intensity” sessions and shared workouts, he said, “because people don’t necessarily have as much time as they used to, and they don’t want to spend as much money.”

According to the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association, there are 41.5 million health club members in the United States. To keep them on the roster, clubs may be willing to bargain. Most customers who quit the Telos Fitness Center in Dallas, for example, must pay to rejoin. But, for suddenly strapped longtime members, “I’ll put a note in their file and we’ll let them pick up their membership without any fees,” said Clarisa Duran, the center’s sales and marketing director.

For Plus One, which operates in-house fitness centers, corporate accounts are the issue; until recently, its major accounts included the investment banks Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Though still operating in all of those except Bear Stearns (which closed in March), the company now must look to its recent expansion in other regions and industries for growth, said Tom Maraday, the senior vice president. (Google is one new client.)

“We’re a little experienced with stress because we went through 9/11 down here,” said Grace DeSimone, Plus One’s national director of group fitness. When disaster strikes, she noted, demand for yoga goes up, and on-site gyms exert a special pull: “People come and they want someone to talk to — it’s like Cheers.”

And, as in a bar, the televisions stay on. “In the banks, we have to keep the news on,” Mr. Maraday said. But at Cadence Cycling and Multisport Centers, TV’s show training videos rather than CNBC, because “we want this to be an escape,” said Mikael Hanson, director of performance for Cadence in New York.

During the Bear Stearns collapse, as becalmed financiers sought their escape, midday classes at the in-house gym grew crowded, according to a former Bear Stearns trader who declined to be named. When the final ax fell, they lost not just jobs but access to a club offering “everything,” she recalled, a hint of longing in her voice.

“They even gave you the shirts and shorts so you didn’t have to worry about laundry.” Now she can no longer get in her daily 5:30 a.m. workout. Her new employer has no gym and, with the markets erupting, her workday starts even earlier. “I wish there was a gym that opened at 5 in midtown,” the trader said, “but there isn’t.”

Stephanie Shemin Feingold misses a cushy fitness center, too. Since leaving a Midtown law firm in June to work at a nonprofit in Harlem, she’s been using her apartment building’s spartan fitness room. “When there are only three treadmills, it can get crowded pretty quickly,” she said.

“I’m lucky if I get in 20 minutes instead of the hour I used to do,” Ms. Shemin Feingold said. “My pants are getting tight. I’m going to have to figure out a new routine, because I can’t afford a new wardrobe.”

Fitness matters more than ever if you’re laid off, career counselors advise, not just for health, but to network and stay positive. “The last thing you want is to gain 20 pounds during a job search, ” said Dr. Jan Cannon, author of “Finding a Job in a Slow Economy.” “That just compounds that sense of, ‘What’s wrong with me?’ ”

Exercise, she added, can also spur creativity. “You know how we always have those ‘aha’ moments in the shower?” Dr. Cannon said. In the same way, “a good brisk walk can be very helpful.”

Jenny Herring, a Des Moines financial writer, usually walks or bikes for respite from the fulltime job search she began in June, after being downsized as part of the subprime mortgage fallout. But one day last month, feeling frustrated when her phone refused to ring, she varied the routine: “I said, I’m going to get outside, and I mowed the front and back yards” for exercise.

For a motivated few, extra time for conditioning actually proves a rare upside of unemployment. “A lot of people who are between jobs are using this downtime to go after a goal,” like a triathlon, said Mr. Hanson of Cadence Cycling.

Dr. Cannon recalled a client whose workouts last spring “got more frequent as time went on” — to block out the disappointment, and to give her something to get up and do every day.

“She lost 40 pounds.”

Article: Incorporating Yoga

Incorporating Yoga

A Yoga Journal Article

In boardrooms from Manhattan to Silicon Valley, the mantra "let's do lunch" is being replaced by "let's do yoga."

By Nancy Wolfson

Just after sunrise, I am lying on the floor of Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, New York. Next to me are 14 other students from the Market Development department at MTV Networks, here on a two-day corporate team-building retreat. The program includes sports, hikes, a croquet tournament, and this yoga class for "active relaxation."

"Your hands are like cosmic conductor cables," intones our instructor Sara Harris. "The hands bring energy into the body and they send healing energy out. Focus on your hands and the energy; then listen to your breathing and feel the echo of your heartbeat."

Harris, who has taught classes for NYNEX, IBM, and AT&T, uses business buzzwords like "systems" and "mind screen" to tap into the language of her students.

At the end of class, Harris has us lie on the floor and leads us in relaxation. She tiptoes around the room, placing an acorn at everyone's side. "In this little acorn there's a huge oak tree," she says softly. "Let this acorn be a reminder of how powerful your energy is. All you have to do is channel and focus it." Harris's metaphor resonates with everyone in the room. Afterward, I talk to one of the MTV staffers who tells me, "Life at work is full of distractions. Yoga gives me an opportunity to focus, since it's rare that everything is so serene."

