Are you a newbie to Yoga? Want to know the purpose and benefits of Yoga for your body? You are at the right place! With the entire world focusing on Yoga these days, it makes sense for us to understand and appreciate the ancient practise of India. From treating all your physical pains to improving your sleep and even removing negativity of thoughts, Yoga is a complete holistic program. Yoga does not require performing any typical exercise that will make you sweat or run out of breath. The yoga exercises are mostly about breathing the right way, improving your body posture and flexibility and finding a cure to several health-related issues. Read along, as we guide you on some of the best benefits of Yoga.
What Is Yoga?
Read on to Understand The Yoga Definition and Benefits:
Yoga is a spiritual discipline that combines asanas (poses), pranayama (breathing) and mantras (chanting). With a right balance of exercise, meditation and breathing, Yoga helps in improving the overall health and happiness of a person. It can also train your mind to create self-awareness and cultivate self-control and consciousness.
Best Benefits Of Yoga:
Here we mention list of the best health benefits of yoga that will help you to improve your health. You can divide these benefits of Yoga asanaslike physical and mental.
A) Physical Benefits Of Doing Yoga:
1. Improves The Flexibility:
The first benefit you shall derive from Yoga is flexibility. Moving and stretching will tone the core muscle areas of your body and help you perform better during the yoga sessions. They will tone your hips, hamstrings, glutes and back. With time flexibility tends to decrease. Therefore to keep yourself healthy and strong all throughout the years, it is important for you to spend time on Yoga. However these things take time, so learn to be patient.
2. Strengthen All Body Parts:
The second benefit derived from practicing yoga is strength. Since many of the poses require you to support your body using your hands and legs, you are going to develop quite a lot of strength in this process. Some of the best yoga poses that increase your strength are Tree Pose, Cobra Pose and the Child Pose. Holding all these poses for several seconds will help in building strength.
3. Gives Perfect Muscle Tone:
Yoga comes with several health benefits. One of them you earn by default is muscle toning. They make your muscles long, lean and well shaped. It is because of this reason why so many celebrities in the world love to practice yoga. Their body is always fit and the right shape because of this great practice.
4. Balance The Body:
Balance is one of the important benefits of Yoga and meditation. As you grow older, you will see that balancing becomes a little difficult. Even if you are young, most of who you don’t exercise daily will feel like you don’t have enough balance in your body. Yoga is something that will pull you out of this misery and help you to build the core muscles of your body and balance yourself better. There are several kinds of balancing exercises and poses available in Yoga to help you.
5. Improves Joint Health:
People who suffer with major diseases such as arthritis should try yoga. Once you practice Yoga, you will see that your entire body has improved. People who suffer with various kinds of syndromes have also found a lot of relief by doing Yoga. Just by doing gentle yoga for thirty to forty minutes every day under the supervision of an instructor is going to help your body muscles to improve in great ways. You will say goodbye to dangerous diseases and live a life that is active, healthy and free.
6. Prevents The Pains:
Most people have complained about back and shoulder pain. These kinds of pain come from living a life that is stressful or hectic or following a lifestyle that is mostly sedentary. The spinal compression in your body is something that can definitely cause a lot of pain. You can definitely get rid of this if you practice yoga the right way. It will also help in the prevention of many kinds of pain and make your body relaxed and adjusted.
7. Give Right Breathing:
One of the greatest benefits of Yoga is that it helps you breathe better. Breathing is not just a simple exercise of inhaling oxygen and breathing out CO2. It is much more than that. Yoga teaches you the right kind of breathing and several ways using which you can control your breathing. Certain types of breathing shall help in the clearing out of the nasal passages and even calm your entire nervous system. It definitely has great mental and physical benefits. Therefore to breathe better and breathe deeper, make Yoga a part of your life.
8. Posture Perfection:
One of the basic benefits of yoga is that with regular practise it perfects your posture and gives you more balance. Sitting is a single position for long hours causes the problems of bad posture and thus results in joint and muscle strains. The head is what you need to balance the most and thus, even a little stress can make you feel very tired and fatigue problems may occur too.
