Health and Fitness Tips

<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">
Exercising your body is perhaps the most important factor to enhance your overall health. Luckily, there are countless ways through which you can exercise your body which therefore means there is an ideal exercise regime for everyone. This is regardless of various factors such as physical capacity, time constraints or lack of it and virtually any reason one may have regarding their ability or inability to engage in different exercises. As such, regardless of whether you’re struggling with painful conditions such as multiple sclerosis, arthritis, a chronic backache or any other related condition, there are still great exercises for you as well. In fact, in such cases where pain tends to inhibit your movement or activity, you’ll need to keep staying in considerable motion since lack of it only aggravates the condition by making your muscles weaker and consequently increasing stiffness and pain.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">
Yoga, one of the most efficient lower impact exercises, can help you gain both the physical benefits of exercising while still enjoying other additional benefits such as alleviation of pain and a general wellness of the mind and emotional state.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioiOGtHCQ5UIPtlVAjKpaAFGTR7iO5c2y259dgtA_y3opEAUbJPKNcazboFJqSkONt1lyydNdwpbb5_GU5lRQD7N88bXhBUoYennViIZsOzJxLBvVOTS6LN4Cws_UqsQoBM-Rf4PHcvlc/s1600/7-Steps-to-a-Life-Long-Yoga-Practice-Youll-Love.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="332" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioiOGtHCQ5UIPtlVAjKpaAFGTR7iO5c2y259dgtA_y3opEAUbJPKNcazboFJqSkONt1lyydNdwpbb5_GU5lRQD7N88bXhBUoYennViIZsOzJxLBvVOTS6LN4Cws_UqsQoBM-Rf4PHcvlc/s640/7-Steps-to-a-Life-Long-Yoga-Practice-Youll-Love.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">
In this post, you get to learn more about some of the little known benefits of yoga to both the body and mind. This is a unique practice known to unite the body, mind as well as the spirit. For this, it enhances a harmony between the three elements thereby making your life calmer and more fulfilling. Below are 10 key benefits of yoga you can gain through the three main activities that characterize the practice; meditation, physical postures and breathing.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-left: 0.75in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
1. Boosts your body energy</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">
One thing you’ll notice when starting out with yoga is that it can be a challenging task. This means that you may have to exert a lot of your body energy just to hold some of its basic poses. However, this is not what you’ll have to endure whenever you take part in the practice. Rather, as is the case with learning any other new activity, you’ll get used to holding these poses making it easier for you to practice yoga as a result. Once you learn the ropes, practicing yoga will turn to be a very refreshing and exhilarating activity compared to how it felt at the beginning. As such, there are certain poses that help to boost your energy more than others. In fact, some of these poses are even capable of helping you shrug off most of the negative energy that might have been trapped in your system.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">
With yoga, you are supposed to feel better and more energized and not otherwise. It unlocks your energy and helps you enjoy life more by providing you with enough energy to complete your daily tasks.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-left: 0.75in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
2. Improves flexibility and body posture</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">
Practicing yoga is a sure way to tone your body muscles while making them stronger. This helps to improve your posture whether you are sitting, standing or even walking. It is common knowledge that stronger muscles helps to prevent the body from getting unnecessary injuries which are usually caused by overexertion. This is particularly important for sportspeople who have to endure a lot of exertion on most of their muscles which, therefore, makes them more prone to a variety of injuries associated with sports.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">
Besides, yoga improves your movements while making such activities less tedious. This is attributed to its ability to improve flexibility with a possibility of achieving about 35% improvement in only 8 weeks of practicing yoga. This is the main reason a majority of athletes today hold this practice in high esteem considering the two main benefits it offers them are increased flexibility and prevention of injuries. To a majority of people, having a strong muscle structure and freedom from injuries means developing a better posture. So, if you have a nagging neck pain or a disturbing backache that you’re unsure about how to get rid of, try out yoga and be certain that it will get corrected in a very short time.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-left: 0.75in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
3. Improves the health of the heart</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">
Yoga has shown very good results when used to protect human from various kinds of heart complications. As such, the activity is considered to be an excellent method to improve the general cardiovascular health with key areas of impact being on preventing heart attacks, blood pressure, chest pains and even stroke.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">
The key ways through which yoga achieves this is by reducing blood pressure, increasing cardiac rehabilitation, lowering the amounts of stress hormones, curbing various symptoms of heart attack as well as lowering levels of blood sugar and harmful cholesterol in your body.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">
A secret to achieve these benefits of yoga is by practicing the activity for a considerable amount of time, which allows you to perfect it. However, you do not need to participate in any form of extreme yoga poses to achieve these benefits. Rather, it is the calming effect that comes with yoga that provides you with these benefits which means that all you need is to focus on feeling good while not pushing yourself to a point where you are frustrated with carrying out the practice further. This technique is particularly very effective when used to lower blood pressure since all you require is to focus on meditation while holding on your poses to allow you free your mind from any incessant chatter that might have piled there.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-left: 0.75in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
4. Boosts body immunity</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">
Our systems comprise of a seamless combination of the physical body, mind and spirit. For this, an alteration to the body leads affects the mind while a similar situation is seen when you’re experiencing some form of restlessness in your mind which most likely manifests as a body ailment or something related. This makes yoga an ideal practice that has the ability to touch on any of the three areas of our systems thereby giving us an all-in-one method to handle an irregularity in our systems. This therefore means that practicing yoga enhances your immunity level which translates to less incidences of common cold, reduced chances of contracting diseases such as cancer in future, etc. Some of the best yoga poses that will considerably enhance your immune system include shoulder stands, bridge and head stands. Nevertheless, nearly all poses will help you achieve this only that some poses produce better results than others.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-left: 0.75in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
