Ways Your Yoga Practice Can Improve Your Life: The Benefits of Yoga. Use yoga to improve quality of life.
You are well aware of the benefits of yoga for building strength, increasing flexibility, and reducing discomfort. What about the advantages that go beyond your mat, though?
ways that yoga can enhance your health
My experience motivated me to carefully examine the scientific research I had gathered from both the West and India. I wanted to pinpoint and describe how yoga might both prevent disease and aid in its recovery. Here’s what I discovered.
Increases flexibility
One of the first and most noticeable advantages of yoga is increased flexibility. You probably won’t be able to touch your toes or perform a backbend in your first class. But if you persevere, you’ll feel a gradual relaxing, and soon, poses that were insurmountable will become feasible. You’ll probably also start to notice that your symptoms and aches start to subside. That is not an accident. Due to incorrect thigh and shinbone alignment, tight hips might strain the knee joint. Back pain can result from a flattening of the lumbar spine, which can be caused by tight hamstrings. Additionally, stiffness in the muscles and connective tissues, such as the ligaments and fascia, can lead to bad posture.
Increases muscular strength
More than just looking attractive, muscles are useful. Additionally, they shield us from ailments like back discomfort and arthritis and assist in keeping older individuals from falling. And you combine strength with flexibility when you practise yoga. If you only went to the gym to lift weights, you might lose flexibility while gaining strength. Use Yoga to improve your quality of life.
Makes your posture better
Your skull is large, rounded, and weighty like a bowling ball. Your neck and back muscles will have to exert far less effort to maintain it if it is balanced directly over an upright spine. But as soon as you move it a few inches forward, those muscles start to feel strained.
It’s understandable why you’re exhausted if you spend eight or twelve hours a day holding up that forward-leaning bowling ball. Additionally, your issue might not just be weariness. Back, neck, and other muscle and joint issues can result from poor posture. Your body may flatten the natural inward curvature in your neck and lower back, as a means of balancing out your droop. Spinal degenerative arthritis and discomfort may result from this.
Prevents the degradation of cartilage and joints
You put your joints through their complete range of motion each time you practise yoga. By “squeezing and soaking” sections of cartilage that aren’t often used, this can help prevent degenerative arthritis or lessen handicap. Similar to a sponge, joint cartilage only obtains new nutrients when its fluid is squeezed out and a new supply can be absorbed. Neglected cartilage might gradually deteriorate without proper care, revealing the underlying bone like worn-out brake pads.
Safeguards your spine
The shock-absorbing spinal discs, which can herniate and pressure nerves, want motion. They can only obtain their nourishment in that way. Your discs will stay flexible if you have a well-rounded asana practise that includes several backbends, forward bends, and twists. Yoga is known for its long-term flexibility, but this advantage is still particularly important for spinal health.
Enhances bone health
Weight-bearing exercise is well known to strengthen bones and fend off osteoporosis. Yoga poses frequently call for you to lift your own weight. Asanas that strengthen the arm bones, which are particularly prone to osteoporotic fractures, include:
1. Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward-Facing Dog)
2. Urdhva Mukha Svanasana (Upward-Facing Dog).
Yoga practise enhanced vertebral bone density, according to a California State University, Los Angeles, unpublished study. Yoga’s capacity to reduce cortisol levels, a stress hormone, may aid in maintaining calcium in the bones. Yoga improves your quality of life.
Improves blood circulation
Yoga increases blood flow. Particularly in your hands and feet, the relaxation techniques you acquire during yoga can improve your circulation. Your cells perform better as a result of yoga because it increases oxygenation in your body. Twisting positions are supposed to squeeze venous blood out of internal organs. Once this twist is relaxed, oxygenated blood is then allowed to flow in.
Headstand, Adho Mukha Vrksasana (Handstand), and Shoulderstand are examples of inverted postures. They facilitate the flow of venous blood from the legs and pelvis back to the heart. From the heart it can then be pumped to the lungs to receive new oxygen. If you experience swelling in your legs due to heart or renal issues, this may assist. Haemoglobin and red blood cells, which deliver oxygen to the tissues, are also increased by yoga.
Additionally, it thins the blood by reducing the amount of clot-promoting proteins in the blood and by making platelets less sticky. Since blood clots are frequently the cause of heart attacks and strokes, this may result in a reduction in these deadly conditions.
Improves immunity and lymphatic drainage
Increased lymphatic drainage occurs as you tense and stretch muscles, move organs, and enter and exit yoga poses (a viscous fluid rich in immune cells). This supports the lymphatic system’s ability to combat infections, eliminate malignant cells, and get rid of harmful byproducts of cellular activity.
Makes your heart beat faster
You reduce your risk of heart attack and also lessen depression when you frequently raise your heart rate into the aerobic range. While not all yoga is aerobic, it can raise your heart rate into the aerobic range if you practise it vigorously or take flow or Ashtanga sessions. However, even yoga poses that don’t raise your heart rate as much will strengthen your cardiovascular system.
Yoga practise has been shown to boost maximum oxygen uptake during exercise, increase endurance, and lower resting heart rate—all indicators of increased aerobic conditioning. According to one study, people who were simply taught pranayama were able to exercise more vigorously while using less oxygen.