9. Prevents Arthritis:
There are so many yoga benefits that even you will get surprised to read all of them. It is true that while doing proper yoga your whole body is challenged and each of your joints and muscles are in motion. This helps to prevent arthritis. Also during the time you practise yoga poses, the cartilages which are not used much are also squeezed as they are like sponges and thus helps reduce joint problems too.
10. Protects Spine:
There are positions at intervals in the spinal cord where frictions are caused and this also results in unrest for the whole body. Now the only food for the spine is exercise and its movements and yoga and its benefits thus come along with the same. You should thus choose a regime in which you will have a lot of back bends and front bends and a lot of stretches.
11. For Better Bone Health:
Your bones get strengthened the more they are pushed and the more pressure they take on them. It is the best to lift your own weight if you want to strengthen your bones. There are postures where you stand on your arms and your head is down with feet up. If we are talking about the benefit of yoga then this is a very important one too.
12. Increase Blood Circulation:
The most important of all yoga asanas and their benefits is this one. It says that performing yoga asanas can enhance blood circulation in your body and thus open clogged veins too. It can make your skin glow and also keep a good balance all over the body. It is also important in controlling glands and the hormonal levels of the body.
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13. Heart Rate Increased:
When your heart rate is more you are at a lower risk of any sort of heart attacks or strokes. To make this you need to practise power yoga to boost up your energy cells and let blood rush well throughout the body. This means blood gets pumped very well to the heart and it beats and functions well.
14. Blood Pressure Controlled:
High blood pressure may result into a lot of problems and so it should be controlled. Benefits of yoga include the reduction of high blood pressure and thus keeps you healthy and free from a lot of diseases. This is because of what we have already discussed earlier that blood flows well and thus the heart pumps it to the rest of the body.
15. Regulates Adrenal Glands:
The level of cortisol and its regulation is very important because it is very important to keep boosting your immunity levels. Yoga does help a lot in keeping you immune. If this is okay even acute situations can be handled due to the good condition of the immunity system. You should definitely try yoga at home for this.
16. Gives Healthy Lifestyle:
A healthy lifestyle is the main key to happiness and yoga is one integral part of it. Practicing yoga regularly and in the correct ways is very helpful to keep you healthier and fitter. The whole family can perform yoga right from a kid to the old people in the family. There is yoga for everyone.
17. Blood Sugar Controlled:
Blood sugar or diabetes is like an enemy to your body. This is said to affect the whole body and damage a number of parts too. The first organs to get affected are your eyes, heart and kidneys. You should first be very careful and take all preventive measures and then also perform special yoga for blood sugar to keep control and be healthy.
18. Boosts The Nervous System:
From earlier times it is known that saints and yogis who took to practising yoga could make wonders happen. Starting from lifting their own bodies in the air to increasing their body temperatures by a few degrees even during freezing winters, these may only sound like stories to you. The scientific reason is however that they could control their nervous systems in such a way these could happen.
19. Controls Digestive Disorders:
Digestion problems may absolutely ruin your life and happiness and this can be properly maintained with the help of yoga. You should however check on what you are eating and not take in too much of junk and oily stuff on a regular basis. If this is balanced well all your work is done. The digestive system is somewhere linked with the whole body and so you need to take special care of that.
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B) Mental Benefits Of Yoga:
20. Keeps You Relax:
When life today is always a race it is very difficult to stay at one place and manage things. It is also true that most of us hardly get any time to for ourselves or to relax ourselves. In this case it is true that work outs can relax us by stretching our limbs in the correct possible ways. Yoga among all is the best way. This is one of the best Yoga meditation benefits!
21. For Good Sleep:
Good sleep is needed for every one and for that you need to first be free of all worries and tensions. This is especially possible if you practise yoga regularly and at fixed hours every day. This is sure to release tension from your body and limbs and thus you have a sound sleep for a fresher start to the next day.
22. Increases Thinking Ability:
Yoga and meditation increases your self esteem and boosts your patience to a great level. You become calmer and can handle situations in a much better way. This is one of the effective benefits of Yoga in the morning.
23. Brings Mental Calmness And Peace:
Mental Calmness is something that anybody would want. It is an important aspect of our lives. Absence of peace and calmness causes mental chaos. And to avoid that, one must practice Yoga. There are several meditation techniques in yoga that will relax your entire system and teach you to watch your breathe and disengage your thoughts too. These situations can be very helpful and effective in situations such as anxiety attack, child birth, a bout of insomnia etc.