5. Inspires inner peace</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">
By definition, inner peace is a general state of being at peace with both your mental and spiritual self which is majorly as a result of understanding yourself better and coping with phases of stress well. In essence, inner peace is characterized by feelings of contentment, happiness, bliss and a generally stress-free life. To most people, inner peace is associated with self-realization while others think of it as part of Hinduism or Buddhism.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">
Inner peace is one of the elements that are perfectly cultivated and achieved through yoga and related practices such as meditation. In the case of yoga for example, this is mainly attributed to the fact that our lungs inhale more air when undertaking this practice which in turn relaxes the body giving it a feel-good experience. As such, yoga encourages slow breaths while shunning quick and exhausting breaths. This is considered to help your system alter your consciousness while transforming any form of existing stress into peace and tranquility. It is for this reason that yoga is regarded as one of the best way to attain lasting inner peace especially when done in the natural environment.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-left: 0.75in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
6. Relieves stress and depression</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">
Yoga has been shown to produce numerous positive effects towards eliminating or regulating a variety of common psychiatric disorders including mild depression and stress. In fact, yoga has been found to have effects similar to antidepressants and psychotherapy which it achieves by enhancing the functioning of neurotransmitters as well as boosting the availability of serotonin in the blood. Serotonin is a vital hormone in the human body that aids in enhancing good moods and consequently elevating stress and mild depression.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">
As such, practicing yoga for a few minutes each day can have a significant effect in your body’s ability to deal with stress. This includes both the stress on your body as well as in your mind. Various yoga poses are seen to have a better effect on stress than others with pranayama, balasana and shavasana leading as among the most effective as far as stress relief is concerned. Besides, yoga is quite an involving activity and thus it preoccupies your body and mind thereby helping you forget your stressors for the time you are practicing it.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-left: 0.75in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
7. Assists in the management of chronic conditions such as Asthma and Diabetes</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">
Diabetes and Asthma are two of the most prevalent conditions in the world and are considered chronic and difficult to manage especially if not managed properly. Diabetes is a destructive condition that damages numerous parts of the body such as eyes, kidneys, blood vessels, teeth and nerves among others. It occurs when there is too much insulin in the body although some forms of diabetes are genetically attained. On the other hand, asthma is another common disorder that results in the swelling of the lungs while leading to narrowing of the airways. As a result, a person suffering from this condition may experience a shortness of breath, coughing or a tight chest.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">
Various studies have shown a positive response to yoga for people suffering from both diabetes and asthma. In the case of diabetes, this has been attributed to the ability of yoga to prompt insulin production when practiced regularly. This helps lower blood sugar significantly which is also an excellent way of fighting stress. On the other hand, yoga is considered to significantly benefit the lungs and airways which is why the practice is regarded as a great way to fight asthma. The high amount of oxygen inhaled during a yoga session detoxifies the body and serves the respective body organs with sufficient oxygen.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-left: 0.75in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
8. Helps in weight loss</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">
Yoga offers an amazing avenue to help you lose weight and thus you may want to consider adding it to your basket of ways to help you achieve your dream body. There are various ways through which this practices helps you achieve a loss in weight. First, your body uses several calories when you’re holding yoga poses and this helps to keep you fitter and leaner. Besides, yoga improves your metabolism which means your body is able to regulate calories while burning excessive fats and glucose. On the other hand, practicing yoga offers you deeper insights regarding living a healthier life and cultivates a discipline to eat only the healthy foods. For this reasons, yoga can be described as an excellent way that will significantly support your weight loss pursuits.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-left: 0.75in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
9. Improves your general outlook on life</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">
Having a positive outlook on life is one of the best ways in which you can transform your life for the better. This is particularly important in helping you overcome difficult situations in life when life seems to have hit a dead end. As such, you can rise above tribulations and other frustrations and potentially break free from various stressors and depression. Yoga is a great way to help you cultivate developing a positive outlook in life and consequently living a worry free life that is more gratifying. It helps to break any developing cycle of unhealthy thoughts or when you feel like withdrawing from trying and pursuing your goals.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-left: 0.75in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
10. Improves your intuition</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">
Yoga and meditation are two main practices regarded to have immense power to significantly improve the human intuitive ability. This is the ability to know the right times to do various things and the type of action to take in certain situations. This is attributed to the ability of yoga to enhance consciousness and keenness to details which therefore means you are capable of reading situations effortlessly and reacting to them accordingly. However, an improvement in intuition is a result of persistent practicing of yoga and thus will take a little longer to develop.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-indent: 0.5in;">
Conclusion</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333d43; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">
A majority of people today only perceive yoga as a method that helps those practicing it develop inner calmness and a peace of mind. However, there is more to it than this as seen in this post. For example, the benefits of yoga touch on other aspects of human such as enhancing the physical body as seen in its ability to improve human health and preventing (or regulating) various conditions. In a nutshell, yoga benefits all aspects of human ranging from physical, mind and even spiritual. You will only need to keep learning and perfecting it to gain maximum benefits from it. Yoga is regarded as continuous process and you should therefore keep practicing.</div>