Causes a drop in blood pressure
Yoga may be helpful if you have high blood pressure. Two studies on persons with hypertension compared the effects of Savasana (Corpse Pose) with merely lying on a couch and were published in the British medical magazine The Lancet.
Savasana was linked to a 26-point decline in systolic blood pressure (the top figure) and a 15-point drop in diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number) after three months. The larger the drop, the higher the starting blood pressure.
Controls the adrenal glands
Cortisol levels are reduced by yoga. If you think that’s not much, take this into account. In reaction to a severe emergency, the adrenal glands normally release cortisol, which momentarily strengthens the immune system. Even when the crisis has passed, excessive cortisol levels might impair the immune system.
Temporary increases in cortisol are beneficial for long-term memory, but persistently high levels impair memory and may cause long-lasting brain alterations. Furthermore, high levels of cortisol have been related to significant depression, osteoporosis (which prevents the formation of new bone by removing calcium and other minerals from bones), high blood pressure, and insulin resistance.
High cortisol levels cause “food-seeking behaviour” in rats, which is the same behaviour that makes you want to eat when you’re unhappy, angry, or worried. These extra calories are absorbed by the body and distributed as fat in the abdomen, which increases weight growth and the risk of diabetes and heart attacks.
Improves your mood
Are you sad? Sit Lotus-style. Better yet, take a backbend or ascend to King Dancer Pose with majesty. While it’s not quite that straightforward, one study revealed that regular yoga practise reduced cortisol and monoamine oxidase levels, which are responsible for the breakdown of neurotransmitters, and alleviated depression.
Richard Davidson, Ph.D., discovered at the University of Wisconsin that meditators’ left prefrontal cortex displayed increased activity, a result that has been connected to higher levels of happiness and improved immunological function. In devoted, long-term practitioners, there was more pronounced left-sided activation.
Establishes a healthy way of life
Many dieters subscribe to the maxim “move more, eat less.” Both can benefit from yoga. The spiritual and emotional aspects of your practise may inspire you to address any food and weight issues on a deeper level. Regular practise gets you moving and burns calories. You might be motivated to eat more mindfully by your yoga practise. Yoga’s resonant effects on other facets of your life are one of its advantages.
Reduces blood sugar
Yoga increases HDL (“good”) cholesterol while lowering blood sugar and LDL (“bad”) cholesterol. Yoga has been shown to lower blood sugar in diabetics in a number of ways, including by lowering cortisol and adrenaline levels, promoting weight reduction, and increasing sensitivity to the effects of insulin. You can lessen your risk of developing diabetic complications like heart attack, renal failure, and blindness by lowering your blood sugar levels.
Aids concentration
Yoga stresses the importance of being in the now. Regular yoga practise enhances coordination, response time, memory, and even IQ scores, according to studies. Transcendental Meditation practitioners have been shown to be better at problem-solving, learning, and remembering information—possibly because they are less preoccupied by their thoughts, which can repeat endlessly like an unending tape loop.
Calms your body
Using Yoga to improve quality of life is great. It promotes relaxation, slower breathing, and present-moment awareness, which helps balance the sympathetic nervous system (also known as the “fight-or-flight reaction”) and the parasympathetic nervous system. The latter is peaceful and restorative; it slows down breathing and heartbeat, reduces blood pressure, and increases blood flow to the reproductive organs and bowels. Herbert Benson, M.D. names this process the relaxation response.
Helps with balance
Regular yoga practise enhances proprioception (the capacity to feel where your body is in space and what it is doing) and balance. Proprioception is typically impaired in people with poor posture or dysfunctional movement patterns, which has been associated with knee and back discomfort. Use Yoga to improve your quality of life.
Fewer falls may result from improved balance. For the elderly, this translates into more independence and postponing or avoiding admission to a nursing home. The rest of us can feel less shaky both on and off the mat by practising poses like Tree Pose.
Keeps your nervous system healthy
Some highly skilled yogis have incredible control over their bodies, most of which is mediated by the neurological system. Scientists have observed yogis who were able to produce particular brainwave patterns, cause odd heart rhythms, and increase the temperature of their hands by 15 degrees Fahrenheit when meditating. If yoga can accomplish that, perhaps it can also help you relax when you’re having difficulties falling asleep or improving blood flow to your pelvic if you’re trying to get pregnant.
Lets you relax your tense limbs
Do you ever catch yourself using a death grip on the phone or a steering wheel, or tensing up your face while looking at a computer screen? These unintentional behaviours can cause chronic tension, muscle pain, and exhaustion in the wrists, arms, shoulders, neck, and face, which can affect your mood and raise stress.
You start to become aware of your tension holding patterns when you practise yoga: Your tongue, eyes, or facial and neck muscles could all be affected. The tongue and eyelids may be able to relax a little if you just tune in. Learning to relax larger muscles like the quadriceps, trapezius, and buttocks may require years of effort.
Although stimulation is beneficial, the nervous system can become overstimulated. Yoga can help you escape the stress of contemporary life. Pratyahara, or the inward turning of the senses, is encouraged by restorative asana, yoga nidra (a type of guided relaxation), Savasana, pranayama, and meditation.
This slows down the nervous system. Studies indicate that improved sleep is a side effect of frequent yoga practise, which means you’ll be less exhausted, worried, and prone to mishaps. One of the main advantages of yoga, regardless of one’s skill level, is the ability to sleep better.
Use yoga to improve your quality of life!