This attitude may explain why yoga is catching on at corporations. Nike, HBO, Forbes, and Apple all offer on-site yoga classes for their employees. These and scores more Fortune 500 companies consider yoga important enough to offer classes as a regular employee benefit.

"Yoga is very hot, we wouldn't open a fitness center without it," says Holly Byrne of Frontline Fitness, a Manhattan-based consulting company that manages corporate fitness centers for Wall Street brokerage houses, law firms, and publishing companies. It is the calming effect of yoga that appeals to many employees, says Byrne, who recognizes that the name of a class can have an impact on its popularity with members. "We've found that in Wall Street firms, a class in stress reduction doesn't fly because people think, 'I don't want other people to think I can't deal with the stress level of my job; and if I can't, I shouldn't be working here.' If you call it yoga or meditation, it's more positive and people come."

Now they do, but 15 or 20 years ago they might have run the other way. "Today, yoga is pretty much standard equipment in corporate fitness centers," says Beryl Bender Birch, author of Power Yoga (Simon and Schuster, 1995). Director of wellness at the New York Road Runners Club for the past 18 years, Birch has taught at Pepsico, General Electric, AT&T, and Chase Manhattan Bank, among other companies. When Birch first began teaching yoga in corporations, she kept it physical, not spiritual. She even avoided using Sanskrit terminology so her students wouldn't be turned off. "Now it's totally changing, and I'm doing things I wouldn't have dreamed of doing 10 years ago," Birch exclaims. "Last week we were chanting in our uptown Road Runners Club class!"

Yoga and the Bottom Line

The current boom in corporate yoga can be traced back 25 years to when companies began adopting wellness programs to lower health care costs, explains Edie Weiner, president of Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc., a New York-based trend analysis firm. At about that time, the Surgeon General issued a warning saying inactivity was as big a health risk as smoking cigarettes. Many companies jumped at the opportunity to establish fitness programs as part of a wellness initiative and began subsidizing gyms, which offered yoga as a "lite" exercise option.

"Whether or not studies have actually proven that productivity is up and health care costs are down, anecdotally, the evidence that it works is overwhelming," says Weiner. "Companies understand you have to address employees' health and well-being. Employees need time to relax, and a lot of people are gravitating towards yoga as a way to manage stress."

According to researchers from the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester, yoga in conjunction with meditation can indeed relieve stress and improve work performance. The Stress Reduction Clinic is the oldest and largest hospital-based mind/body center of its kind in the United States, treating more than 10,000 patients since opening in 1979.

The clinic delivers meditation and yoga-based classes to clients ranging from judges and correctional staff to the Chicago Bulls, and offers a five-day retreat for CEOs in the Arizona desert. A majority of the clinic's patients report lasting decreases in both physical and psychological symptoms of stress. They also experience an increased ability to relax, greater energy and enthusiasm for life, improved self-esteem, and increased ability to cope more effectively with stressful situations. Recently, the clinic's parent institute, The Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society, launched an eight-week mindfulness-based stress reduction program for corporations. Its goal is to teach participants how to manage stress, enhance clarity and creative thinking, improve communication skills, cultivate leadership and teamwork, and increase overall effectiveness in the workplace. This is just what any human resource department with a conscience would order.

When Bill Moyers interviewed the Stress Reduction Clinic's founder, Jon Kabat-Zinn, for the 1993 PBS series, "Healing and the Mind," Moyers raised the possibility that a placebo effect may result from a person's belief that the stress-reduction program will work for them. He asked whether they might feel better even though they're not sure what's happening. Kabat-Zinn replied, "Why not? I'll take transformational change any way it comes."

This attitude seems more and more common among human resources executives, who previously doubted the power of yoga and other mind-body exercise forms.

At HBO in New York, employee health and fitness director Bill Boyle can't keep pace with the demand for yoga classes. He recently added a third class to the weekly schedule and would add more if he had room. Boyle attributes the boom in yoga at HBO to rising levels of workplace stress. "Everybody is under more stress now, and has to perform better, and work more hours per day. Yoga gives them a chance to take it all in stride." Boyle is convinced that the investment HBO is making to subsidize yoga classes for employees is well worth it. "The deep breathing and relaxation employees get from yoga help them to be more focused and less anxious. When they go back to work, they're in a position to make better decisions. You don't want people making business decisions when they're stressed."

