You've probably heard that yoga is good for you. Maybe you have even tried yoga and discovered that it makes you feel better. But what are the specific health benefits can you expect to enjoy from doing yoga regularly?
Physical Benefits
Flexibility: Stretching your tight body in new ways will help it to become more flexible, bringing greater range of motion to muscles and joints. Over time, you can expect to gain flexibility in your hamstrings, back, shoulders, and hips.
Strength: Many yoga poses require you to support the weight of your own body in new ways, including balancing on one leg (such as in Tree Pose) or supporting yourself with your arms. Some exercises require you to move slowly in and out of poses, which also increases strength.
Muscle tone: As a by-product of getting stronger, you can expect to see increased muscle tone. Yoga helps shape long, lean muscles.
Pain Prevention: Increased flexibility and strength can help prevent the causes of some types of back pain. Many people who suffer from back pain spend a lot of time sitting at a computer or driving a car. That can cause tightness and spinal compression, which you can begin to address with yoga. Yoga also improves your alignment, both in and out of class, which helps prevent many other types of pain.
Better Breathing: Most of us breathe very shallowly into the lungs and don't give much thought to how we breathe. Yoga breathing exercises, called Pranayama, focus the attention on the breath and teach us how to better use our lungs, which benefits the entire body. Certain types of breath can also help clear the nasal passages and even calm the central nervous system, which has both physical and mental benefits.
Mental Benefits
Mental Calmness: Yoga asana practice is intensely physical. Concentrating so intently on what your body is doing has the effect of bringing a calmness to the mind. Yoga also introduces you to meditation techniques, such as watching how you breathe and disengagement from your thoughts, which help calm the mind. Stress Reduction: Physical activity is good for relieving stress, and this is particularly true of yoga. Because of the concentration required, your daily troubles, both large and small, seem to melt away during the time you are doing yoga. This provides a much-needed break from your stressors, as well as helping put things into perspective. The emphasis yoga places on being in the moment can also help relieve stress, as you learn not to dwell on past events or anticipate the future. You will leave a yoga class feeling less stressed than when you started. Read more about yoga for stress management here.
Body Awareness: Doing yoga will give you an increased awareness of your own body. You are often called upon to make small, subtle movements to improve your alignment. Over time, this will increase your level of comfort in your own body. This can lead to improved posture and greater self-confidence.
Benefits of Yoga to Your Bones, Muscles, and Joints
- The physical benefits of yoga are myriad. Yoga keeps your body strong, as it involves all the muscles in your body to hold and balance yoga asanas (poses). The various yoga postures strengthen your feet, legs, hands, abdominals, lower back, legs, and shoulders.
- Yoga's stretching and breathing exercises improve your flexibility, helping joints, tendons, and muscles stay limber. People suffering from osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis will see a noticeable improvement in their stiffness, pain, and other arthritic symptoms by practicing yoga poses and postures.
- Yoga improves your endurance, especially the more athletic forms of yoga such as ashtanga yoga, power yoga, vinyasa yoga, and Bikram yoga. These rigorous yoga practices follow a specific sequence of poses (asanas) that become more challenging as you progress. Unlike the more gentle hatha yoga, the forms of ashtagna yoga, power yoga, vinyasa yoga, and Bikram yoga require you to keep your body in constant motion between poses, resulting in a strenuous cardiovascular workout and improved core strength.
- Hatha yoga can relieve chronic back and neck pain, since the poses and postures gently stretch and strengthen your back and neck muscles.
- Yoga is often prescribed to help heal various injuries, including repetitive strain injuries, knee and back injuries, pulled hamstrings, even minor skin burns. Of course, you should consult your physician before using yoga as a treatment for any injury!
- Yoga is an excellent weight-bearing exercise that can improve your bone density. This is particularly beneficial for women approaching menopause, since yoga can help ward off osteoporosis, or thinning of the bone.
Benefits of Yoga to the Cardiovascular System
Yoga has tremendous health benefits for your heart. Most notably:
- The gentler forms of yoga lower your blood pressure because the asanas (yoga poses, postures, and yoga positions) keep blood flowing evenly throughout your body while you focus on your breathing.
- People suffering from hypertension can benefit from yoga tremendously, as hatha yoga can lower your heart rate and blood pressure.
- Many practitioners claim that yoga has also lowered their cholesterol.
- Power yoga is an excellent form of cardio conditioning, which strengthens core muscles while it keeps blood and oxygen circulating throughout your body.
Benefits of Yoga on Mental Health
- Yoga benefits anyone's mental health by helping him or her relax, and it is an effective form of psychological therapy. Yoga reduces anxiety and stress, resulting in better health, better mood, and better concentration throughout the day. Yoga has been used to help treat a wide variety of emotional and mental disorders, including acute anxiety, depression, and mood swings.
- Even children can benefit from yoga. Those with attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity can learn to relax and get control by using yoga breathing and yoga asanas.
- Because yoga is a form of meditation, it results in a sense of inner peace and purpose, which has far-reaching health benefits.
- Yoga has been used to help heal victims of torture or other trauma.
Benefits of Yoga on Other Health Conditions
- Do you have frequent headaches? Yoga can rid you of tension headaches and migraines because yoga circulates blood and oxygen to your head, which can often prevent headaches from starting.
- A regular yoga practice helps boost antioxidants throughout your body, resulting in a stronger immune system and improved ability to heal quickly from disease or injury.
- Yoga can help you lose weight and maintain a healthy weight throughout your life. Power yoga is a vigorous form of yoga that burns calories, resulting in weight loss.
- Many women going through menopause report an easing of symptoms when they begin practicing yoga.
Benefits of Yoga in Everyday Life
- Yoga can help cure insomnia, as regular yoga practice leads to better and deeper sleep.
- Yoga can help fight fatigue and maintain your energy throughout the day.
- Yoga is an effective treatment for a variety of autoimmune diseases because it can reduce the symptoms these diseases often cause, such as stiffness, malaise, fatigue, and weakness.
Regular yoga practice will create multiple and noticeable benefits to your health. Try some yoga postures today! And as your instructor will no doubt tell you at the end of your practice: Namaste.