Benefits of Yoga
If you’ve done your allocation of reading up on anything and everything pertaining to yoga, you must know by now that this practise has both physical and mental benefits.
Sure, yoga attained mainstream reputation more as a fulfilling fitness routine. But given how demanding life gets these days, more and more individuals are turning to yoga as a twofold elucidation for their weight related issues and stress or angst. Some of the important advantages of practising yoga on a regular basis are as following –
- Strength and Flexibility – Many perceive that it is must to head to the gym and work out with latest equipments to increase strength and flexibility. But this thinking of theirs has a divergent method as well. With Yoga, one can build flexibility and strength all naturally, that too with methodologies that is holistic in nature.
Yoga poses reinforces and lengthen our body’s connective tissues in a very natural ways with physical postures practised for 1000s’ of years. It doesn’t matter if you are firm or flexible, strong or weak, yoga can help you transform your body and mind, while improving on your overall health.
- Stress Relief – It is a well known truth that stress as a result of our hectic and unhealthy lifestyle is taking a toll on many. As a result of this many are attracting towards them, some serious illness. Answer to come out of stress is Yoga. Daily dose yoga routines calms both body and mind, while boosting our immune system and eliminating toxins that stress generates. Yoga should be inculcated into our lives, especially for students and professionals whose jobs are sedentary in nature.
- Self-confidence and Self-esteem – While yoga makes you become healthy, agile and strong, it also help you enhance your self-image and self-confidence. Practising yoga creates a massive sense of pride that greatly improves the way you feel about yourself. It helps you realize your full potential in its true sense.
“The body is your temple. Keep it pure and clean for the soul to reside in.”
– B.K.S Iyengar
- Breath Control – The way you breath has direct correlation with your mind. When a person is upset, his breath gets shallow and fast and when he is at ease and relaxed, his breath gets slow and deep. Slow and deep breath in-turn calms the mind. So, if you are anxious in nature, you can calm your mind with Yoga’s breathing techniques, which help you slow down your breath. Calming your mind with consistent and slow breath also eases your stress as well.
- Weight Loss – It is well proven that practising yoga on a regular basis makes you less hungry, while helping you better food choices. As part of an overall healthy lifestyle, yoga is a great way to detoxify your body, stimulate waste elimination, enhance metabolism and lessen your craving for food.
- Body Metabolism – Practising yoga is a great way to elevate heart rate for a longer period of time. This increase in heart rate brings about their own benefits, including – strengthening the heart, burning of excess fat and boosting the body’s metabolism
- Immunity – Stable body, mind and spirit is the key to achieving a healthy life. Any kind of irregularity in the body affects the mind and vice versa. Yoga poses helps you achieve a balance between these 3 entities, thus enhancing your immunity.
- Awareness and Focus. The mind is relentlessly swinging from the past to the future and back – but always fails to stay in the present. By minimally being conscious of this inclination of the mind, we can in fact save ourselves from becoming stressed and relax our mind. Pranayama help generate that alertness and bring the mind back to the present situation, where it can stay focused and happy.
- Inner Peace –Calming your inner mind is the clear path to inner peace and Yoga helps you calm your mind while maintaining its balance.
“Calming the mind is yoga. Not just standing on the head.”
– Swami Sachitananda
- Yoga Enhances Blood Circulation – We all know that oxygen is the basis of our lives and is required for every cell in the body. Oxygen helps us heal our wounds, destroy germs and bacteria from the body, and guarantee maintenance of strength and vitality of our living tissues. Blood circulation in our body is raised when Yoga is practised on a regular basis.
What makes yoga predominantly favourable is that it also boosts blood circulation to often-neglected sections of the body like connective tissues, joints and internal organs. Yogic body contractions gestures the body to send blood to those specific areas.
- Detoxification – Regular yoga practise helps you sweat, breathe deeply & consistently, while rising heart rate (enhanced blood circulation). These outputs of yoga helps individuals detoxify their body and mind effectively.
- Overall Fitness – Yoga is one of the few physical activities that encourage wellness of the whole body – both psychologically & physically – without forming imbalances in our body that primarily guide to injuries & complications later on in life.