Although it has been around for thousands of years, yoga has only been practiced in the Western world for a few decades. Modern medicine is proving that it has the health benefits that traditional yogis and ancient texts have always claimed. These are just some of the benefits you can expect to receive from regular yoga workouts:
Flexibility: Holding a series of yoga poses in a controlled and methodical manner really exercises the muscles. The result is that your muscles lengthen and become more flexible. While holding a pose, you are prompted to breathe, causing you to focus on your breathing. As a result, your muscles work harder to maintain the pose while your attention is elsewhere.
Strength: The act of holding your body in an unnatural position or pose causes your muscles to work in ways they are unfamiliar with. This is the very essence of strength training: working your muscles harder and in different ways, causing them to tear. It is when they heal from this tear that they become stronger. Yoga achieves this strengthening of the muscles without the use of weights, using only gravity and one’s own body weight as resistance.
Less stress: Yoga is very much a discipline that combines the body and the spirit. You cannot work the body without also exercising the interior, the spirit. Yoga participants report that they experience or perceive much less stress in their lives after participating in yoga classes. The act of coordinating controlled body movements with controlled breathing integrates the body and the spirit, causing a union of the two that promotes calm and inner peace, two enemies of stress.
Improved mood: Participants in yoga classes report a much better outlook on life in general. Some participants have experienced an improved mood that they liked from the effect of an antidepressant. Yoga cleanses the mind and body of negative and unhealthy thoughts. The concentration is on fluid movement, accompanied by controlled breathing.
Pain relief: Studies have shown that regular yoga exercises help relieve chronic pain, especially pain associated with fibromyalgia. Subjects showed decreased pain perception, along with an increased desire to participate in activities of daily living. They also reported an improvement in their ability to cope with setbacks, especially those related to their illness. Yoga workouts show promise in treating other types of chronic pain, although more study is needed.
Better sleep: There is no doubt about it, doing yoga exercises regularly helps you sleep better. Studies have shown that participants experienced better sleep quality, the ability to fall asleep faster, and sleep longer once they fell asleep. The results were similar to those obtained with the use of sleep-inducing medications, which shows promise in the management of sleep-related disorders without the use of medications.