Yoga and Diabetes: Your Guide to Safe and Effective Practice

Yoga and Diabetes is an accessible guide for individuals with diabetes interested in beginning or deepening a yoga practice. It provides tailored guidance to people with type 1, type 2, or gestational diabetes, and features 30 yoga postures and breathing exercises arranged into programs to suit every person’s individual needs. With easy-to-read text and detailed photographs, Yoga and Diabetes will explain how to do yoga safely, and includes options for beginning and less-fit practitioners. Sidebars with ideas on putting concepts into practice, sample weekly plans, lifestyle guidance, and tips for deepening the practice is woven throughout.

Yoga does more than manage stress. In addition to calming the nervous system, it improves circulation throughout the body, increases muscular tone, improves balance, allows improved breathing, and provides gentle physical activity that nearly anyone can do. As a form of exercise, yoga (like any exercise) can increase insulin sensitivity and improve glycemic control. Research also suggests that the practice of yoga can help individuals be more mindful of their own self-care, make healthier eating choices, and facilitate positive lifestyle changes over the long-term. And it’s fun.

Yoga and Diabetes will also give readers an overview of the compelling evolving science of yoga and health, help readers to cultivate mindfulness, and explain how yoga supports the process of positive change and moderation.

Annie B. Kay MS, RD, RYT, is an integrative dietitian, master yoga teacher, author and Lead Nutritionist at the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, the largest holistic education center in the US. Her first book, the award-winning Every Bite is Divine.

Lisa B. Nelson, MD, is the Director of Medical Education at Kripalu and practices common-sense lifestyle medicine in her thriving private practice. A longtime advocate for community wellness and preventive health, she serves as medical director of the Nutrition Center in Pittsfield, MA.

 

Sat Bir S. Khalsa, Ph.D., lives in Boston, MA.