Yoga and ADD is a little known secret for helping you calm down, slow down and focus.
Yoga is good for ADD/ADHD because it is calming for the mind and body and helps you learn to go with the flow rather than be constantly yearning for something else. It provides a structure in which you can learn to slow down, get to know your body, and make peace with how your mind works. And it is active, so you don’t have to sit still the whole time. Of course there are some quiet moments, but by the time you get to them, you have learned how to settle yourself inside and out, so you are ready to relax and enjoy the calmness in the present moment.
How do I know this? Because I have experienced it as a yoga student and teacher. Yoga has always appealed to me, and while I have attended classes off and on since my early twenties, I could never stick with it and complete a class. It was nice but… not enough to hold my attention over the long term.
Over the span of years I have been very athletic: played tennis, softball, rode bikes, danced and swam a lot of laps. As I got older I found my body could not keep up as well with all the active sports I liked.
The type of yoga I have discovered, and stuck with over the last five years, has helped ease my aches and pains as well as provided a structure for me to move my body and learn how to relax and enjoy being in my body. Along with the physical poses, I have learned through the yoga to sit still long enough to meditate. Talk about yoga and ADD! This is quite an accomplishment as it has taken me twenty years to be able to sit still for more than a few minutes. I never thought I could do it!
So as an experienced yoga student, I want to share with you how yoga might be a very effective strategy for you or someone you know who has ADD-like behaviors.
First, in case you don’t know, there are many types of yoga. There are yogas that move quickly, are fast paced and fairly athletic and aerobic. There is a hot yoga, which means that the room in which you do yoga is heated at a warmer than usual temperature, so you sweat and the heat is supposed to help relax your muscles.
The yoga I do is Svaroopa Yoga which appears deceptively easy and slow paced. What is unique about it is that we use lots of props, mostly blankets, which help balance the body so that the poses tend to reach more deeply into our bodies and release core tensions. This enables relative beginners, and those of us who are somewhat inflexible, to reap the benefits that more advanced yogis are able to achieve.
Svaroopa Yoga also has introduced me to a deeper spiritual life, because, as I’ve learned, behind the poses is a spiritual philosophy that also runs very deep and wide. I have learned specific breathing techniques which are very useful in slowing down and soothing my racing thoughts and speeding body. I know that if I take 5-10 minutes out in the middle of a busy day, I can find peace and quiet in my mind as well as my body.
You don’t have to be particularly fit or athletically inclined. What you do have to do is get to yourself to a class regularly and allow yourself the time to learn the poses and techniques that can help support you physically, emotionally and spiritually!
