9 Ways Yoga Can Improve Your Physical, Mental & Spiritual Health
Ever wondered what is it that has kept yoga alive and thriving for thousands of years? Apparently, people of all ages and times have found it to be relevant and helpful in one way or the other, a testament to its timelessness in itself.
FUN FACT
According to
, the number of people practicing yoga in the U.S is expected to rise to 55 million by 2020, from about 37 million in 2015.
Yoga goes far beyond trendy yoga equipment, burning calories and toning muscles. It is more of a total mind-body workout that involves a combo of stretching, strengthening, breathing and meditation techniques aimed at improving overall health and wellness of the practitioner.
Talking of health and fitness benefits, with over 100 different forms of yoga offering only one or two benefits each, you still get hundreds of them, right?
For now though, we have compiled a list of top 9 ways yoga can improve your physical, mental and spiritual health:
1. Yoga Betters Your Breathing Techniques
‘Pranayama’ (interpreted as yogic breathing techniques) constitutes the very foundations of yogic breathing practices, which are integrated into almost all types and forms of yoga. Yoga is all about working out on your breathing techniques, enhancing them to increase your energy levels and relaxing your muscles while reducing depression, anxiety and stress. Practicing yoga regularly has been found to develop lung capacity and breathing, both in healthy individuals as well as people suffering from asthmatic issues.
2. Yoga Improves Your Flexibility
Acrobatic flexibility, without any doubt, is one of the major attractions grabbing people’s attention to the art of yoga in the first place. Certainly, a great advantage of yoga, but not the only one of course, as they learn soon enough. Practicing yoga asanas regularly means working continually on the body’s range of motion in a gradual manner, ensuring that it improves in a safer and gentler manner. This substantially cuts down the risk of damaging the ligaments and tendons in the process, a threat posed by other aggressive approaches of flexibility training.
3. Yoga Enhances Your Functional Strength
For most people, the flexibility aspect of yoga somehow overshadows its body strengthening capability. In fact, yoga works great on strengthening the weight bearing muscles of the body, significantly adding to the development of body’s functional strength. Improving core strength is also one of the major health benefits yoga has to offer. This not only contributes in making your look and feel smarter and healthier, but also boosts your athletic ability, safeguarding you from different types of injuries.
4. Yoga Bestows Strength and Stability to Your Joints
As muscles around your joints become strong due to practicing yoga regularly, they gain more and more stability. Similarly, as the joints indulge in a full range of motion involved in yogic poses and postures, the synovial fluid gets a better flow through them, offering them better lubrication and smooth movement. This also gives essential nutrients and fresh oxygen to the joint cartilage, keeping it strong and healthy. Yoga has also proved its efficacy in helping people with serious joint problems like arthritis.
5. Yoga Corrects Your Posture
Imbalanced and incorrect body posture is one of the vices of contemporary lifestyle. Though our body is naturally prone to posture deterioration as we age, our movement patterns (directly related to our lifestyle preferences) add to our vulnerability against it. For example, rounded shoulders and slumping posture is quite common in people seated for extended period of time throughout the day. This weakens your back muscles over time, also tightening the chest muscles, eventually inducing the rounded slumping posture. Yoga, on the other hand, is known to be really effective catering to muscular imbalances, loosening the tighter areas and strengthening the weaker ones. Moreover, yoga can inculcate in you an enhanced awareness regarding your postures in particular and your body in general. As a result, you will start self-correcting and self-aligning your postures all through your day.
6. Yoga Manages Your Blood Pressure
High blood pressure can have some grave consequences on your health, including a higher risk of stroke and heart attack. Various aspects of practicing yoga, especially the deep controlled breathing, are believed to be capable of improving the flow of blood through your body. The tranquility imparted by deep breathing and relaxation exercises of yoga can lower down high blood pressure long after the session ends. Several of the yoga postures, especially ‘Legs Up the Wall Pose’, ‘Savasana or Corpse Pose’ and ‘Supported Bridge Pose’ are known to have amazing effects on people with high blood pressure.
7. Yoga Acts as a Stress Buster
Many people are not much aware of the tranquility that yoga has to offer, first turning to it due to much more visible facets like stretching and flexibility. However, yoga can be one of the best stress busters you can ever come across, courtesy to its deep breathing and meditative aspects. All the physical loosening and relaxation leads to a sense of overall revitalization, leaving you much fulfilled physically, mentally as well as energetically, wrenching any bit of stress being piled up in your body.
8. Yoga Inculcates Cognizance
Originated from a Sanskrit word, ‘Yoga’ literally translates as ‘Union’, represented more appropriately with the English word ‘Yoke’. So, the essence of yoga is to establish a unison between the body, mind and soul through a series of breathing techniques complemented by specific physical poses and asanas. In doing so, you are brought into the present moment, gaining an exceptionally high sense of mindfulness. The physical manifestation of this such cognizance includes strengthened immune system, reduced depression and anxiety, and improved social relationships.
9. Yoga Fosters Your Body’s Natural Healing Process
As surprising as it may sound, the human body is a self-healing unit, totally capable of healing itself under appropriate circumstances. Yogic philosophy and practice not only recognizes this, but also actually helps foster an environment suitable for body’s innate healing properties to kick in. The mindfulness aspect of yoga also plays a role in this due to its positive impact on the whole body, including the immune system, which improves the body’s natural ability to fend off diseases and illnesses. Since regular yoga practice also improves strength and flexibility, your body tends to recover fast from physical injury because of enhanced mobility and function. Similarly, bettered mental health due to yoga can lead to improved sleep patterns, altogether contributing in your overall wellbeing, remarkably improving your quality of life.
Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu mantra tank with its meaning on the back. This tank makes a great gift for any yogi from my Etsy shop
Also check out my Etsy shop
This concludes our list of top benefits you can expect to get from practicing yoga, but I will suggest experiencing them firsthand by starting your own yoga journey, the sooner the better.
Author Bio
An avid sports enthusiast, Millie is part of Xn8 Sports, an ambitious business venture involved in designing, manufacturing and selling Boxing, MMA & Fitness products. She loves spending her spare time learning new things and sharing them with others, yoga being his current passion.
Ever wondered what is it that has kept yoga alive and thriving for thousands of years? 9 timeless ways that yoga can improve your health #yogabenefits