What Are The Health Benefits of Yoga? 6 Ways To Feel Better Physically and Mentally

Ever wondered about the health benefits of yoga?

Despite what some are calling just another fitness craze, Yoga has stood the test of time and for good reason.

The health benefits of Yoga, both physically and mentally last well beyond your session on the mat and provide enormous benefits to your overall health and wellbeing.

Regular yoga practice provides a well-balanced foundation for an overall healthy lifestyle through improved strength, awareness and respect for your body and mind. Let’s breakdown the top physical and mental health benefits of incorporating consistent yoga practice into your exercise regime.

Key Physical health benefits of yoga

Increased Strength and Flexibility

Consistent yoga practice is an excellent way to develop lean muscle mass and improve your overall health. Providing a well-rounded regime, targeting your core, arms, legs and glutes using your body weight, yoga helps develop strength and flexibility simultaneously.

The range of poses within yoga work to increase flexibility as well as extending the range of motion within your joints.

This increased range of motion helps to promote proper circulation as well as significantly decreases your chance of injury and minimises the effects of chronic pain. In particular, yoga helps to loosen your hamstrings which can help to alleviate back pain.

As a low impact exercise, regular yoga also greatly improves your balance through mindful movements. Better balanced coupled with increased flexibility is the best way to protect against injury and to protect your spine.

Increasing your overall strength and flexibility will also improve your overall endurance and performance.

Improved Cardiovascular and Circulatory Health

The gentle stretching poses incorporated in yoga significantly improve both your cardiovascular and circulatory health. Gentle stretching allows your muscles to be more susceptible to insulin allowing better control of blood sugar which can help with weight management as well as overall health. With improved circulation, oxygen is better transported throughout the body significantly improving your athletic performance as well as maintaining healthy organs, skin and brain. Yoga helps to lower blood pressure, improve lung capacity as well as lower your resting heart rate, contributing to improving cardiovascular health and minimise the risk of heart disease.

Better Quality Sleep

The health benefits of high quality sleep are very well known, but did you know regular yoga practice can improve your quality of sleep. Meditation and breathing exercises developed through regular yoga practice, can significantly improve the quality of sleep by reducing anxiety, and stress as well as encouraging mindfulness.

A good night’s sleep not only provides physical health benefits as your body recovers quicker and can perform better, but also provide numerous mental health benefits from reduce anxiety, better focus and concentration as well as improving your overall mental wellbeing.

Beyond the physical benefits, regular yoga practice can significantly improve your mental wellbeing long after you’ve step off the mat.

Key Mental health benefits of Yoga

Stress Reliever

Meditative practices such as yoga are highly effective at helping to relieve stress and better manage anxiety.

The breathing and mediation aspects help to regulate the stress response system by decreasing the release of cortisol (the primary stress hormone).

Cultivating these breathing and meditation techniques help to rewire the neural pathways in our brain, better equipping us to manage stress and anxiety.

A mixture of active and passive poses throughout your yoga practice and learning to feel at ease throughout each pose translates to better manage anxiety and the effects of adrenaline on your body.

Improved Concentration and Mental Clarity

Cultivating mindfulness within your life has huge mental health benefits, but also physical benefits too. Yoga promotes mindfulness movement creating a greater awareness and respect of your body.

This mindfulness can significantly improve your concertation and mental clarity, which can help to relieve chronic stress and pain, improve your focus as well as centre your attention.

This mindfulness encouraged by regular yoga practice can also help to lower blood pressure as well as manage weight loss, through mindful eating and a more balanced metabolism.

Increase in Serotonin

Studies show exercise increases the production and release of serotonin which regulates anxiety, happiness and your mood.

The poses, breathing techniques and meditation associated with regular yoga practice help to increase serotonin levels as well as reduce cortisol levels. Higher levels of serotonin can help to fight depression with improved sleep, mental clarity, while the lower cortisol levels allow for better management of stress and anxiety.

Focusing on breathing and meditation throughout yoga poses, helps to rewrite neural pathways in your brain about when to invoke your automatic stress response and therefore encourage a more balanced overall mental wellbeing.

Yoga provides an excellent basis for maintaining a healthy mind and body. These health benefits are most effective when yoga is incorporated regularly into your exercise regime, as meditation and breathing habits develop over time.

There are a number of different style of yoga, some of which are more strenuous than others and depending on your practice some styles may be better for mental wellbeing while others will focus on strength and flexibility.

Incorporating regular yoga will renew and strengthen your respect and awareness of your health, both mentally and physically and help you get the best from yourself.

Make it your mission to do one good thing for your health today!