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YOGA: UNITING MIND, BODY, AND SPIRIT 355
Yoga: Uniting Mind, Body, and Spirit
1 What do you think of when I do this? If you said “Yoga,” you are absolutely correct. For
5,000 years, people have been practicing yoga in order to enhance their mental, physical, and
emotional health.
2 “Yoga” comes from the Sanskrit word meaning to “unite” or to “join.” As Stella Weller
says in her book Yoga: Finding Balance and Serenity in Everyday Life, yoga is the practice of
uniting one’s mind, body, and spirit.
3 I’ve been practicing yoga for over eight years, and I’m in the process of getting my certi-
fication to become a yoga instructor. Although there are many dimensions to yoga, today I’m
going to focus on two—yoga breathing and yoga postures. Along the way, I’m going to share
with you some of the health benefits that come along with these simple yoga practices. First, I’m
going to go over yoga breathing.
4 Breathing has been an essential part of yoga for centuries. There are four major stages in
the breathing process. The first is inhalation; the second, pause; the third, exhalation; and the fourth,
a pause.
5 It goes something like this. When you inhale, you feel the breath coming from deep within
your belly. And as you pause, you will feel the breath rising up. You focus to feel the breath
around your heart. As you exhale, you feel the breath moving slowly from your throat and out of
your mouth. As you pause the final time, it needs to be prolonged and deliberate, because this is
what completes the cycle of yoga breathing until the new inhalation begins.
6 Now, you may be asking yourselves: Why does yoga concentrate on something so or-
dinary like breathing? Well, the reason is this: When you breathe properly, the amount of oxy-
gen that enters your brain and your bloodstream allows your body to relax, and it allows you to
356 INFORMATIVE SPEECHES FOR ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
YOGA: UNITING MIND, BODY, AND SPIRIT 357
358 INFORMATIVE SPEECHES FOR ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
