Benefits of a Yoga Practice
The choice to begin a yoga practice is often to find a solution to a specific area of your life. It may be to help with a situation or struggle. Some areas of life need support. There is a multitude of benefits to yoga. It helps to support you in your daily life.
You don't need to try yoga specifically to help with an issue. You don't need a reason. You can try it for the simple reason of trying something new. To explore being more in tune with yourself. But over time, you'll find there are many benefits when practicing yoga regularly.
I was a dancer, and at seventeen, I just-so-happened to walk by a new yoga studio on my way to dance class. I thought it could be something to help support dance. Little did I know it has a myriad of other benefits than just the physical. I was fostering a healthy relationship with myself. I started to feel more mental clarity. I noticed stress becoming more manageable and much more.
Because of the well-rounded support yoga brings to my life, it has become a lifelong practice and what I feel called to do for work: To help others find the gifts of yoga. I have been practicing yoga for half of my life, and I see yoga being something I will practice always.
Regardless if you come to yoga to find a solution to something, or if you stumble upon it as I did, the benefits are immense. Here are my favorite reasons why starting a yoga practice will enrich your life and the lives of those around you.
Often, you don't only receive one benefit of yoga. You may start for one reason or another and notice a cross-over of others. They all work together. Yoga is connecting your mind, body, and heart(hello emotions :))
Maintain Flexibility, Mobility, and Physical Comfort: I often make the analogy to think of your body like a rubber band. You grab a rubber band you've not used for a long time. It is now brittle, and when you try to use it, it breaks. Your aging body is very much the same. The older you get, the less movement you do, and the tighter your muscles get. As we age, we become more susceptible to injuries, arthritis, and lack of comfort and mobility. When you consistently move your body in dynamic ways, you have a greater likelihood of being more comfortable in your mobile body. Your muscles get used, you build strength and openness. Your joints are supple and lubricated. You have an overall better range of motion.
Create Balance. For most, balance is a challenge. It too becomes more challenging as you age. As I said before, strength, flexibility, and mobility play into finding physical balance. It also comes back to the use-it-or-lose-it mentality. The less we practice balance, the less balance we have. Not only does yoga help you find balance physically, you have the opportunity to find balance in many aspects of your life. Find the balance between work and fun. Between healthy and indulgent. Between happy and sad.
Happy Mind: As you practice yoga regularly, you release endorphins. These endorphins help to promote a happy mind.
Stress and Anxiety Relief: Racing heart, quick breath, shaky body, unsettled mind; This is something we all face at times. When you are stressed, you secrete hormones like Adrenaline and Cortisol. These hormones stimulate your fight-or-flight response(the feeling that once protected us from things like running from predators) that we often feel in daily life. Stress not only negatively affects your mind but your body too. Cortisol is proven to negatively affect maintaining a healthy weight, increase blood pressure, weaken your immune system, and more. With stressors in everyday life, these hormones are more prevalent and can feel like they rule your life. Practicing yoga and mindful breathing(a part of yoga) allows you to slow down and teaches you invaluable tools to reduce the secretion of these hormones. You learn to explore and refine how you respond to the stressors in your life. In doing so, you begin to move from fight or flight response to the rest and digest response. Yoga helps lower blood pressure, strengthen your immune system, get better sleep, and dealing with stress when it comes your way.
Better sleep: Yoga and mindful breathing help make better sleep your reality. When you move your body, you produce lots of beneficial hormones. One being melatonin. The hormone melatonin helps regulate your sleep cycle, making it easier to sleep more soundly. Breath control can also help you to sleep better. Some say if you practice a 4-7-8 count breath before bed, you can fall asleep fast. The 4-7-8 breath is inhaling for a slow count of four, holding your breath for seven, and exhaling for a count of eight. I use this on nights I struggle to sleep, and more often than not, it works. Try it for 3 minutes as you lay in bed and see what happens.
Body Awareness: You live in your body but are you aware of it? Do you know about your anatomy? Do you bump into things because you don't know about being spatially aware? Along the yoga journey, you learn about the body that gets you to all the things you want and need to do. Body awareness helps you understand how you can help yourself and be less reliant on others.
Yoga supports and fosters the connection to ourselves. The more consistent your practice, the more benefits you get from it.
To experience these benefits and more, join me in online yoga classes. I'm always here to help you feel your best.