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.
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.
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.
1. Boosts your body energy
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.
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.
2. Improves flexibility and body posture
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.
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.
3. Improves the health of the heart
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.
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.
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.
4. Boosts body immunity
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.
5. Inspires inner peace
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.
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.
6. Relieves stress and depression
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.
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.
7. Assists in the management of chronic conditions such as Asthma and Diabetes
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.
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.
8. Helps in weight loss
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.
9. Improves your general outlook on life
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.
10. Improves your intuition
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.
Conclusion
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.
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