24. Reduction Of Stress:
Physical activity is ideal for removing stress and tension and this point is particularly true to Yoga. Because of the concentration it requires you to possess, all your problems from small to big shall be solved. They give you a much needed break from stress. Reduce stress will also help you feel a big difference if you suffer with problems such as depression and infertility. You will also notice and how relax and lively you feel at the end of the session.
25. Awareness Of Yourself:
Yoga makes you aware of yourself and your body. All it takes are simple and subtle movements to improve the alignment. You will also be able to increase the comfort level in your body. You will have self confidence and your posture will improve as well. You will also come to terms with the several important things in your life and improve your personality as well.
Role Of Yoga In Curing Diseases:
Yoga cures a number of diseases and even prevents them in the long run. This is why Yoga is recommended as a part of treatment, along with internal medication. Some of the known diseases which have a sure shot relief with Yoga are:
Respiratory Problems:
People with chronic asthma and other breathing problems can get over them permanently with regular practise of Yoga. Especially with Pranayama, the lung capacity gets expanded, along with a regulation of heart beat.
Stomach Disorders:
Whether it is a bloated stomach or digestion problems, Yoga asanas can cure many stomach disorders. Poses like child pose, vajrasana can help in passing out of gas and enable better digestion. They can also stimulate your digestive enzymes and better bowel movements.
Joint Pains:
Yoga is highly beneficial to those with chronic joint and muscle pains. Many asanas like the Tree pose, Warrior pose, offer balance to the body and corrects the alignment of the spinal column. These poses also stretch your muscles and increase their flexibility.
Heart Problems:
By expanding the chest cavity, Yoga can regulate the blood flow to the heart. Asanas like Kapalabhati can increase the oxygen supply to the body and in turn prevents pressure on the heart.
Diabetes:
Studies show that people who performed Surya Namaskars and other asanas regularly showed drastic improvement in their blood sugar levels. These exercises work by stimulating the pancreas for better insulin production
Surprised at reading these incredible benefits of Yoga? That’s not all! There are more areas where Yoga creates a positive impact. Also, different types of Yoga work in different ways to deliver the results. No matter which form of Yoga you choose, the key focus is always on achieving a healthy and happy life. If you are taking up Yoga, these points are sure to motivate you to hitting the class every single day!
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Frequency Asked Questions And Answers:
1. Which is Better Yoga or Gym?
The answer to this depends on the goal you intend to achieve at the end of the program. Exercises at gym involves a lot of equipment or techniques to stretch your muscles and burn calories. Yoga, on the other hand also involves certain props and asanas, along with breathing and meditation techniques. Unlike the gym where the focus is only on the physical self, Yoga creates a complete mind and body fitness.
2. How Often Should I Do Yoga For Best Results?
You must do it regularly to get best results. Yoga is not a reactive approach. It must be used proactively to create a healthy being and therefore, it must be taken up regularly. You must dedicate atleast one hour of time for Yoga, for about 3-4 days a week to notice the results. Combining different forms of Yoga amplifies the benefits.
3. Can Yoga Help In Building Muscles?
The purpose of Yoga is never to lose weight or make muscles. It is to promote a happy and healthy life. However, if you seek to achieve those goals with Yoga, yes, there are exercises to build muscles. You may not notice rippling muscles like what you get in a Gym, but your body gets toned. You will notice a slimmer waistline and tighter muscles with these asanas.
4. What Are Things to Avoid Before Yoga?
You must never perform Yoga on a full or a completely empty stomach. Yoga is best done on a mat placed on the ground. Don’t get completely exposed to sunlight while performing the asanas. Stay within the limits and avoid over stretching. Do not perform complex Yoga during Menses or pregnancy. Also, it is advised not to have water or bath after 30 minutes of Yoga.
5. Is Online Yoga a Good Idea?
In a technology driven world like ours, online Yoga is a boon to those who cannot travel to the classes. Detailed videos and in-depth explanation of asanas bridge the gap between a teacher and a student. You will also be given a lot of material to read and upgrade your knowledge. However, you might miss a personalized approach in an online class.