It's not just large corporations with deep pockets like HBO that are bringing yoga into the workplace. Gelula & Co., a 55-employee Beverly Hills firm that creates subtitles in 28 languages for about 200 films per year, is introducing a 7 a.m. free yoga class for employees. Elio Zarmati, the company's 53-year-old president, wanted to share yoga with his employees after going to Stewart Richlin's class at Yoga On Melrose four mornings a week on his way to work. "I go to the office feeling a lot better on days when I go to yoga class, compared with days when I don't," says Zarmati.

Zarmati plans to hire Richlin to teach at Gelula. "I feel good doing yoga, and I'd like to give my staff that option. We're in a high-stress business making deadlines, and I think anything people can do to help them cope is a benefit to them and to the company. I'd like to see more of that in the workplace, and I want to put my money where my mouth is."

But in Birch's experience, it's the employees, those who experience the benefits of yoga directly, who are responsible for the corporate yoga boom. "What I've noticed since I started teaching yoga in corporations is that the demand for yoga classes is employee driven," says Birch. "The management of corporations has been dragged kicking and screaming into the mind-body discipline."

Christine Owens, a 45-year-old visual effects coordinator at George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) in San Rafael, California, is responsible for initiating and organizing a lunch-hour yoga class that meets three times a week. While ILM offers aerobics classes at no cost to employees, there is a five-dollar charge for the yoga class, despite high interest and attendance. "It's a place I can go and check out of work for a while and come back really renewed," says Owens, an upbeat, energetic woman. "It switches systems in me: I totally lose a sense of myself, and afterwards I feel so much more able to cope."

Nearly 3,000 miles away in New York City, these feelings are echoed by Doreen Sinski, a 37-year-old working mother. "Yoga has helped me look at things in a totally different way," says Sinski, who's been taking yoga classes at HBO for a year. "It has helped me tremendously in my personal life with my relationships; it's calmed me down and taught me not to let little things bother me. I can clear my mind of things that are not important, and I think I'm a better person for that." While people can be very demanding at work, she doesn't let it upset her. Due to her busy schedule, Sinski is convinced that had yoga not been offered in the office at lunch hour, she never would have found it.

Yoga, Corporate Style

Employee demands for more balanced lives have been the focus of yoga teacher Jean Marie Hays's work for the last four years. Before becoming a yoga instructor in the San Francisco Bay Area, she worked as an occupational health and safety engineer, helping private companies set themselves up as government-approved healthy workplaces. In scrutinizing work environments, she became aware of "a sort of draining of the spirit in the business world." She noticed an imbalance between people's business and personal lives.

It took her about 13 years to realize what the missing piece was, and when she did, she left her work and started a company that brings yoga into the workplace. Since 1995, she and her partner, Debra McKnight Higgins, have worked with more than 50 California companies, teaching yoga and stress management. This includes classes in breathing, effective communication, and Kripalu-style yoga.

Higgins and Hays teach Kripalu-style yoga because it's gentle and internally based a nice counter to the externally based values of the corporate world. "Since there's less focus on exact alignment, it's easier to get out of your head and focus on what's happening inside your body, on what kind of posture you're holding inside that might be creating the tension in the first place," says Hays, whose only class requirement is that students turn off their cell phones.

Students who do yoga at the workplace often move swiftly in and out of a class scheduled between meetings and work commitments. But yoga helps them go back to work with a clearer head. It provides an opportunity to let everything go for one hour during the workday, to find quiet and stillness, focus on breathing, and allow for relaxation. "A freer body gives you a more open mind," says Theresa McCullough, who teaches at HBO. "How you feel physically is going to affect how you function mentally," she reasons.

Though "how you feel" has not conventionally been a corporate concern, yoga emphasizes the importance of emotional well-being in the workplace. L.A.-based Larry Payne, Ph.D., director of Samata International Yoga Center and coauthor of Yoga for Dummies (IDG Books, 1999), calls his method "User Friendly Yoga." He is careful to develop a nurturing, noncompetitive environment in the classes he teaches at the Viking Corporation, Candle Corporation, and the J. Paul Getty Museum. He also sets up yoga programs for executives at Ritz-Carlton and Loews Hotels, and teaches yoga to doctors at the UCLA Medical School. "It always takes the edge off. Students tell me they feel more peaceful after my class, and their coworkers confirm it," says Payne. "After I'd been teaching at the Getty for a year, a security captain told me there was a noticeable difference in the way the museum staff treated him: They were nicer."

In her corporate classes, Jill Edwards Minye, cofounder of the Yoga Circle in Sebastopol, California, helps students realize where they are holding tension, physical, mental, or emotional. Her intention is to guide people out of their heads and into their hearts. "Traditionally, corporations have valued aspects that are considered masculine: being focused and goal-oriented, and valuing the intellect over the heart. I'm trying to help people wake up to their feminine aspects: feelings, intuition, and softness," Minye says. "The most successful business people have a balance of the two." Perhaps the business community's growing awareness of this might account, at least in part, for the corporate yoga boom. Companies are finding that yoga not only helps employees be more productive, it also creates a kinder, gentler workplace.

