How Yoga Benefits You Physically and Mentally

Yoga is an ancient practice that helps you to bring together your body and mind. It is a combination of meditation, breathing exercises, and poses to yield some amazing physical and emotional benefits. If you are interested in incorporating yoga in your life, you are making the right choice. Here are some reasons how yoga benefits you physically and mentally.

It Helps Decrease Stress

Yoga is supposed to help alleviate stress and promote relaxation at the same time. Some studies have confirmed that doing yoga on a regular basis will lower the levels of cortisol, the main stress hormone, and help you feel happier.  It helps you immensely when you’re already in a state of emotional distress. Moreover, studies show that yoga can help lower levels of fatigue, anxiety, and depression.

It Lowers Anxiety

If you feel anxious all the time, you may want to try yoga to relax your nerves. Many people have used this practice to cope with feelings of anxiety, and it can help you achieve the same benefits. Many studies have also confirmed this benefit, as people with an anxiety disorder have managed to lower anxiety levels by practicing yoga twice weekly for a couple of months.

Experts are also of the view that it can help people suffering from the post-traumatic stress disorder. While it is not yet clear how yoga benefits people with anxiety disorders, it does work wonders mainly by promoting a feeling of staying in present and finding peace.

It Reduces Inflammation

When you find it hard to deal with chronic inflammation, you may benefit a great deal by practicing yoga. In healthy people, inflammation is an immune response, and that’s natural, but people with chronic inflammation may have a higher risk of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

Although experts are still looking for more evidence to determine how yoga helps lower inflammation, some studies have noticed positive effects in people who practice yoga along with moderate exercises.

It Helps Improve Cardiovascular Health

By practicing yoga, you can help improve your circulation system and that in turn can increase the supply of oxygenated blood to tissues. Your heart won’t have to exert that much of pressure and that, in turn, will help keep your ticker in the best condition. Many studies are available to support the idea of practicing yoga to reduce risk factors of cardiovascular disease. It means that yoga can indirectly improve your heart health by lowering anxiety, reducing stress, and controlling inflammation. It can also lower risk of heart attacks and stroke by lowering your blood pressure. If you’ve already developed heart disease, practicing yoga regularly may actually slow the progression of the disease.

It Improves Overall Quality of Life

Yoga has helped many individuals improve their quality of life when they rely on it as an adjunct therapy. Studies have found that seniors may notice an improvement in mobility as well as mood and fatigue after trying yoga on a regular basis.

Some studies have also found that yoga may enhance spiritual well-being, improve sleep quality, and reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety, which in turn improves your quality of life as well.

However, it is important to ensure that they perform it under the strict supervision of an experienced yoga instructor. A great idea is to opt for YOGA 2.0 because this beautiful yoga studio in River North, Chicago is equipped with amazing facilities and trained yoga instructors to help you in every situation.

It Helps Beat Depression

Dealing with a depression disorder is never going to be easy, but practicing yoga may help, as it is known to create an anti-depressant effect. By directly lowering the cortisol levels, yoga can have an impact on the neurotransmitters associated with depression, including serotonin. There is some evidence suggesting that Sudarshan Kriya, which is a special type of yoga focusing more on rhythmic breathing can help reduce depression in alcoholics. To get better results, you may want to combine yoga with other traditional methods of treatments for clinical depression.

It Helps Alleviate Chronic Pain

Millions of people have no clue how to deal with their chronic pain, which could be the result of arthritis or other injuries. More and more people are now turning towards yoga to make chronic pain more manageable.  When done correctly, under the supervision of a trained practitioner, yoga can improve physical function in patients dealing with osteoarthritis.

It Improves Sleep Quality

Your body repairs itself during sleep, and if you are not getting a full night’s sleep regularly, you increase your chances of developing anxiety, depression, stress, and other disorders. Preliminary evidence suggests that yoga can help improve sleep quality and lower risks of problems like hypertension, obesity, etc. In fact, some studies have found that people struggling with lymphoma may notice decreased sleep disturbances after incorporation yoga into their lifestyle.  How it really helps is still unclear but some experts are of the view that it works by triggering the release of melatonin, a hormone responsible for maintaining a healthy sleep cycle.

It Improves Strength

If you’re a healthy person overall but want to improve strength, yoga may also offer great assistance. So many yoga poses are designed to boost strength in particular. In fact, hata and Iyengar, which are relatively less vigorous yoga styles, are capable of producing many endurance benefits.  To build upper-body strength, you can practice yoga poses, such as upward dog, downward dog, and the plank pose. The standing poses also prove beneficial when you want to build strength in quads, hamstrings, and abs. The chair pose is a great choice to increase strength in your lower back.

The Bottom Line

The fact of the matter is that so many studies are now backing yoga as an effective practice to reap several mental and physical benefits. The only thing to remember is that you can find so many so-called yoga experts online, but they don’t possess the knowledge to train you well. So, do your research before you put your money on a yoga studio to receive its potential benefits.