Yoga can enhance your physical and emotional well-being by reducing stress and strengthening your muscles. Sam Graham, a yoga instructor, delves into the study to present the advantages of regular yoga practice that are supported by science.
Yoga practitioners report feeling better and having a higher chance of forming health behaviors. Because of its many health benefits, yoga has even been acknowledged by medical professionals as an effective supplemental treatment.
These are seven advantages of yoga that have been demonstrated by numerous international researchers.
- Yoga can improve your balance and flexibility.
Yoga can improve beneficial if you wish to increase your range of motion. The flexibility and balance of American collegiate players were considerably enhanced by ten weeks of biweekly yoga sessions.
However, these advantages are not limited to the young and physically fit; a University of Edinburgh study discovered that yoga also improved senior persons.
Enhancing your flexibility and balance with exercises like yoga is crucial for preventing falls and strained muscles as you age because the bones deteriorate and aches and pains may become more frequent. - Yoga can help you get stronger.
Many of the postures, like warrior pose and maintaining a chair stance, are isometric workouts, meaning you work the muscles without moving. Yoga is a terrific technique to strengthen your muscles, whether you want to tone them up or replenish their strength.
Adults from Hong Kong showed improvements in their muscular strength and endurance after 12 weeks of hatha yoga.
Hatha yoga can help prevent age-related muscular degradation, according to a study conducted on Indian Air Force members of various ages. - Yoga can improve your quality of sleep.
If you have trouble sleeping, yoga might be the solution. In one research of women with sleep issues, yoga helped them fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer.
Yoga, which incorporates physical postures, breathing techniques, and meditation, has been demonstrated to help older adults fall asleep more quickly, stay asleep longer, and feel more relaxed. As you age, your sleep can become more disturbed.
According to a different study, yoga nidra, a type of lying-down meditation in which the goal is to achieve a profound state of consciousness, can be very beneficial for treating chronic insomnia. - Yoga is beneficial for heart health.
Breathing exercises, or pranayama, have been shown to enhance a number of body systems; slowing down breathing significantly benefited the cardiovascular system.
Additionally, yoga can help with circulation; those in their 40s who had been doing it for five years had lower blood pressure and a slower pulse rate than those who hadn’t.
When paired with dietary modifications and stress reduction, yoga may even lower cholesterol and halt the progression of hear diseases. - Yoga helps reduce joint discomfort and strengthen bones.
According to a study, practicing yoga for just 12 minutes a day can boost bone mineral density in the femur, hips, and spine, potentially reversing the bone loss linked to osteoporosis.
According to a study, following 16 weeks of yoga therapy, 9 out of 10 rheumatoid arthritis patients noticed improvements in their joint discomfort.
In a similar vein, a 12-week yoga program that included postures, movement, and breathing methods reduced the severity of chronic lower back pain in military veterans.
For many who have lower back discomfort, yoga might even be just as beneficial as conventional physical treatment. - Yoga helps fight sadness, anxiety, and stress.
Yoga is a source of comfort for many persons with mental health concerns. Regular yoga practitioners have lower levels of cortisol, one of the main stress chemicals, according to one study.
After a 10-day yoga intervention that included asana, pranayama, meditation, and yoga philosophy, participants’ anxiety ratings were shown to have dramatically decreased in another study.
Additionally, a meta-analysis showed that yoga therapies, which included both pranayama and asana, were successful in lowering depression.
The primary treatment for stress, anxiety, and depression is cognitive behavioral therapy; but, how does yoga fit into this ?
Although it wasn’t as successful as CBT, it was shown that 12 weeks of kundalini yoga which includes poses, breathing techniques, and meditation improved anxiety symptoms more than stress education, indicating that yoga may be used in addition to CBT. - Yoga has been shown to enhance mood and focus.
Yoga may help you focus if you have trouble staying focused. When compared to aerobic exercise or baseline conditions, a yoga session improved participants’ accuracy and reduced their reaction times in a study involving college aged individuals.
And its undeniable that yoga can improve your mood. Hatha yoga and meditation considerably enhanced mood after a session, according to a study conducted on somewhat experienced hatha yoga practitioners.
SOURCE: NUFFIELD HEALTH
