Yoga is a restorative tool for releasing stress that involves series of postures and controlled breathing exercises that help the brain to remain calm and promote body flexibility. Yoga, besides being a fun activity, plays a significant role in improving general health and wellness. Unlike aerobics, yoga is available for people of all ages and helps them improve their physical and mental health. Yoga can also be incorporated into patients’ schedules to help their brains and make their bodies flexible. Yoga is a meditation that helps build skills to manage stress and reduce negative emotions. Below are some ways yoga assists people to achieve and improve their health and wellness.
- It helps ease arthritis symptoms.
Arthritis is a disease caused by the swelling of one or more joints. The swelling and tenderness limit the movement of the patient. Yoga helps increase the flexibility, strength, and balance of such patients. Failure to move up and down should not discourage you from taking yoga classes, as easing arthritis is just among many of the benefits of doing yoga. There are unique yoga chairs that are used to create modifications for people with such difficulties. At first, you may encounter some challenges, but with time, you will get the hang of it and start witnessing the progress. As a beginner, you must listen to your body, realize your limitations, and start working from there. This is essential as some yoga poses require a lot of strength, flexibility, and balance that a beginner’s body cannot handle. A general application for patients with arthritis doing yoga is, if it hurts you, stop. With time, the body becomes more comfortable and enduring, and then you can increase the intensity of the poses.
- Yoga helps maintain and improve heart health.
A relaxed body and mind are critical factors to a healthy heart. Besides relaxing the body and mind, yoga also lowers blood pressure, cholesterol, and glucose levels. Yoga helps the body by reducing emotional stress causing the release of hormones like cortisol , which narrows the arteries, increasing the blood pressure. Yoga is also essential for people trying to quit smoking, among the most significant heart attack risk factors. Slow-paced yoga classes also help reduce the frequency of atrial fibrillation episodes in patients. Heart failure patients attending yoga also showed improvements in reducing blood level markers contributing to heart disease.
- It promotes better self-care.
Yoga is one of the most beneficial self-care activities as it works on both mental and physical self-care. As mentioned before, yoga helps increase body flexibility by loosening the stiff muscles and improving balance and strength. Hatha yoga is a type of yoga that specifically focuses on all the physical poses building up the body’s physical strength. Iyengar yoga improves balance by focusing on alignment, details, and precise movements. Kundalini yoga is another of yoga that focuses on improving core strength with fast-moving and vigorous postures and breathing exercises. On a mental level, restorative yoga helps wind down after a lengthy, exhausting, and draining day. This type of yoga mainly focuses on relaxation. As a type of meditation, yoga helps people gain a new perspective on how to approach stressful situations by creating skills to manage the stress and increase tolerance and patience. It also helps reduce negative emotions and focus on the present.
- It is an excellent exercise for pregnant women in all trimesters.
Prenatal yoga is a type of yoga that was tailored towards so-to-be moms to help work on their pelvis as they prepare for delivery. Since yoga is not a strength-draining exercise like going to the gym or running, it makes it easy for women to do physical activity without consuming a lot of strength. Prenatal yoga is considered one of the best exercises for pregnant women because of its core elements like relaxed breathing, pelvic floor work, comfortable position, and bonding with the growing baby. Yoga also helps them work on their mood brightening. Working with an experienced yoga teacher ensures that you get the most out of your yoga classes no matter which trimester you are in. This is essential because each trimester comes with different requirements, energy, and changes, which may pose a risk to the unborn child if neglected.
- It helps improve and restore your circadian rhythm.
A circadian rhythm is the sleep-wake cycle the body aligns with depending on your activities and environment. The body aligns itself when there is light, when there is darkness, and when you eat. The circadian rhythm is a clock in the body that tells you when to sleep and wake up. When it gets out of sync with the environment, you develop a circadian rhythm disorder, which makes it hard for you to rest, and some people develop insomnia. And this is where yoga comes in as a tool. Since yoga is a therapeutic and gentle exercise, it helps your mind release stress and relax, making it easier to sleep. Practicing yoga just before bed creates a new routine that your body adapts and restores the circadian rhythm, making it easy for you to fall asleep. You can try some of these yogas; uttanasana, bolasana, ardha uttanasana, savasana and viparita karasani.
- Yoga helps you join a supportive community.
By taking yoga classes, you join a community of people with the same objective as you. This gives you a sense of belonging and support, essential to maintaining mental and emotional well-being. This is beneficial in creating a relationship with the rest of the community members and neighbors. This helps you improve your social self-care by meeting new people, interacting with them, developing relationships, and being in a setting where many people motivate you to keep going and achieve your goals just like others. Working as a team is also more efficient in ensuring you are regular in your routine compared to when you are working alone. You also learn and acquire new skills from different people and exchange your cultures.
In conclusion, yoga is a self-care activity that acts as a tool to improve our physical and emotional health. Start your yoga classes today and experience the calmness of relaxing the brain, getting rid of stiff joints, and reliving your steam.