Yoga is a Hindu spiritual and ascetic discipline, a part of which, including breath control, simple meditation, and the adoption of specific bodily postures, is widely practised for health and relaxation. It is a great channel for releasing our stress and anxiety. Yoga gained popularity gradually and has now spread in all regions of the world. It unites people in harmony and peace. Furthermore, after this popularity of yoga, India became known for yoga worldwide. People all over the world have started to realize the benefits of yoga. Several workshops are held and now there are even professional yogis who teach this ancient practice to people so they can learn about it. In addition, practitioners can develop self-discipline and self-awareness from yoga if done regularly. Here are 10 evidence-based benefits of yoga that’ll make your time on the mat worthwhile and enjoyable.
1.Improves Mental Health
One of the major problems nowadays is the enormous amount of stress people face in various aspects of life. Yoga is a bona-fide stress buster, so there’s good reason to squeeze in a lunchtime session. Practicing yoga helps to alleviate the symptoms of generalised anxiety disorder – characterised by long-term, persistent and excessive anxiety about everyday life events. While medication and psychological therapies are the formal choices for treating depression, multiple studies show that yoga can be an immensely useful complementary tool. Elevated cortisol levels decrease your body’s ability to make serotonin, the happy hormone (plus other neurotransmitters like dopamine – the reward and motivation hormone. Yoga helps to dampen cortisol levels.
2.Improve Self-Awareness
Since yoga strengthens your mind-body connection, it helps you manage unpleasant emotions rather than reaching for external distractions to suppress those feelings. There is an increase in mindful eating, positive changes in food choices, and decreased emotional eating. A benefit of yoga practice is becoming increasingly self-aware of how our bodies feel in asana, while practicing breath awareness and while meditating. With increased self-awareness, we can learn to be present for our bodies’ messages. One classic focus of awareness in yoga is cultivated in asana (poses) practice. For example, how it feels when we lengthen our hamstrings or notice any difference on one side compared to the other in standing balance practice. Gently exploring a fuller breath is another tool for becoming mindfully self-aware. We can make a relationship with our breath intentionally in yoga practice. Doing so refines our attention and begins to internalize it in a subtler way, allowing us to witness changing mental and emotional states.
3.Source of a healthy Life
Practicing yoga can seriously improve your quality of life. Related benefits include lowering blood pressure and heart rate, improving digestion and boosting the immune system as well as easing symptoms of conditions such as anxiety, depression, fatigue, asthma and insomnia. The various benefits of yoga don’t just have a profound effect on your quality of life – they can even add valuable years to it. Intensive practice counteracts the cellular effects of ageing. Studies found that yoga can lower resting heart rate, increases endurance, and improves maximum uptake of oxygen during exercise—all reflections of improved aerobic conditioning. It has also been found that those who practice pranayama or “breath control” are able to do more exercise with less oxygen.
4.Healthy for Brain
Yoga enhances many of the same brain structures that benefit from aerobic exercise. By boosting your brain’s amygdala, which contributes to emotional regulation; the prefrontal cortex, which governs planning and decision-making; and the default mode network, a set of brain regions associated with your sense of ‘self’, the practice works miracles on your cognitive functioning. Yoga poses require you to concentrate on your breathing. The process of observing your breath calms your mind and makes you more mentally relaxed. As a result of this mental stability, you’ll be able to recollect and retain more information.
5.Being more Mindful
The benefits of yoga and mindfulness are intertwined. Practicing yoga directs your attention to any sensations, thoughts, and emotions that accompany a given pose. That awareness will bring the mind back to the present moment, which is the main aim of mindfulness. People who perceive themselves as being mindful have greater emotional stability and described better control over their emotions and behaviours during the day.
6.Improves Physical Health
Chronic pain is associated with a reduction in grey matter in the brain, but yoga can help to prevent – and even reverse – these effects. This is because yogis have been observed to have more grey matter in the brain regions involved in pain modulation. Mind-body practices seem to exert a protective effect on brain grey matter that counteracts the neuroanatomical effects of chronic pain. Regular yoga practice offers a wallet-friendly, convenient way to get some relief to chronic back pain. While inflammation is a normal – and necessary – immune system response, the chronic kind is associated with serious health conditions like heart disease, diabetes and cancer. A regular practice improves chronic inflammation in the body by lowering the levels of pro-inflammatory markers like cytokines. It’s one of the lesser-known benefits of yoga, but yoga is heart-healthy. Making time for the mat can reduce your cholesterol levels and even slow the progression of heart disease when combined with dietary changes and stress management. It also improves your circulation. Yogic breathing techniques (called pranayama) focus on slowing down the breath and breathing from the pit of your stomach to the top of your lungs. As well as sending a message to your brain that soothes your sympathetic nervous system – responsible for the ‘fight or flight’ response we feel when stressed – these exercises have been shown to increase vital capacity, which refers to the total amount of air your lungs can exhale.
7.Improves Sleep
Yoga regularly had better overall sleep quality, less episodes of disturbed sleep, took less time to fall asleep, less daytime dysfunction, less use of sleep medications and also felt more rested and energetic in the morning. Yoga exercises involve stretching and relaxing of muscles causing significant physical and mental exertion resulting in less sleep latency, more deep sleep, less sleep disturbances, and better sleep efficiency.
8.Increases Energy
Yoga practice is said to awaken the main energy centres (called chakras) in your body. Great poses for extra energy are those that extend the spine, such as the tree pose, allowing energy to circulate throughout the whole body, and poses that open the chest, like the cobra pose, encouraging the intake of more breath. Scientific research suggests that yoga can, indeed, invigorate your mind. Practicing 25-minute sessions of Hatha yoga can improve your energy levels significantly. This thought to be due to the release of endorphins, increased blood flow to the brain, and reduced focus on ruminative thoughts.
9.Helps in Weight Loss
When it comes to shedding excess fat, exercise is just a small piece of the puzzle. Restorative yoga – practiced at a very slow pace with long holds and lots of deep breathing – helped overweight women lose belly fat. Yoga can boost weight loss by several mechanisms, including burning calories, reducing stress levels, enhancing other forms of exercise, and helping you feel more connected to your body – which enhances awareness of satiety, preventing overeating.
10. Corrects Posture
Yoga poses also emphasize alignment correction of hands, wrists, arms, and shoulders. This sense of proper structural alignment is great for improving posture. As poses are adjusted for optimal positioning, students get in the habit of ideal alignment and are able to hold poses correctly and for longer amounts of time. These muscle groups are directly involved in controlling the lumbar spine, which is essential for achieving good posture. trunk strength is related to posture control. By boosting these postural muscles, students train themselves for greater endurance and resistance. Trunk strength is also key for balance, as seen in a recent study about falls in elderly people. When elderly people performed trunk exercises, they saw greater stability in their lumbar spine and better posture control.
