Top 10 Benefits of Yoga

There are more than ten reasons why yoga is overall good for you, and the physical, psychological, and subtle benefits of this practice could fill plenty of books. But the following is a brief overview of some of the reasons you should consider adding yoga to your world. Here are ten health benefits of yoga;

Strength, Agility, And Flexibility Are All Increased

• Many sports will give you strength. While others will give you more agility, but few practices will increase your strength, your agility, and your flexibility all at once. Professional athletes can overcome injury by increasing their range of motion with yoga, and victims of a double mastectomy regain full mobility after debilitating surgeries that left loads of scar tissue in their bodies. Nothing compares for repairing the body and making sure that the ligaments and connective tissues are just as vigorous and pliable as the muscles themselves.

Yoga Enhances Memory & Cognitive Functioning

• It may seem strange that a practice which involves breathing and stretching can enhance your cognitive functioning, but yogis could be better at learning, show increased memory capacity, and have high levels of concentration. These benefits are attributed to meditation such as yoga. The goal of all yogic practice can also help you at school or on the job by improving your brain functioning.

Body Weight Normalizes- Health Benefits Of Practicing Yoga

• While doing an hour of hot yoga, or even power yoga won’t likely burn as many calories as doing a high-intensity interval workout, yoga has a way of normalizing your body weight by restoring your normal hormonal balance in the body.

• By lowering levels of cortisol in your body and our nervous system’s constant fight or flight response, we less likely to overeat, eat to suppress unpleasant emotions, and we also train our brains to feel more satisfied more quickly because we aren’t in constantly in panic mode. Stress is commonly known to cause obesity and fuel virtually all disease, and yoga is a perfect countermeasure.

Yoga Naturally Reduces Pain

• Countless studies are proving that yoga can be very effective at relieving pain. It doesn’t matter if you suffer from fibromyalgia, arthritis, or migraine headaches, yoga has been proven actually to reduce pain from all these ailments. And if you are one of the millions of people that suffer from back pain practicing yoga can make that pain practically disappear. Meditation has even been proven to be better than morphine at reducing pain.

Respiratory Efficiency Increases

• Adding to the health benefits of yoga, Yoga is becoming one of the few practices that utilize pranayama. The cultivation of life force or chi through breathing. While many people practice pranayama as a means to have higher states of awareness. They also end up having some side benefits which include increased lung capacity, more tidal volume meaning the total amount of air your lungs can hold at any one time), and ability to reduce the pace of their breathing which has been dire linked to a longer lifespan.

Blood Pressure Is Normalized

• Yoga provides specific benefits for hypo-reactors in blood pressure. For those who suffer from hypertension, yoga has been shown to be even more effective than dietary changes for improving blood pressure.

Mental Health Is Greatly Enhanced

• Yoga offers many benefits in the psychological department of health. It ‘s hard to name them all in a brief overview, but some of them are an improved overall mood and sense of well-being, more connected-ness with others, lowered depressive states, less hostility toward the self and others, less anxiety, feelings of self-actualization increase, motivation increases, and more.

Yoga Prevents Degenerative Diseases

• The ways in which yoga prevents disease are astounding. When you understand how, it can be more evidence than you would ever need to take to the yoga mat, stat! Here are just some of the reasons yoga helps to keep you young and healthy longer:
• Glucose reduces
• Sodium reduces
• Triglycerides decrease
• HDL cholesterol increases
• Total, LDL and VLDL cholesterol reduces
• Hemoglobin increases
• Total white blood cell count decreases
• Vitamin C increases
• Total serum protein increases
• Oxytocin increases

The Parasympathetic Nervous System Takes Over In Yoga

• Why is this a good thing? Both the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems work to keep us stabilized in the face of stress. These systems are connected like a see-saw. When one goes up the other goes down. When the sympathetic nervous system is active, it usually means we are on ‘high-alert’ either responding to stress or trying to minimize it.

• This is the part of our nervous systems that is most often triggered especially from flashing lights, traffic noises, emails from our co-workers or boss, family responsibilities. Yoga strengthens the activity of the parasympathetic nervous system which is primarily responsible for the ‘relaxation response.’ Obviously you wouldn’t want to be zoned out or lethargic regularly, or on high-alert, so yoga helps to put the circular motion, the balance, back into the two nervous system’s dance.

You Can Do Yoga Anywhere

• One of the most current health benefits of yoga is that you can experience yoga in just about anywhere. Yoga in studios, at the airport, in a house, at a friend’s house, in a hotel room, outdoors, in parks and even forests, on top of rocks, or on the rooftops of tall buildings in a busy city. You don’t need anything (except maybe a yoga mat), but even that isn’t necessary to do yoga.
• There are no gym memberships required and no expensive gear. You don’t have to be in shape to start, and it will continue to challenge you even if you are in shape. Yoga is timeless and can be done almost anywhere without a great cost or inconvenience.

For more reasons to practice yoga, visit a class in your area and learn first hand what the benefits of yoga can do for you and your body. Also, if you are elderly, here are some reasons you should consider yoga

To see our Top Yoga Mat Reviews, Click Here.

source http://www.healthy4lifeonline.com/top-10-benefits-of-yoga/