The Health Benefits of Yoga
Research Shows How Yoga Affects Your Thoughts, Body & Soul
Yoga can improve physical health & psychological disorders. The health benefits of yoga include improved body image, less depression & weight loss.
Yoga enhances the mind-body connection, which can improve your mood and physical health - and even lighten various psychological disorders. Improved depression, body image struggles, eating disorders, and even physical problems such as back pain and asthma are some of the health benefits of yoga practice and meditation.
The health benefits of yoga are initiated because you're focusing on inner peace. Self-realization, relaxation, focus, and harmony are the cornerstones of yoga. Research shows that the health benefits of yoga include improvements of all sorts of ailments, from back pain to fatigue.
The health benefits of yoga: depression
Yoga can lift your mood and disposition, especially when combined with traditional treatments, by focusing your attention on the way your emotions are expressed in your body. Negative feelings that are blocked or suppressed may come to the surface during certain hatha yoga poses, which moves negative energy from "stuck" places in the body.
Psychotherapist Stephen Cope wrote Yoga and the Quest for the True Self. In this book that reveals many health benefits of yoga, Cope states that yoga creates regular feelings of well-being. The National Institute for Mental Health in India found a 73% success rate in treating depression with the sudharshan kriya technique. The relationship between yoga and depression is still undergoing scientific scrutiny – but whether you're depressed or not, yoga can't hurt your mood!
The health benefits of yoga surpass your mood to how you see yourself.
The health benefits of yoga: improved body image
Women who practice yoga report more body satisfaction, less self-objectification, and greater satisfaction with physical appearance (compared to women who don't do yoga). Fewer symptoms of eating disorders are also reported by women who practice yoga, perhaps because yoga encourages you to listen to your body's feedback and learn to be sensitive to your bodily sensations. This in turn makes you less preoccupied with your appearance, gives you more positive views of your body, and helps you incorporate healthy eating habits in your life. Yoga may also help you tune out society's messages that thin is the only worthy body shape, and only beautiful people are valuable. A healthy body image is one of the health benefits of yoga.
The discipline of yoga makes you think differently about your mind and body by enhancing your mind-body connection.
The health benefits of yoga: weight loss
Regular yoga practice (30 minutes once a week) was connected to weight loss in subjects between the ages of 45 and 55, according to a study funded by the National Cancer Institute. Yoga isn't about burning calories; it's more about becoming more aware of your body and when it's full of food, stress, or conversation.
The health benefits of yoga with regard to weight loss is that it's easier to stop eating when your mind-body connection is strong. It's your body awareness that is improving, not necessarily the caloric burn. Yoga improves mindfulness and encourages a "gentle strength", which positively affects weight loss and weight management.
The health benefits of yoga: improved physical health
Research is proving connections between good physical health and yoga. For instance, epileptic stress, back pain and fatigue caused by multiple sclerosis are all health problems that have been proven to be reduced by yoga practices – and that's just barely scratching the surface of all the scientific research about yoga and health!
The health benefits of yoga: improved sensuality
Yoga can even improve your relationship and love life. When my husband and I participated in a weekly yoga class we found ourselves much more amorous in the evenings! Depression and health problems aside - it can improve your overall disposition and mood. Even struggles like fear of intimacy and anxiety-based phobias can be improved with regular meditation and yoga.
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