Military & VeteransYoga is a physical practice, but equally a mental practice. The possibilities that can arise from any yoga practice are infinite. Yoga can help you learn ways to calm yourself down. It can release discomforts that you may have been resigned yourself to always having to endure. It can instigate a willingness and openness to try new things, or to access parts of yourself you thought were forever locked.
Marty Yura is a yoga teacher and co-owner of Vista Yoga. A veteran with a Masters in Psychology, he served as a psychologist in the military for five years. He now teaches yoga to civilians as well as to veterans with PTSD and other physical and mental health conditions through the Emory Healthcare Veterans Program.
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I think the possibilities for anyone practicing yoga are so broad, so wide and there’s so many ways that people can either, at a minimum just calm themselves down a little bit. They can relieve the discomfort that they’ve contended with, and they maybe have resigned themselves to forever. So those are some of the possibilities. But I think also the possibilities are, people are always surprised, How much better they feel. How much more they’ve done than they’ve ever done before.
So, those possibilities, what I really mean by that, things that were not available before and then become available. Even a willingness to try things may have been absent. A willingness to try things, or a resignation like, oh, I can’t do that, I’ll never be able to do that. I was like that. And I’ve discovered, you know, I’m older than you think, and I am deeply grateful for what yoga’s provided me because, you know, I’m — nothing hurts. Maybe that’s the best way to say it — nothing hurts.
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About the author: Marty Yura, MA
Marty Yura is a yoga teacher and co-owner of Vista Yoga. A veteran with a Masters in Psychology, he served as a psychologist in the military for five years. He now teaches yoga to civilians as well as to veterans with PTSD and other physical and mental health conditions through the Emory Healthcare Veterans Program.
