Yoga is a great way to relieve the stress of everyday living - StarNewsOnline.com

<p>Here's the irony of using yoga as a stress release – worrying about how you look in class, or what you're wearing as you turn yourself into a pretzel, can be triggers themselves.</p><p>Nonsense, say the folks at the Wilmington Yoga Center, which hosts 104 classes each week upstairs at its Oleander Drive Studio above the Tidal Creek Co-Op.</p><p>Seven days a week, classes have at least 12 people learning how to bring their physical, mental and spiritual practices together, lusting for a state of permanent peace.</p><p>There's a free introduction class the first Tuesday of each month, and for $30 you can get 30 days of all the class time you require for a stress buster. Don't be shy about your appearance or flexibility.</p><p>"It took me six years just to touch my toes," says Ali Callahan, the center's executive director. "There is nobody, no one, who can't do it."</p><p>Echoes Noelle Cavenaugh, a key instructor: "If you're breathing you're doing yoga. People of all shapes and sizes will fit in. Just come in and we'll get you started somewhere."</p><p>So how does yoga possibly inhibit stress? The dictionary describes yoga as "a school of Hindu philosophy advocating and prescribing a course of physical and mental disciplines for attaining liberation from the material world." Like shopping lists, car payments, school report cards and credit cards.</p><p>At the center, the two key courses that try to reduce stress are gentle and meditation and candle relax and restore.</p><p>"The idea is to get you to relax, be more flexible and get you in the moment," says Callahan. "You are making a mind-body connection and cultivating a single point of focus, such as breathing."</p><p>She believes yoga calms your sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for a fight vs. flight response to the myriad situations that pepper your day. Further, says Callahan, "yoga can turn on your parasympathetic nervous system" to diffuse stressful environments, or at least sideline them until you're more prepared to act.</p><p>Yoga also encourages the body to rest, slow down and use good nutritional habits to facilitate better digestion, says Callahan, who has experience in that discipline, having managed both the downstairs co-op and also the Riverfront Farmers Market.</p><p>She also reinforces that any yoga position or class will help "bring you into the moment," and don't get hung up on your wardrobe.</p><p>"People wear sweatpants and sweatsuits," she says. "It's just with yoga tights, the pant legs don't roll up on you when you're doing certain flexes."</p>