Our health and lifestyle matter more than you can imagine. Yoga for health, in particular, has been used for many generations. Despite the debates regarding its origin, there are several benefits of yoga that have shaped lives over time. If you happen to be active in yoga, you’ll likely agree that a long-term commitment has brought you various physical and mental changes.
This could include better quality and lengths of sleep, increased and controlled metabolism, and even increased flexibility. All in all, the benefits don’t come easy, and this is why you need to be committed to the activity. Here is how yoga can boost your overall health.
Benefits of Yoga
1. Builds Muscle Strength
Yoga for health is simply a life changer. Putting in work to do those stretches may seem weird and strange at first, but your muscle strength depends on it. Scientifically, stretching your muscles reduces tension and builds up muscle tissue. This is the reason why yoga for health lowers your risk of back pain and arthritis through muscle build-up. (1)
2. Spinal Protection
If you know one or two things about the spinal cord, you’ll agree that the spinal discs have a complex structure. Ideally, the arrangement of your spinal discs allows them to compress nerves when necessary, to absorb any sort of shock.
This means that your spinal discs require proper movement via stretching in order to remain robust and intact. These movements mostly include backward, forwards, and side bends as done in yoga.
3. Posture Perfection
The human body is created with complexity that you may not seem to comprehend. Consequently, our spinal cord is the central support system of the entire body, since it also directly supports the head. The neck and back muscles are strong enough to support your weight, but once you begin to lean on any direction for long, you’ll notice the strain. (2)
This is why yoga helps to improve posture by making sure that the spine is always straight.
4. Increased Flexibility
If you have been a yoga practitioner for a fairly long period of time, you will notice that improved flexibility is one of the main benefits of the activity. The first time you started off was probably harder than you could imagine. Being able to touch your toes can be hard the first few times, but with perseverance, you’ll notice that you were finally able to do the impossible.
5. Joint Breakdown and Cartilage Prevention
Among the many benefits of yoga, this is quite vital. All the times you fully stretch your joints, they’re able to go through a full range of motion that helps to squeeze out the fluids in between the cartilage. This allows for replacement, therefore allowing it to receive fresh nutrients.
6. Increases Your Heart Rate
So far, we have witnessed that the benefits of yoga are numerous. Either way, both vigorous and calm yoga can elevate your heart rate into an aerobic heartbeat range. This eventually lowers your levels of depression and the risk of heart attack.
7. The Increase of Blood Flow
Yoga exercise mostly entails the stretching of your joints and muscles. This movement involves contraction of muscles which helps to increase the rate of blood flow. The organs that benefit the most are your hands and feet, due to tension release and increased oxygen supply to the cells.
8. Better Bone Health
Scientifically, any exercise that involves bearing your own weight helps to prevent osteoporosis. Fortunately, yoga for health requires you to lift your own body weight through some stretches such as the “upward” and “downward facing dog.” This type of stretch helps to toughen your arm bone strength, which is considered vulnerable to osteoporosis.
9. Immunity Boost
One of the most underrated benefits of yoga is the upgrade it does to your immune health. Usually, stretching of joints and muscles leads to the release of lymph fluid, which has a high concentration of immune cells. This fluid facilitates the enhancement of the immune system.
10. Lifts Energy Levels
You’ve seen the way yoga positively alters several functions and conditions in your body. Just among the few that have been mentioned, the benefits such as increase in muscle strength, robust immune system, and better bone health collectively increase your body’s energy levels. Even so, this can leave you in high spirits, hence making you a happier individual.
11. Regulates Adrenaline
The thing about yoga for health is that it helps to regulate your adrenal glands. In the event of an acute crisis, your adrenal glands must emit cortisol that is important for the maintenance of your immune system. Therefore, if the cortisol levels remain high even after a crisis, your immune system remains uncompromised.
12. Drops Blood Pressure
Have you ever sat down for long hours and stood up to stretch? Yoga exercise is as healthy as any other exercise, and studies have shown that among the benefits of yoga, a decrease in hypertension is one of them.
This is because stretching your spine, joints, and muscles offer a relieving sensation. The “corpse” pose in yoga was recorded to have a 26-point drop in systolic blood pressure.
13. Lowers Blood Sugar
Science has already shown how yoga has helped to increase heart rate and decrease depression. In addition, yoga stretching has also been seen to lower bad cholesterol (LDL) and enhance good blood sugar (HDL). This also leads to a drop in blood sugar.
Blood sugar has always been linked with diabetes, and this is why maintaining the right blood sugar levels is necessary for a diabetes-free life.
14. Upgrades Your Focus
You’ve probably experiences times when you’ve had a specific song or thought play constantly in your mind like a tape loop. These sort of patterns are associated with a drop in your brain’s focus. There are many mental benefits of yoga, one of them being an increase in focus.
Yoga involves deep meditation, which can help keep any sort of mental distractions far away.
15. Helps You Build A Healthier Lifestyle
Yoga is almost just like any other exercise, and this means that the proper diet ought to be followed in order for you to reap the full benefits. Moreover, yoga can prompt you to get rid of some habits such as smoking. This is because the activity creates both body and mind nourishment.
16. Betters Your Balance
Stretching in yoga involves the effort of several muscles in your body, such as the psoas muscle. Some of these muscles are quite crucial since they help to support overall body weight. This is why yoga helps you develop a better understanding of what your body is doing and where exactly it is in time and space.
This can have an overall positive effect on your balance which means that you could have fewer falls, if you tend to be uncoordinated or accident-prone.
17. Increases Quality of Sleep
Although the excitement and stimulation that your body receives from various activities is good for the brain, you should also keep in mind that excess could translate to adverse effects. Yoga stretching is considered a great escape from the physical and mental struggles that you go through daily.
Due to its effect on body-brain health, yoga helps you to experience deeper slumber that leaves you feeling refreshed in the morning.
18. Tension Release in The Limbs
There are probably many times when you lazily stare at your phone screen while holding it up for hours. You may even find yourself developing sedentary postures that can inflict lots of tension in-between your limbs. Yoga helps to get rid of the chronic tension, soreness, and muscle fatigue that may be caused by any sort of strenuous or repetitive activity.
Wherever your tension may be located, constant yoga practice can help you locate and relieve the affected areas.
19. Increases Lung Capacity
Yoga can involve heavy breath holds, similar to swimming, that help to increase your lung capacity. Yoga consists not only of stretching, but also meditation that requires you to hold in your breathe so as to become one with the environment around you. This ultimately increases your breath volume and boosts the efficiency of exhalation.
All the same, there are yoga techniques that are employed to simplify this process such as “complete breathing.”
20. Relaxes Your Mind
Yoga has always been used as a thought cleanser, and this is why you’re allowed to refer to it as the medicine of the mind. Yoga is a powerful tool used to boost mental energy. Meditation, being a major part of its process, helps relax your mind and take away distress.(3)
21. Self-Esteem Booster
Have you ever taken part in a weekly physical challenge or even a diet program? Developing a strict routine that allows you to practice yoga over a period of time can have an encouraging impact on your confidence and self-esteem. This is mainly because of the sensation and satisfaction obtained after a series of completed sessions.
This accomplishment will reflect both mental and physical upgrades which will boost your self-esteem.
Final Thoughts on Benefits of Yoga
Our health is one crucial aspect that requires the right attention on a regular basis. Therefore, yoga practice ought to be followed with a fixed mind in order for you to reap the best results possible.
