These unconscious habits can lead to chronic tension, muscle fatigue, and soreness in the wrists, arms, shoulders, neck, and face, which can increase stress and worsen your mood. As you practice yoga, you begin to notice where you hold tension: It might be in your tongue, your eyes, or the muscles of your face and neck. If you simply tune in, you may be able to release some tension in the tongue and eyes. With bigger muscles like the quadriceps, trapezius, and buttocks, it may take years of practice to learn how to relax them.
Stimulation is good, but too much of it taxes the nervous system. Yoga can provide relief from the hustle and bustle of modern life. Restorative asana, yoga nidra a form of guided relaxation , Savasana, pranayama, and meditation encourage pratyahara , a turning inward of the senses, which provides downtime for the nervous system.
Sleep is one of the key benefits of yoga that nearly every practitioner can experience no matter what their skill level. Asana and pranayama probably improve immune function, but, so far, meditation has the strongest scientific support in this area. It appears to have a beneficial effect on the functioning of the immune system, boosting it when needed for example, raising antibody levels in response to a vaccine and lowering it when needed for instance, mitigating an inappropriately aggressive immune function in an autoimmune disease like psoriasis.
Yogis tend to take fewer breaths of greater volume, which is both calming and more efficient. After one month, their average respiratory rate decreased from Meanwhile, their exercise capacity increased significantly, as did the oxygen saturation of their blood. In addition, yoga has been shown to improve various measures of lung function , including the maximum volume of the breath and the efficiency of the exhalation.
Ulcers, irritable bowel syndrome, constipation—all of these can be exacerbated by stress. Yoga, like any physical exercise, can ease constipation—and theoretically lower the risk of colon cancer—because moving the body facilitates more rapid transport of food and waste products through the bowels.
And, although it has not been studied scientifically, yogis suspect that twisting poses may be beneficial in getting waste to move through the system. See also: 8 Yoga Poses for Better Digestion. In other words, it slows down the mental loops of frustration, regret, anger, fear, and desire that can cause stress. Many of us suffer from chronic low self-esteem. If you handle this negatively—take drugs, overeat, work too hard, sleep around—you may pay the price in poorer health physically, mentally, and spiritually.
If you practice regularly with an intention of self-examination and betterment—not just as a substitute for an aerobics class—you can access a different side of yourself. Yoga can ease your pain. According to several studies, asana, meditation, or a combination of the two, reduced pain in people with arthritis, back pain, fibromyalgia, carpal tunnel syndrome, and other chronic conditions. Yoga can help you make changes in your life.
In fact, that might be its greatest strength. The tapas you develop can be extended to the rest of your life to overcome inertia and change dysfunctional habits. You may find that without making a particular effort to change things, you start to eat better, exercise more, or finally quit smoking after years of failed attempts. Good yoga teachers can do wonders for your health. Exceptional ones do more than guide you through the postures.
They can adjust your posture, gauge when you should go deeper in poses or back off, deliver hard truths with compassion, help you relax, and enhance and personalize your practice. A respectful relationship with a teacher goes a long way toward promoting your health.
Studies of people with asthma, high blood pressure, Type II diabetes, and obsessive-compulsive disorder have shown that yoga helped them lower their dosage of medications and sometimes get off them entirely. The benefits of taking fewer drugs? Always consult your doctor before stopping or altering any prescribed medications.
Yoga and meditation build awareness. And the more aware you are, the easier it is to break free of destructive emotions like anger. Studies suggest that chronic anger and hostility are as strongly linked to heart attacks as are smoking, diabetes, and elevated cholesterol. Yoga appears to reduce anger by increasing feelings of compassion and interconnection and by calming the nervous system and the mind.
It also increases your ability to step back from the drama of your own life, to remain steady in the face of bad news or unsettling events. Love may not conquer all, but it certainly can aid in healing. Cultivating the emotional support of friends, family, and community has been demonstrated repeatedly to improve health and healing. A regular yoga practice helps develop friendliness, compassion, and greater equanimity.
Consider chanting. It tends to prolong exhalation, which shifts the balance toward the parasympathetic nervous system. When done in a group, chanting can be a particularly powerful physical and emotional experience. See also: The Sound of Om. Several studies have found that guided imagery reduced postoperative pain, decreased the frequency of headaches, and improved the quality of life for people with cancer and HIV.
Kriyas, or cleansing practices, are another element of yoga. They include everything from rapid breathing exercises to elaborate internal cleansing of the intestines.
Jala neti , which entails a gentle lavage of the nasal passages with salt water, removes pollen and viruses from the nose, keeps mucus from building up, and helps drains the sinuses. We all find ways to deal with stress. If you want to be more James Bond than Charlie Sheen, get yourself on the mat. Most series of yoga asanas physical postures include one or more spinal twists to loosen the many joints that make up your spine.
This can improve your tennis game and golf swing, as well as promote detoxification and good digestion. Gentle twists help to wring the sponge out and purge toxins. Yoga uses the weight of your own body to build mass and strength.
Think about how many clunky free weights it takes to bench press your bodyweight — lbs. The results are well-worked muscle groups, which get stronger with each class. This basic ability to scan and assess yourself as you practice will help reduce injuries when running or playing other sports. Plus, flexible, well-stretched yoga muscles will heal and recover more quickly after working out or getting strained. One way to improve your performance in the bedroom is to translate all those relaxation and breathing techniques from yoga class into better, longer sex.
The left hemisphere is also linked to the parasympathetic nervous system , the "rest and digest" network responsible for relaxation. This "neuroprotective" effect of yoga has also been found in brain imaging studies of people who meditate. In some regions of the brain, year-old meditators were found to have the gray matter volume of year-olds.
These changes to the brain can occur within a few months. One study found brain changes after only eight weeks of a mindfulness-based stress reduction program. The regions of the brain responsible for learning, memory, cognition and emotional regulation showed growth. In contrast, the areas of the brain responsible for fear, anxiety, and stress shrank. But the truth is that the practice of yoga is not about changing the brain, body, headstands, or even about gaining greater happiness and joy.
If it were, it'd be just like taking a spinning class or doing a set of lunges at the gym. Yoga aims toward transcendence of all those things. In a culture in which we rush from one day to the next, constantly trying to change our health, our body, or our emotions, or to plan our future, yoga opens up the possibility of connecting to what we already have -- to who we already are.
When people tell me that they want to try yoga but don't because they aren't "flexible enough," I tell them yoga isn't about attaining the perfect pose. Use as many blocks as you need. Modify the pose to feel comfortable in your own body. It's not about being "good enough" or "right": Yoga is about removing any judgment and letting us be present to who we are now. As Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron explains:. It's about befriending who we are already.
The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are.
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