Yoga and health benefits of a regular practice transcend the usual ideas that limit yoga to something that concerns only flexibility. Yoga will not only improve and help alleviate a wide range of physical problems, such as muscle tightness and a limited range of motions, but it also provides excellent accompaniment or total substitution for regular exercise, especially for people who are too busy to go to a gym. Yoga helps to tone the muscles, increases flexibility and range of motion, allows better lung capacity through good breathing, and will improve your balance, both physically and mentally.
Although yoga in the West is associated with flexibility, it also helps develop strength, which is vital for women. Women may be more flexible than men due to the larger and denser muscles of men, but women need to follow some form of regular strengthening to maintain muscle tone and ward off Osteoporosis. Yoga, although it is a form of unconventional exercise, has become known for countless benefits, including the benefit of massaging and compressing the internal organs and allowing better blood circulation. The health benefits of yoga also prove to be extremely beneficial during pregnancy. Yoga helps with labor and childbirth and helps ensure that new moms get in shape quickly.
Regular practice of yoga nurtures a discipline in its followers which develops by rising regularly in the morning for practice and routinely showing up for the yoga class. By practicing, yoga practitioners become disciplined at a subtle and inner level. This discipline comes from focused breathing, controlling and holding the physical postures, and through an ongoing meditation practice. Getting fitness-savvy through yoga at a subconscious level, is a unique experience unlike any other, one that you won’t get at a gymnasium or fitness club.
When you begin to feel the need for yoga, you are probably developing a higher level of consciousness and the connection of mind and body becomes apparent. Quite often, we feel disconnected within our own bodies. When we go through our yoga poses we can feel resistance points but maintaining certain beneficial yoga postures and breathing in this rigidity will allow you to develop mental strength as well as physical resilience.
The health benefits of yoga are not limited to our body and the ability to maintain physical postures. We create a calm confidence in our abilities that does not get held back by the limitations we sometimes develop subconsciously. The regular practice of yoga helps us to connect to what is referred to in yoga as our Dharma or our purpose in life. As we develop physical strength, we also develop an inner strength that brings us the courage to follow our purpose in life.
Yoga and health benefits are not only to achieve a relaxed state of mind or to lose extra weight. Yoga helps us discover the divine being within ourselves.
