What Yoga Can Do For You

As research continues to reveal yoga’s various health benefits, this centuries-old Eastern philosophy is starting to become a new fitness trend for workout enthusiasts. Whether partakers want to improve their physical condition or maintain toning and strength, there’s plenty of reasons to consider yoga as a healthy workout routine.

Aside from aesthetically attractive perks such as sculpted and toned muscles, regular practice can also provide health benefits such as lower blood pressure and improved pain tolerance. For chronic lower back pain, research has found that yoga reduces pain by an average of 30%. Additionally, studies on the correlation between yoga and heart disease have found that it can reduce high blood pressure, improve symptoms, enhance cardiac rehabilitation, and lower cardiovascular risk factors.

The three main focuses of yoga are exercise, breathing and meditation. Exercise keeps you strong and fit; breathing administers calmness and focus; while meditation clears your mind and wrestles stress. When combined, the physical and mental developments work to improve overall well-being and self-regulation.

Practicing yoga three sessions per week will not only help you get to sleep faster, but improve your quality of sleep. Research and expert speculation believes that regular practice helps people to better relax, in return making it easier to doze off. Deeper sleep improves overall health by allowing our brain to process ours memories, stress, and emotions easier and also increases our next day energy levels.

Other select side effects of yoga have been known to include improved mood and anxiety, improved metabolism, decreased depression, less fatigue, improved anxiety control and a reduction in medication dependency. Most of these effects come from a rise in levels of GABA, a chemical in the brain that at low levels is linked to depression.

Yoga encourages deeper mind-body awareness and is growing as a modern method to reducing stress and coping with daily responsibilities. We believe everyone should give yoga a try and we challenge you to explore the internal and external benefits it can provide.