Unpacking The Benefits of Yoga

Moving your body daily is incredibly important not only to your physical health but to your mental health too. Exercise allows you to feel good and ultimately be healthier and look good at the same time. However, there are types of exercise that incorporate your spiritual health too.

Yoga is one of these. Yoga is a gentler form of movement with more intention behind it and can help a person feel more spiritually connected while still allowing them to get enough exercise to keep them physically healthy.

While that should be enough to convince you to take up Yoga, there is much more than the exercise practice can do for you. Here are some of the benefits of doing Yoga.

Flexibility

It is no secret that yoga twists and contorts your body into shapes that you may never have been in before, but these poses help to increase your flexibility and mobility, and this will ultimately lead to you feeling more comfortable in your body daily.

Decrease Stress

When you are doing Yoga, you are forced to shut the outside world out and focus only on yourself and the movement of your body. These quiet moments can allow you time to reflect and destress because you will find solutions easier with a clearer head.

Heart Health

Any form of exercise will improve your heart health, and Yoga is no different. Despite the movements being slow and deliberate, Yoga still exercises and will elevate your heart rate enough to improve your cardiovascular health.

Strength

Yoga might not be the gym workout you are used to, but you will be improving your strength even though you will not be lifting weights. Yoga uses different muscle groups all at once, and how you would not usually use those muscle groups, which improves your strength in different ways.

Posture

When you are indifferent to yoga poses, the focus is usually on keeping your spine straight. You will focus your attention on keeping your posture upright not to hurt yourself in the poses. This ensures that your posture in everyday life improves as well.

Self-Awareness

As mentioned above, Yoga is a practice in which you must focus on yourself enough to get the full benefits of the poses you are in. When you do this, you improve your self-awareness and will be able to find exactly what you need within yourself.

Better Breaths

Yoga requires you to focus on your breathing to get the full benefits of all of the poses. You will take deep breaths in and out most of the time, and this will allow you to breathe better in your daily life. This will also improve your cardiovascular health.

Self-Care

Self-care has become increasingly popular in recent years, and Yoga is one way to ensure that you promote self-care. Yoga allows you to take time out for yourself to release and reflect to know what you need in your life.

Pain Relief

The poses that you practice in Yoga can be painful and feel as though your body will shake a joint loose, but it can ultimately lead to pain relief as it healthily stretches your muscles.

Anxiety Relief

When you are anxious, you tend not to breathe correctly. Instead of taking long, deep breaths, you will take short, shallow breaths. Yoga teaches you how to breathe deeply in a way that can help you to relieve your anxiety.

Better Sleep

Whether you do Yoga first thing in the morning or later in the evening after work, the chances are that you will sleep far better. This is because Yoga helps to relax the muscles in your body, which promotes better sleep overall.

Migraine Relief

A 2017 study showed that the recurring, intense headaches known as migraines were significantly helped by Yoga. The intensity, frequency, and pain caused by migraines were reduced by those who participated in Yoga.