A few years before retiring from teaching in 2011, Patricia Lavey did something different in her third-grade classroom at Martin Elementary School. She added yoga to her lesson plan.

Lavey, who retired from a 35-year career that ended with being named Manchester's teacher of the year, is now a certified yoga instructor for adults and children. She can often be found returning to Manchester classrooms to demonstrate yoga and speak about its benefits.

"Kids have a hard time centering and self-regulating," Lavey explained. "[Yoga] has really helped with that."

Lavey visited Peri Comollo's third-grade class at Bowers Elementary School Oct. 9 to lead students through a few different yoga exercises.

"Anybody can do yoga," Lavey said to the students circled around her. "You are all very, very special yogis."

Comollo, who invited Lavey to come to her class, said she uses yoga in her classroom daily. She said that even if it's only during a brief transition period from one lesson to another, it helps.

"It does seem to have a calming effect," Comollo said.

Using yoga to connect children to their minds and bodies, Lavey said, can be incorporated into testing and other schoolwork.

"The breathing exercises were very helpful in testing," Lavey said. "You can also use yoga in the classroom to energize."

Comollo said that doing certain yoga exercises early in the morning gets her students ready and more awake for the day. And the opposite also holds true. Her more energetic students can become relaxed after doing certain yoga poses and breathing exercises.

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Retired Manchester Teacher Brings Yoga To Classrooms

When yoga instructors tell you to take a healing breath, they arent just using a metaphor. Recent studies show that practicing yoga may actually have a significant effect on a persons physiological well-being.

Researchers have studied the effects of yoga on fitness for years. (Yoga) engages a lot of muscles at one time said Andrea Soberaij, physiology courses manager. It does a lot of lengthening. Thats one thing conventional workouts like doing the machines at the gym dont do. They just shorten the muscle.

The effects of yoga on hypertension, or high blood pressure, are currently being studied by Debbie Cohen-Stein, associate professor of medicine at Penn.

A lot of people are interested in an alternative to medication, especially with mild hypertension, she said. The preliminary data does appear to show that yoga has a modest effect on lowering blood pressure.

According to Cohen-Stein, most forms of yoga can contribute to lowering blood pressure.

Any type of yoga that incorporates breathing and movement and a component of meditation will do, she said.

MRIs taken of participants in her current blood pressure study suggest yoga activates the same part of the brain responsible for impulse control, Cohen-Stein said. She said she hopes to study next the effects of yoga on people attempting to quit smoking.

Patricia Gerbarg 71 has spent years studying the effects of yoga on different disorders and afflictions of the body.

We have found that the most effective practices are certain breathing practices, Gerbarg said.

She and her husband, Richard Brown, developed these practices using breathing techniques that were safe and easy for almost everyone. They use these breathing practices to work with several different groups of people including victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and recently-liberated slaves in South Sudan, Gerbarg said.

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Yoga may offer physical benefits, studies find

Topics: editors picks, stand up board yoga, yoga

STAND Up Paddle Board Yoga has been recognised as the "coolest new yoga trend" by Women's Health Magazine for 2013

Over the past 10 years, stand-up paddle boarding has spread from an ocean sport to every water body.

Stand-up paddle boarding or Hoe he'e nalu, is Hawaiian in origin.

YOU might not associate poses like the cat, cobra, dolphin or pigeon with stand-up paddle boarding, until now that is.

Tweed Heads' Sara Rice has been doing yoga for eight years and been teaching it for three; now she is taking her classes to the water.

The classes will be held at Jack Evans Boat Harbour in a combined effort with Big Trev's Water Sports.

"I have been a surfer since I was about 12 years old but never done stand-up paddling until now," Mrs Rice said.

"SUP yoga takes more core stability than normal yoga but the basics are fun and easy, only the advanced stuff is difficult."

Mrs Rice teaches land-based yoga at Vinyasa Yoga in Tweed and says she has already got class members keen on the concept.

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Stand up paddle board yoga is the coolest new thing