Top 10 Mind and Body Benefits of Yoga

Exercising your body is perhaps the most important factor to enhance your overall health. Luckily, there are countless ways through which y...

<div class="MsoNormal">
Whenever the topic of health and fitness is mentioned, stress and anxiety are two common issues that always come up. This is mainly attributed to the immense negative effects the two can have on general wellness in human beings. Anxiety and stress are regarded as both physical and emotional responses to perceived threats and dangers which are not always existent. However, no one, including you, deserves to go through the rough times of stressing over and getting anxious about things you most likely have little or no control over.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQaDcZ95ZZnvUh0Z1pvpM0GiVANRJtVQ5LiDnT7U9O1Yftp3toaLCHXyBjVODdvxTnoVTsyyjwL1PxWj4YbVoa9bnXnLcpZ-GPzJxgkX-k6kBxQOG5dshaBGBwgXSFSVOfC3mg2kHGHXE/s1600/meditation_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQaDcZ95ZZnvUh0Z1pvpM0GiVANRJtVQ5LiDnT7U9O1Yftp3toaLCHXyBjVODdvxTnoVTsyyjwL1PxWj4YbVoa9bnXnLcpZ-GPzJxgkX-k6kBxQOG5dshaBGBwgXSFSVOfC3mg2kHGHXE/s1600/meditation_1.jpg" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If this describes your situation, relax. Here are the 10 most effective de-stressing tips and strategies that will help you get back to your happy ways, and in turn enhance your overall health and fitness.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0.75in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
1. Eat Right</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sometimes when anxiety and stress kick in, it is likely that you’ll experience low appetite levels or abnormally extreme cravings for certain foods. However, this is a time to maintain your calm and seek better foods that benefit your body more. As such, eat foods rich in B vitamins, healthy whole grain carbs, and omega-3 oils. Whole grain carbs are particularly vital since they help to regulate your levels of serotonin. This is the hormone responsible for helping you remain calm and give you the “feel-good” moods. Avoid eating excessive amounts of sugary foods as well as processed foods. Additionally, limit your intake of caffeine and alcohol and possibly do away with your smoking habit (if any).</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0.75in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
2. Practice Meditation</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You probably have heard about the benefits of meditation before especially regarding how it can help you relax your body. Several studies have shown that meditation can have significant positive effects on stress alleviation as well as lightening up the moods. When meditating, you’re able to control the functioning of your brain by figuring out how it generates the anxiety-provoking thoughts.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0.75in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
3. Get Sufficient Sleep </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This may perhaps sound obvious, but the fact is having little or inconsistent sleep can have grave consequences on your overall health and fitness. Strive to enjoy between seven and nine hours of uninterrupted sleep every day. As such, get rid of all disturbances and elements that potentially interferes with your sleep or sleeping environment.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0.75in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
4. Visualize Positive Things</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is a powerful tool that works nearly every time especially when you’re confronted with anxious thoughts or stressors. During such times, you can try visualizing yourself taking control of the situation and handling it with clarity, calm and ease. Avoid giving attention to any other thought and happening around you at this time. Give yourself time to focus fully on the thoughts of you conquering the storm and achieving success on the issue at hand. This technique is referred to as guided visualization or imagery and has been proven to significantly lower stress and anxiety levels.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0.75in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
5. Get Outdoors and Meet People</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Stress and anxiety are extensively linked to boredom and low or lack of social life. This means giving yourself a few hours or days off from that busy workplace or lonely office will likely alleviate the pilling stress and anxiety. Make this time your perfect opportunity to disconnect from your daily routines which probably includes lengthy phone calls, busy email conversations, long hours in front of screens, etc. Go out and meet new people, friends and family and even engage in social activities together such as having a good play or story time with them. By the end of your recess, you’ll possibly notice a significant change in your morale and motivation to complete tasks that hitherto appeared taxing or even undoable.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0.75in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