Nancy Wolfson, who writes frequently on fitness, health, and style, has studied hatha yoga for 19 years. A former beauty editor at Glamour, Redbook, Parents, and Seventeen, she has written for Good Housekeeping, Shape, and New Age Journal.

Your Safe & Healthy Workstation

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Repetitive Stress Injuries (RSI) reported to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) have dramatically increased in the years since the introduction of the personal computer. In the United States, more workers are injured using a computer keyboard than operating any other tool.
Tips for Creating a Healthy Workstation

• Keep wrists flat and straight, when using the mouse.
• Place the mouse nice and close to the keyboard, avoid reaching.
  
• Monitor and keyboard centered in front of you. Center yourself to the "B" on the keyboard.
  
• Upper arms and elbows close to body, elbows bent at, or greater than 90 degrees.
• Shoulder neutral. Roll the shoulder blades together, draw them down the spine periodically.
  
• Keep feet flat on floor or use footrest.
• Thighs parallel to floor, or slightly below parallel.
  
• Change your position often. Practice arm & shoulder rotations and simple stretches.
• Support your lumbar spine (lower back) with a cushion.
  
• Recline your chair to 100-110 degrees. This decreases pressure in the lower back.
• Too close? Too far? Sit back in your chair and hold out your right arm, reaching forward. When your fingertips almost touch the screen, you are the correct distance from your monitor.
• Move your body frequently! Be kind to yourself, and your body will feel better.
  

Yoga for the Feet

YOGA FOR HAPPY HEALTHY FEET
By Michelle Myhre

"The true man breathes with is heels"
-Chuang Tzu.

With more than 150 ligaments and an intricate network of muscles, nerves and blood vessels, our feet are both a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art. Feet support our weight and move our bodies, enduring tight shoes and long periods of standing. Feet connect us to the earth, holding up, on a typical day, a cumulative force of several hundred pounds.

When our feet hurt, we hurt all over and in ways that might be hard to comprehend. Tight muscles in the feet can pull the muscles in your neck out, affecting bones at the apex of the spine. Sore feet can also develop bone spurs and common conditions like plantar fasciaitis.

As a yoga teacher I couldn't help but wonder why yogi's have healthy, happy feet. Yoga students do not have much of the foot pain many non-yogi's experience, such as flat feet, and pain. So I began investigating the cause and effect of yoga on the feet.

Through lengthening forward bends, and foot flexion, tendons and ligaments do not shorten Stretching and lengthening the muscles and fascia of the feet and legs keep plantar fasciaitis at bay (the cause of plantar fasciatis is shortened connective tissue). Anchoring and grounding the four corners of the feet, activates the muscles in the feet which lift the arches of the feet. Keeping this musculature integrated and strong stops foot pain before it has a chance to manifest.

Reflexology is another way of keeping the feet and body healthy. Nerve endings in the feet are connected to the spinal and organ reflexes of the entire body. By putting pressure on these nerve points, stagnant energy throughout the body is released.

More than 70% of all people in the United States will have painful foot problems during their life. In Hawaii, with miles of beach to walk and slippers encasing our tan lined feet, ours are healthier than many, but we still have our issues. Even in healthy Hawaii, people who wear closed toe shoes, and those who work standing for long periods of time, can develop sore feet.

Remember foot pain is not normal. It is not something to be passively endured until it becomes debilitating. Much foot pain is preventable and reversible.

How does yoga help feet? In a typical yoga class we are flexing and pointing the feet, standing on our tip-toes, rolling over the toes, rotating the ankles, activating the muscles of the feet by pressing firmly into the earth, "putting down roots". The joints of the feet and toes are kept open. All of these actions support, strengthen, and heal the feet.

Tips for healthy feet:

• Walk on the beach. Sand is a natural pumice stone. Each step will stretch and lengthen the muscles of the feet.
  
• Massage your feet before bed. Use coco butter and wear socks for extra soft feet.
• Get a pedicure (men too, no polish!). Pedicures feel good physically and are psychologically uplifting, especially when massage is involved.
• Practice yoga. Build good posture from the ground up.
• Learn reflexology points and self-massage techniques.
  

Michelle Myhre is certified to teach Jivamukti, Ashtanga & Bikram Yoga, owns and directs Maui Yoga Lotus Studio, is a licensed massage therapist in the state of Hawaii, #7262, and graduated from Maui author Michael Reed Gach's Acupressure Institute,Berkeley, California in 1995.