BlackDoctor.org: What are the health benefits of Kemetic Yoga?
Yirser Ra Hotep: Lowered blood pressure. It’s a lifestyle. It’s not [that] you’re going do yoga and your whole life is better. The person needs to change their diet, increase your water intake, fast and watch their diet. It’s a total lifestyle change. For example, you ate a whole bucket of fried chicken from KFC and then you go to practice yoga. You’re increasing your blood circulation from doing yoga, but your tissues and cells are going to be flooded with concentrated fat, salt and chemicals. And in turn your blood is poison.
When you start to practice you lose your attraction for eating things that are unhealthy. It has a synergistic effect.
It stimulates your parasympathetic system which is your stress response. When you get stressed that’s your “fight or flight” system.” Practicing yoga allows you to activate your parasympathetic system, it helps your body to calm, blood circulation is centered, organs and tissues are repairing themselves and the immune system is strengthened. This makes you less susceptible to degenerative diseases such as cancer, hypertension and heart disease.
When your body is stressed it’s going to release sugars. The fat and glucose is not being burnt up when you’re stressed and sedentary. When you start to practice yoga it helps to eliminate these responses.
Your muscles become more lean by the lengthening of your muscles. Kemetic yoga’s goals is not to stretch the muscles, it’s designed to release resistance in the body. We use slow breathing to relax your body into these postures. You gain more flexibility and strength in the process.
Your cerebral spinal fluid is enhanced and increased, which has a great affect on the body as a whole. Yoga helps align your skeletal system. Your range of motion will increase, [more] elasticity and helps to keep cartilage healthy. We keep the emphasis on the breath, so the body doesn’t build up lactic acid.
Practicing yoga helps to reverse the aging process. Aging is when you have more cells dying than new cells coming to take their place. Yoga helps to keep the ratio of new to dying cells on the side of new.
Stress really affects Black people, especially Black men. Yoga affects you on a microscopic and molecular level because stress has a negative affect on your genes, chromosomes and your telomeres. Yoga helps to alleviate that stress.
BlackDoctor.org: How much does it cost to become an instructor?
Yirser Ra Hotep: It’s a certification course. My course is registered with the Yoga Alliance. They’re able to register with the Yoga Alliance once becoming certified. The cost is $2895.
BlackDoctor.org: Where can we find you?
Yirser Ra Hotep: I have two websites. YogaSkills and KemeticYoga and like our Facebook Fan Page