For those of you who have seen me more than a couple of times you've heard me say over and over how great yoga is for overall health, well I'm going to say it again. Actually there are two things I recommend for almost every client - juicing and yoga. We'll get to juicing later in the newsletter. I came across yoga during college when I played college baseball at the University of Oregon. It was suggested by the coach to take yoga to improve flexibility, I took yoga for one semester and liked it. It was until many years later in 1999 that I really saw the benefits.

After years of back pain and spending thousands of dollars on body work and chiropractic adjustments I started doing a simple yoga practice at home several days a week and going to classes once or twice a week. What a difference it made on my levels of pain and overall well-being. I've always wanted to take care of my own health problems and not to have to rely on outside practitioners for treatment. Integrating yoga into your life will help substantially with lowering the amount and during of chronic pain.

There are many types of yoga and each has it's benefits. Recently I came across a wonderful Hatha yoga teacher in the River Forest named Marianne Steenvoorden. Her studio is called Heaven on Earth Yoga (www.heavenonearthyoga.com) She took a class through a series of simple yoga exercise which address the source of chronic back pain so efficiently and easily that I was truly surprised how good my body felt afterward.

The resource I've used for many years is a magnificent book called Pain Free, by Pete Egoscue. Therapeutic exercises customized for different parts of the body which are in pain are Egoscue's expertise. I strongly recommend having this book on hand if you have chronic back pain.

Another excellent yoga series can be found in the book, "Ancient Secrets of The Fountain of Youth", by Peter Kelder. This book will teach you the amazingly simple and powerful yoga program of Tibetan monks called The Tibetan Five Rites. The advantage of this program is that it only takes no more than 10-15 minutes per day and there is no need for an instructor once you learn the five exercises.