6. Exercise</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Exercise is indisputably one of the best ways to de-stress yourself while also improving your health and fitness. A good exercising session leaves you feeling fantastic and psyched up which is good for de-cluttering your brain and stimulating the “feel good” hormone in your body. Some of the simplest yet effective exercises to involve yourself in include jogging, riding a bicycle, walking and even dancing. Conduct these activities at least thrice a week with each session lasting not less than 30 minutes. As such, seek to achieve consistency rather than having perfect workouts or exercises. Be sure to take part in activities that you deem fun and enjoyable since you're more likely to do them for longer and more consistently.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0.75in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
7. Share Disturbing Issues With a Trusted Friend or Family Member</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is perhaps a difficult decision to take especially in today’s society where stress and anxiety are considered to be signs of weakness. However, there will always be that one or two people in your life whom you probably count on in times of need. It could be your parent, sibling or even a colleague. By acknowledging that the issue at hand is beyond your comprehension and control, it is recommended that you share it with that trusted individual who despite not necessarily helping you physically, may stand by you and show you the much-needed care and concern.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0.75in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
8. Learn to Identify What Triggers Your Stress</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is a crucial step in alleviating stress where you’re required to note down all the factors and situations that you often find yourself relating to your stress and anxiety. Besides, try to identify the pattern with which your stress and anxiety follow which can be equally important in helping you understand what to manage or control in your life.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0.75in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
9. Be Grateful For What you Already Have</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Several studies have indicated that expressing gratitude is one of the effective ways to lower stress and anxiety, especially when done while calm. You can cultivate this mindset of appreciating what you have in life by starting a gratitude journal on which you’ll write down all your achievements and life positives.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0.75in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
10. Plan Ahead of Time</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Planning your day well in advance is another surefire way of fighting anxious thoughts and increasing your productivity. This may include creating a pattern of doing your things especially the routine activities such as laying out your clothes and stuff the night before, preparing lunch ahead of time, etc. This helps to limit cases of having to complete these tasks under pressure which is a recipe of stress and anxiety.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
Conclusion</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ideally, your mindset is not wired to naturally produce stress and anxiety. However, you’re human and thus has to acknowledge that it’s inevitable to worry about things and be anxious about stressful situations once they appear. Nevertheless, do not allow these conditions drive you to your edge. Never give up trying to control negative feelings about undesirable things that occur in your life. Above all, put into practice the valuable tips outlined in this post and take full control of your stress and anxiety. This will ultimately enhance your overall health and fitness which translates to a happier and more fulfilling life.</div>

10 Effective Tips to Help You Alleviate Stress and Anxiety

Whenever the topic of health and fitness is mentioned, stress and anxiety are two common issues that always come up. This is mainly attribu...

Health and Fitness Tips

Top 10 Mind and Body Benefits of Yoga

10 Effective Tips to Help You Alleviate Stress and Anxiety

Popular Posts

Blog Archive