Is yoga for me? Here are 6 ways your health can benefit from a regular yoga practice
The purpose of yoga is to promote harmony and strength between body, mind and spirit. Yoga is a great tool to improve an internal state of balance.
There are many different types of yoga, however, most of them involve breathing exercises, meditation and holding particular postures (called asana or poses) that stretch, flex and strengthen different muscles.
Dr. Natalie Nevins, a board-certified osteopathic family physician and certified Kundalini Yoga instructor in Hollywood, California, focuses on preventive medicine and practices, and in the body’s ability to heal itself, she considers yoga to be a great tool for staying healthy because it is based on similar principles. "The relaxation techniques incorporated in yoga can lessen chronic pain, such as lower back pain, arthritis, headaches and carpal tunnel syndrome” she explains, “yoga can also lower blood pressure and reduce insomnia.”
Yoga through meditation works remarkably to achieve harmony and helps the mind work in synchronization with the body. How often do we find that we are unable to perform our activities properly and in a satisfying manner because of the confusions and conflicts in our mind weigh down heavily upon us?
Stress is the number one suspect affecting all parts of our physical, endocrinal and emotional system. And with the help of yoga, you can bring balance to these. At the physical level, yoga in it's different practices has proven to be extremely effective to help cope and revert a number of physical disorders.
Here's a list of the key physical benefits you can expect from a regular yoga practice:
Benefit of Yoga #1: Yoga is known to increase flexibility; yoga has postures that trigger the different joints of the body. Including those joints that are not acted upon with regular exercises routines.
Benefit of Yoga #2: Yoga also increases the lubrication of joints, ligament and tendons. The well-researched yoga positions exercise the different tendons and ligaments of the body. It has also been found that the body, which may have started doing yoga being a rigid one, may experience quite remarkable flexibility in the end on those parts of the body which have not been consciously worked upon.
Benefit of Yoga #3: Yoga also massages all organs of the body. Yoga is perhaps the only exercise that can work on through your internal organs in a thorough manner, including those that hardly get externally stimulated during our entire lifetime.
Benefit of Yoga #4: Yoga acts in a wholesome manner on the various body parts. This stimulation and massage of the organs in turn benefits us by keeping away disease and providing a forewarning at the first possible instance of a likely onset of disease or disorder. One of the far-reaching benefits of yoga is the uncanny sense of awareness that it develops in the practitioner of an impending health disorder or infection. This in turn enables the person to take pre-emptive corrective action
Benefit of Yoga #5: Yoga offers a complete detoxification of the body. It gently stretches the muscles and joints as well as massaging the various organs. Yoga ensures the optimum blood supply to various parts of the body. This helps in the flushing out of toxins from every nook and cranny of your body as well as providing nourishment up to the last point. This leads to benefits such as delayed ageing, energy and a remarkable zest for life
Benefit of Yoga #6: Yoga is also an excellent way to tone your muscles. Muscles, which have been flaccid and weak are stimulated repeatedly to shed excess fats and flaccidity.
These enormous physical benefits are just a “side effect” of this powerful practice. What yoga does is harmonize the mind with the body and these results in real quantum benefits. It is now an open secret that the will of the mind has enabled people to achieve extraordinary physical feats, which proves beyond doubt the mind and body connection.
In fact, yoga = meditation, because both work together in achieving the common goal of unity of mind, body and spirit which can lead to an experience of eternal bliss that you can only feel through yoga. The meditative practices through yoga help in achieving an emotional balance through detachment. This in turn creates a remarkable calmness and a positive outlook, which also has tremendous benefits on the physical health of the body.
We would love to hear about your own experience. What are the benefits you have experienced? Share it with our community.
Live with purpose, be authentic. Live Happy!
