Instructor
Melanie Alexander, RYT

Melanie is a certified yoga instructor, who has studied yoga for over eight years and has been teaching yoga for over two and one half years. Her studies have included instruction with Baron Baptiste, Gregor Singleton, Wade Zinter, Max Strom as well as many others. She has traveled to many yoga conferences and retreats as she continues to broaden her knowledge of yoga and yoga instruction. Previously, she has taught aerobics and fitness. She has studied Power Yoga, Hatha Yoga, Kundalini Yoga, Vinyasa Flow Yoga and Meditation.

Moonglow Yoga is the area's newest yoga studio. It is the only studio in the area that offers hot yoga. The studio has new floors and serene lighting in order to create the perfect environment for your yoga practice and to relax, meditate, and expand your mind, body, and spirit.

About Yoga
The word yoga means "union" in Sanskrit, the language of ancient India where yoga originated. We can think of the union occurring between the mind, body and spirit.

Yoga is for anyone willing to learn it. It does not require any special equipment or clothing. What it does require is your will to have a healthier, stress-free self.

Yoga can improve your health, as stretching can tone your muscles, exercise your spine and your entire skeletal system. But yoga is more than just is stretching. Yoga is really about creating balance in the body through developing both strength and flexibility. This is done through the performance of postures and breathing exercises, each of which has specific physical benefits. The poses can be done quickly in succession, creating heat in the body through movement (vinyasa-style yoga) or more slowly to increase stamina and perfect the alignment of the pose.

Yoga also encourages you to reflect on yourself and find your inner peace. It exercises not just your body but also your mind. A healthy body and mind can lead the way to a more fulfilling life.

Yoga to Ease Inflammation
Practicing yoga may not only relax you, it may also lower levels of compounds in the blood that promote inflammation. New research from Ohio State University shows that women who routinely practiced yoga had lower amounts of interleukin-6 (IL-6), a component of the body's inflammatory response that may play a role in heart disease, stroke, type-2 diabetes¸ arthritis and other chronic diseases.

What's more, these "expert" women with at least two years' experience practicing yoga were also able to maintain lower levels of IL-6 when they were deliberately stressed. Study participants included 50 women, average age 41, who were classified as experts or novices depending on their yoga experience. After being stressed (by being asked to solve difficult mathematical problems without pen and paper after having a foot immersed in icy water) the novices' IL-6 levels were 41 percent higher than the yoga experts'.

So take note: yoga can not only keep you flexible and mellow, it may actually protect you from disease. The study was published online in Psychosomatic Medicine on January 11, 2010.