The Amazing Mental and Physical Benefits of Yoga – Best Way to Boost Health
If you’re looking for a hobby that helps improve mental and physical health at the same time, there’s no better place to start than yoga. All of the benefits of yoga make it a surefire way to improve overall wellness with ease.
Keep reading to find out everything you need to know about yoga including what it is, its purpose, and how it can improve both mental and physical health at the same time. Knowing why something works can make you more likely to pick up on the habit.
What is Yoga
So, what is yoga in the first place? Yoga is an ancient Hindu practice that Bridges a connection between the mind and the body. It aims to teach us control of the body and mind through various movements, breathing techniques, and goals.
Nowadays, yoga is more accessible than ever due to the growing quantity of at-home practices you can start. All you need to do is follow along with videos to get into a routine that can have amazing benefits.
Purpose
As stated above, yoga is a mental and physical practice. If you want to meditate, but can’t seem to sit still, yoga may be the perfect solution. If you want to start some sort of exercise for your fitness journey, but don’t want to go to the gym or feel too nervous to jump right into training, yoga is again the perfect solution. It is an amazing practice that unites fitness with mental health.
Many of the postures help to improve many aspects of physical health. The breathing techniques that are used in yoga also provide mental benefits while increasing relaxation and inner peace. Yoga can be used in a variety of ways to target certain concerns and improve overall health. Best of all, yoga offers different variations to increase or decrease difficulty, making it accessible for a variety of individuals no matter what their fitness level is.
Science-Based Benefits of Yoga
Jumping right into it, here are the science-based benefits of yoga. They are sorted into physical benefits and mental health benefits. Depending on what your goals are, you can target certain benefits. For example, if you aim to increase strength, you may want to try some more challenging yoga positions. If you want to prioritize mental health, a more soothing routine may be more beneficial.
Physical Health
Here are all the amazing physical health benefits yoga can provide you. All you need is about 15 minutes a day to see improvement in physical fitness.
1. Improves Heart Health
Your heart is an essential organ as it pumps blood throughout the body which delivers nutrients and oxygen everywhere it’s needed. Studies have found that yoga has an incredibly positive effect on cardiovascular health. It can lower blood pressure in individuals who suffer from hypertension and has been found to lower blood sugar levels in many individuals, especially those with type 2 diabetes.
2. Improves Balance
The various poses of yoga can greatly improve balance. This is because yoga involves holding postures that utilize various muscles of the body including the core, legs, and arms. This makes yoga a great option for individuals who seek to increase their ability to move through life with more ease.
3. Reduces Pain
Studies have found that yoga is a great way to reduce pain, particularly if you suffer from chronic pain due to injuries or arthritis. Pain is debilitating, especially if you have to live with it day in and day out. Yoga is one way that you can manage pain with the use of birth control and movement.
4. Increases Flexibility
Another great benefit of yoga is that it increases flexibility. This is because the poses in yoga often involve us lengthening the muscles. This helps the muscle stretch and will increase the range of motion if done habitually. Flexibility is important for all of us since more flexibility equals more ability to move freely and without pain.
5. Improves Circulation
Finally, an amazing physical health benefit of yoga is its ability to help improve circulation. This is in part due to the movement and poses you do while practicing yoga. The postures help circulate blood, nutrients, and oxygen throughout the body. Furthermore, the breath work that we use with yoga helps the circulation of the lymphatic system as well. The lymphatic system is a network of tissue, veins, and organs that is needed for adequate immune system response and detoxification. The lymphatic system has no heart to fuel it and therefore relies on our movement and breathing for circulation.
Mental Health
You’re the amazing mental health benefits of yoga that you can gain today with just a simple 15-minute routine!
6. Reduces Anxiety
Yoga has been found to reduce anxiety greatly. People who practice yoga as a habit tend to report lower levels of anxiety, in part due to the breath work we practice during yoga. Yoga also tends to help us stay in the present moment, another technique that can help reduce anxiety.
7. Reduces Stress
Yoga is also a great way to reduce stress. We stress over a lot of things in our life from finances to work to people. When the body is stressed, it tends to wear on our physical health and mental health. Yoga reduces cortisol, the stress hormone, and other mental illnesses. In fact, one study found that after about 10 weeks, participants who practiced yoga one time a week no longer met the criteria for PTSD.
8. Improves Mood
Yoga helps improve our overall mood greatly. This is because physical exercise tends to help the body release happiness chemicals. These chemicals such as serotonin and dopamine, are related to the way we experience joy and pleasure. Find out how to activate happiness chemicals here!
9. Calms Fight or Flight
The breathing that we do while we practice yoga manages to get stress under control which can in turn calm our fight or flight response. Fight or flight is a biological process in which our body prepares to either fight or run. The issue is that it is an out-of-control response that tends to come up during everyday worries such as bills or work issues. Controlling this rampant stress response is incredibly important, more information on that right here!
10. Increases Awareness
In general, yoga is as much a mental practice as it is a physical one. This is because we pair movement with breathwork and mental tranquility. Yoga tends to help us improve our self-awareness and self-esteem due to these factors.
The Takeaway
The benefits of yoga are endless. It is both a mental and physical practice and can have many benefits for overall health. All you need to do is find a quick YouTube video that leads you through poses. Breathe deeply, hold the stretch, and enjoy the daily dose of health.
Remember that health comes from within. Eat nutritious food, exercise when you can, and take care of your mental health. The small daily habits you cultivate become the basis for overall wellness. Don’t forget about microbiota health too! Gut microbiota affects the entire body, from the skin to muscles, to immune and mental health! Get all the resources you need about microbiota health for free here!
