The hustle and bustle of our daily lives and activities sure won’t leave us with any other choice than STRESS.
The word yoga isn’t unfamiliar anymore. It is a healthy practice that uses mind, relaxation and breathing techniques. It helps to reduce stress and improve general well-being.
Again, it builds the mental, physical and spiritual health. No doubt, it has been performed many years though it recently became popular. It spread from and across Asia, it’s continent of origin to other places.
Yoga practices come lots of benefits, not just does it help in relieving stress, but also helps in building muscle strength, easing back pain and lower blood pressure. Among other benefits are encouraging good posture and lowers heart rate.
Yoga and Stress
Relaxes the muscles and body
Yoga comes with a relaxation technique that helps not just to calm the body but also the mind.
And this has been one of the reasons it can benefit those who are stressed out from work, as well as other daily activities.
It serves as an antidote for general mood enhancement, and this directly eliminates anxiety and improves stress.
Improves clarity of mind
Yoga provides clarity of mind. It offers inner peace that we couldn’t get throughout our daily activities.
Most times, we are stressed out and may have various unexpected challenges during the course of the day, and that can make us anxious.
The meditation technique offered by yoga tends to solve this issue, hence, it relieves stress by giving peace that comes from within.
Eases stress through breathing
Stress is non-avoidable, but when we have it, we should tackle it effectively. Breathing exercise is one of the techniques of yoga. Factually, it helps in keeping the neck, back, and shoulder calm by easing the built-up stress.
When we breathe in constantly and deeply, we indirectly allow oxygen to the brain, this signals the body to respond to stress and anxiety through relaxation.
Relieves stress through stretching
Some types of yoga practices such as Hatha yoga encourages stretching. This is not just effective in reducing stress but also stops back pain.
When it comes to tackling stress, stretching is a sure way to go. It can be done right in the office, walkways, and within daily activities. In fact, it can be done anywhere and anytime as it possesses a kind of quick soothing relief to the stiff nerves.
There are some quick stretching exercises that can be done for the back, neck, and legs. All of which help in stress reduction by straightening up the muscles.
Yoga and General Well Being
As earlier said, yoga isn’t just a practice that helps to reduce stress, however, it has some positive impacts on the overall health and wellbeing which can be seen below.
Improves mental health
One of the aspects of life that yoga focuses on is mental health. It has been found that yoga can be of great benefit to help in the management of Schizophrenia.
This mental condition cannot be cured, but it can be managed with some treatments that can help to improve it. The health disorder is said to affect the thinking ability, feeling, and behavior.
And with the practice of yoga, it has been reported by people who suffer from this disorder got a feeling of inner peace, contentment and a feeling of general wellbeing.
Improves posture
Bad posture brings about discomfort such as those from back pain. However, the practice of yoga can offer soothing relief as it encourages good posture.
It can help to eliminate other issues like poor blood circulation and digestion, the curvature of the spine, stiff nerves, upper body pains, etc. that bad posture can cause.
Reduces blood pressure
High blood pressure has been one of the risk factors of chronic kidney diseases, strokes, heart problems and many more.
Some recent studies have shown that yoga can help to reduce high blood pressure, thereby eliminating the risks linked with it.
It works by slowing down the heart rate while making the mind and the muscles to deeply relax.
Provides better sleep
Staying refreshed every morning has such a sweet and nice feeling. But is that always the case every time? No.
In some cases, most people don’t feel that way, rather they look weak or as if they were hit in a boxing ring, but it is as a result of insufficient sleep (insomnia).
Inadequately sleep comes with its own risk, but practices like yoga can help combat this situation. And so, it provides a better sleep by reducing the underlying causes of poor sleep.
Improves the immune system
Do you know that yoga can help to improve the immune system? Oh Yes, it can. It does so by allowing an easy flow of oxygen to the vital organs.
And also through its breathing technique “makes the respiratory system including the lungs to function to the fullest.
Improves memory
One of the techniques in yoga is “focus” using the mind. This helps to keep the mind concentrated on an object of focus thereby avoiding distractions that might arise from the environment.
The mindfulness meditation as it can be also called improves forgetfulness, loss of memory as well as other memory-related conditions.
It does this through the act of mind awareness and boosts the circulation of blood in the brain.
Some types of yoga can help boost memory better such as the lotus pose, mountain pose, plow pose, bridge pose and more. It doesn’t only help with memory but also improves overall brain health.
Helps to fight disease
The healing power of yoga should not be underestimated. Yoga may not be able to fight the disease itself, but it sure will help in tackling the factors that cause such diseases.
For example, it can help to fight heart disease by reducing blood pressure, ameliorate cardiovascular health and other factors that can cause it.
Improves strength
Yoga helps to build the body muscles and nerves, and in turn, leads to muscle strength improvement.
This can help the body from suffering from rheumatoid arthritis or other related health conditions caused by weak muscles.
Provides balance
The practice of yoga makes the body to understand how it can conveniently balance itself and the mind. One of the benefits of this practice is that it enables one to be coordinated.
In some instances, coordination and balance may mean quite different things, but in this case, they are very important.
They help in controlling the movement of the body, as both are being controlled by the cerebellum which forms part of the brain.
Improves flexibility
Many types of yoga come with different styles, which include bending, stretching, twisting and so on. Flexibility is very important as it is one of the main factors of physical fitness.
It helps to improve joint health thereby preventing pains and aches such as back and neck pain, sports injuries and many more.
Encourages weight loss
As we all know, weight loss and staying fit does improve the general well-being of an individual which includes the physical state, mental state, and emotional state.
Practicing yoga sure helps in weight loss, builds muscle tone, burn abdominal fats and also strengthen the muscles.
There are some kinds of yoga poses that will work faster and better than the other in terms of weight loss, so if you want to practice at home just get professional advice on which one to engage in.
Is yoga safe for everyone?
The practice of yoga is considerably safe; it can be practiced by anyone though some health risk factors can prevent some people from such practice unless they have been certified okay by their doctor to practice it which may come with strict supervision.
Some of the health factors that can make it unsafe to practice yoga include those
- Suffering from Glaucoma and other related serious eye conditions
- Prone to Blood Clot
- Suffering from Osteoporosis ( a serious bone condition)
- With blood pressure issues
- Pregnancy as some yoga poses are not suitable in this case
- With herniated disc
Conclusion
It wouldn’t be a lie or an over-exaggeration if we say that yoga’s healing power is second to none. Yoga doesn’t just help to improve our mental conditions but spread across our emotional, physical state and general wellbeing like wild-fire.