Recently, life has been slowing down and allowing you more time to focus on yourself. As such you may be looking for new healthy habits to try.
You might be wondering “what is yoga therapy and how can it help me?” Yoga is a practice that can not only improve your strength and flexibility but also your peace of mind.
Keep reading to learn more about the health benefits of yoga.
1. Strengthens Your Muscles
Yoga uses a serious of postures and movements to focus on each area of your body. Each muscle in the body is engaged during the various poses which might activate muscles you don’t use regularly. This practice helps strengthen your entire body, from your fingers to your toes.
Stronger muscles help your body from developing conditions like arthritis and suffering from back pain. It can even help elderly people from falling due to better balance and increased muscle strength.
2. Improved Flexibility
Practicing yoga also helps improve your flexibility. This is an improvement from just focusing on lifting weights where you might increase your strength but not improve your flexibility.
During your first yoga class, you might not be able to touch your toes or sit up straight while sitting crisscrossed. After a few sessions, you will begin to notice a loosening of your muscles and ligaments and be able to achieve these poses easier. You will also notice that your various aches and pains begin to lessen.
If you have aches in your knees it can be due to tight hips causing improper alignment in your thighs and shinbones. Hamstrings that are tight will cause back pain by leading to a flattening of the lumbar spine. Back pain can also be caused by having poor posture from the inflexibility of muscles and connective tissue such as ligaments and fascia.
Are you still wondering “what is yoga therapy going to do for me?” Improved flexibility and creating stronger muscles are just the beginning.
3. Prevents Degeneration of Cartilage and Joints
Usually, in our general day to day life, we don’t put our joints through their full range of motion. This can lead to arthritis and disabilities in the joint because the cartilage needs to receive fresh nutrients by having the old fluids squeezed out and then fresh fluids soaked in.
By practicing yoga on a daily basis you are able to move your joints through their full range of motion and allow the cartilage to accept the fresh nutrients. If your joints are neglected in this manner, the cartilage can eventually wear out and expose the underlying bone. Your bones then begin to crush against each other without any cushion to ease them which causes pain and limited mobility.
4. Helps Your Posture
If you work at a desk all day on your computer or have a tendency to look down at your phone a lot then you have probably noticed a strain on your neck and upper back. Your head is heavy and when not balanced directly over your spine it puts a strain on those muscles that are used to support it. This forward position of your head and strain also leads to increased fatigue making you increasingly tired each day.
Yoga helps you retrain your posture and keep your head directly over your spine, with your back erect. After prolonged yoga training, your posture will begin to improve and resist the forward slump caused by leaning forward constantly. This will also relieve pain and avoid future degenerative arthritis in your spine.
5. Improves Blood Flow
Most exercises help you get your blood pumping but yoga specifically can help increase your circulation, especially in your hands and feet. Yoga places specific attention on raising awareness of your breathing and as a result, introduces more oxygen into your bloodstream making your cells function better as a result.
Yoga implements different poses that allow you to twist and invert your body. This helps move venous blood out of your internal organs and the freshly oxygenated blood to absorb in once the pose has been released.
Due to this improvement in blood circulation, practicing yoga is great for those suffering from swelling in their legs, decreases the risk of heart disease and strokes, and lessening the chance of blood clots.
6. Builds Happiness
Aside from the physical benefits of practicing yoga, it can also improve your mental well being. When you are feeling depressed or anxious, yoga can help increase your serotonin levels and decrease the enzyme that demotes your neurotransmitters, known as monoamine oxidase. When increasing your levels of activity and focus on meditation it helps change the activity in your brain which makes you happy.
Practicing yoga daily also helps give you a sense of accomplishment and an eagerness to continue to do so the next day. The increased activity levels release endorphins into your system which also boosts your happiness and increases your eagerness for more.
7. Creates a Healthier Lifestyle
Once you get up and get moving you start to burn calories and promote weight loss. The increase in physical activity will also help you choose healthier foods to eat because when you eat poorly it will make you feel sick after your daily practice.
Yoga also helps you address your eating habits on a deeper level and make you more conscientious about what you are digesting on a regular basis. With your new yoga practice creating a healthier lifestyle you may also find that you change your relationship with food on an emotional level.
What Is Yoga Therapy? Learn More Today!
After reading about what is yoga therapy and how it can affect you, hopefully, you will be excited to implement the practice into your daily life. Do yourself a favor and start building a happier and healthier lifestyle.
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