Reading Time: 4 minutes 6 Ways Yoga Helps To Boost Your Health and Wellness
This is a collaborative post by Ellie Jo with the ways that yoga helps health and wellness.
Yoga is an ancient practice that has become popular the world over. It incorporates a range of exercises, which focus on breathing, mindful poses, and meditation. All of these activities help to alleviate stress and boost relaxation. So its no wonder yoga is known to help improve overall health and wellbeing.
Yoga is a beautiful practice that is suitable for people of all abilities and ages. If you’re considering how it could help benefit your physical and mental health, take a look at these key areas that yoga can help improve.
6 Ways Yoga Helps To Boost Your Health and Wellness
Managing stress and anxiety levels
One of the top reasons that people try yoga is to help alleviate high stress levels. Modern lifestyles place a lot of pressure on us in both family life and work life, so it’s essential to take a step back and revaluate your self-care routine. By practicing yoga regularly, studies have shown that people experienced lower levels of stress and anxiety. It’s also a great way to help you clear your mind and think about stressful situations in a more logical mind frame. By freeing yourself of everyday pressures, you will start to notice a difference in general health and wellbeing on a broader scale.
It could help improve your heart health
Having a healthy heart is essential for a long and comfortable life; however, with the range of temptations in everyday diets, there are several things that could lead to long-term health problems. The practice of yoga can help to get the blood pumping, which in turn encourages the transit of essential nutrients around your body. Stress also plays a significant part in heart health, and as mentioned previously, yoga helps to reduce stress levels, which might decrease long-term problems such as heart disease.
Reducing chronic pain
Chronic pain seems to be more common due to being less mobile during the day. Many people are tied to their desks and rarely get out even to stretch their legs. This lack of exercise or mobility in everyday lifestyles can lead to chronic pain or long recovery times when you have an injury. Practicing yoga is said to help reduce well-known pain issues we experience, such as carpal tunnel syndrome.
Improves balance and flexibility
Another benefit of yoga is how it helps to improve your balance and flexibility. Studies have shown that specific poses can help to target different muscles that build on your strength and performance over time. As you mature, it could also help keep you flexible and even just taking to the mat for 15-30 minutes a day have significant benefits for mind, body, and soul.
Promoting better sleep
It’s surprising just how many people don’t get enough quality sleep each day. With the stresses of daily routines, pressures at work and family commitments, everything can weigh on your mind, which in turn could affect sleep patterns. Technology plays a big part too, as we’re always looking at screens whether that’s a computer or mobile phone. If you struggle to get forty winks each night, yoga could help. A part of the practice helps to completely clear your mind and focus on each pose and your breathing. By doing this, you are allowing yourself to release the stresses and worries of the day, which could help you sleep more soundly.
Nourishing your body effectively
Once you’ve started incorporating yoga into your self-care routine, it’s important to learn about what can help nourish your body to improve its impact. Adapting your diet is an important step, but also understanding how your body uses the nutrients is also essential. Most people, when they’re trying to lose weight or improve health ask questions such as ‘is body fat good?’ or ‘what’s the fastest way to shift body fat?’ But in fact, you might be surprised that there are different types of body fat that help our body store energy, regulate body temperature and increase vitamin absorption. Visceral fat is what you need to think about when it comes to improving health, as excess amounts of it can escalate problems such as high blood cholesterol, diabetes, and heart disease.
There are several elements to how yoga practice could help you improve your health and wellbeing, both physically and mentally. If you’re just getting started, there are plenty of online resources to let you explore each pose and technique. Plus, if you’re looking for some pointers on how it could benefit you, there are lots of local classes that can help you get started on this new journey.
Rachel is an Austin blogger, educator, mom, wife, young breast cancer survivor writing about health, saving money, and living a happy life in Austin, Texas.
Rachel has written for HuffPost and Hometalk and has been featured on KXAN, Studio 512, Fox 7 Austin, and CBS Austin.