Why you should practice Yoga

Looking for ways on how you can improve your life quality? Yoga can be a healing process for people of all ages and all levels of experience by improving physical health and enhancing mood. Taking time out from your busy schedule and practicing yoga might be challenging sometimes but it’ll be a well-invested time for yourselves and the people around you. Even if you are a newbie in yoga, you’ll feel the benefits of the practice.

The ultimate aim for Yoga is to Unite, to Yoke. To unite into one integral whole; a healthy body, a strong mind and a calm spirit.

Physical benefits

Having a routine in practising yoga comes with many benefits for the physical health, correcting the body posture, flexing and strengthening the muscles over time and improving the health of the joints. Increasing the muscles’ strength and endurance and lubricating the joints may result in improving the ability to carry out daily tasks with ease, reducing inflammation and slowing down the rate of bone and muscle loss associated with ageing. Boosting the muscles’ and joints’ health can contribute to accelerating the process of recovering from an injury, preventing a future injury and easing some of the discomforts of tender and swollen joints relieving chronic pain. Incorporating Pranayama, breathing control techniques, within the yoga practice can also contribute to a healthier respiratory and circulatory system. Increasing the oxygen intake and deepening the breaths can result in a more oxygenated brain, heart, lungs and digestive organs enhancing their functions and reducing factors related to respiratory diseases such as sinus, chronic bronchitis, asthma, emphysema and allergies.

Mental benefits

Through yoga practice, many mental benefits can be achieved. Studies have shown that it can decrease the secretion of cortisol, the primary stress hormone. Lower levels of cortisol may result in alleviating the symptoms of stress, anxiety, fatigue and depression resulting in a better quality of sleep and inevitably to a better quality of living. Yoga has also been linked with building a better relationship with ourselves, developing self-care, self-trust and self-compassion. Becoming more confident, more centred and more peaceful, we become less reactive and more sympathetic. We learn to be kind with ourselves, to truly forgive, to honour imperfection, to embrace struggles, to accept failures, to surrender to the present moment and to enjoy what life has to offer to us!

As a final note, it’s important to remember that contentment comes from inside us and not from the external world. Make the yoga practice your daily ritual and nurture yourself with a healthy body, a strong mind and a calm spirit. Namaste!