Ten Good Reasons to Practice Yoga

Ten Good Reasons to Practice Yoga

1. Contrary to the popular myth that yoga is necessary for athletes, pop stars and supermodels! The fact is that yoga is for benefit of all of us: we, our children our grandparents, both man and woman, healthy or sick. Irrespective of the age, sex and geographical locations, yoga gives tremendous benefits to each and every one once adapted to individual needs
   
   
2. In a world full of challenges, stress and anxiety everywhere, yoga is answer to all health queries. Start practicing yoga and get benefits immediately, such as stress-relief. Apart from health benefits, one can notice enhanced self esteem, renewed positivity and enthusiasm, once yoga becomes a part of life and practiced regularly.
   
   
3. Unlike other physical exercises that might put a strain on your heart, muscles and joints, Yoga is comparatively safe option. On must be aware of one’s strain bearing capacity and practice yoga following expert guidelines. Yoga does not harm our body in any way.
   
   
4. Generally there is no mandatory requirement of special equipments or accessories for yoga practice. If you have few props you can practice easily, but the only thing that pays is your concentration and will power.
   
   
5. While respiratory system gets better equipped to help you to breathe more fully, deeply and easily (thus increasing your oxygen intake), your physical and mental health also improves due to enhanced energy.
   
   
6. Yoga helps all body systems to work effectively, improving digestion, helping in assimilation of nutrients and the elimination of toxins.
   
   
7. Yoga is a boon to insomnia patients as helps to get better sleep, reducing the sleep breaks so that, when you wake up, you feel refreshed and full of energy and enthusiasm.
   
   
8. Yoga brings synchronization in mind body and soul helps you to utilize your energy effectively, thereby avoiding tension, stress and negativity.
   
   
9. When practiced regular yoga techniques, you get awarded with a genuine sense of outward tranquility, which leads you to the spiritual path of getting deep state of inner peace, too.
   
   
10. Yoga is immense source of positivity if combined with FUN!

RELATED ARTICLES:

• Child Yoga and Physical Therapy
• Yoga for Beginners
• What is Yoga Therapy?
• Top Yoga Techniques For A Healthy Life
• Open Your Heart to Yoga - Yoga for Heart Diseases

Yoga Poses & Yoga Exercises

In Sanskrit, the word “pose” is “asana” (pronounced as “ah-sah-nah”).

Ancient yogis studied human body and then developed various yoga asanas so that each and every part of our body gets benefits from yoga poses. The yoga poses not only give us health benefits but also make us more aware of our body, mind, and environment.

It is however advised that while beginning yoga exercises, one must have a cool mind and experiment with the poses as per one’s comfort and convenience. The benefits of yoga exercises will be noticed faster if one has a playful mind and also the feeling of frustration and competitiveness will not enter the mind. The word of caution one must keep in mind while practicing yoga exercises, is that there must not be any feeling of discomfort or pain.

Important things to keep in mind during yoga practice:

• Never hold your breathe during a pose.
  
  
• Do not force or strain your breath.
  
  
• Whenever you notice Labored breathing, come out of the pose slightly as it is an indication that you’re working too hard.
  
  
• The rule of thumb is that, one can hold for three full breaths through most yoga poses. You must hold it longer only if your body says that you are comfortable in the pose, and if the body shows symptoms that you are uncomfortable, you should come out of the pose immediately.

Types of Yoga Poses

Seated poses

• Seated yoga poses are especially beneficial if practiced for breathing exercises and relaxation or meditation techniques.
  
  
• Seated poses generally advised to be used as a warm up or as a starting point for other poses.
  
  
• Performing seated poses can help improve your posture and open your hips.

Standing poses

• Standing yoga poses are often used as warm up or as a starting point for other poses.
  
  
• Standing poses are beneficial for strengthening your legs, opening your hips and improving your sense of balance.

Inversions

• Yoga experts advice Inversion yoga poses because it helps to improve your blood circulation quiet your mind and improve your overall health.
  
  
• Inversions are also believed to reverse the ageing process and reduce the effect of the gravity on your body.

Relaxation and restorative poses

• Relaxation or restorative yoga poses are more beneficial if performed at the end of each yoga practice.
  
  
• The body and mind get more relaxed at this time and the energy released by the poses in your practice is moved freely throughout your body.

Counter poses

• A counter pose is a yoga pose that stretches your spine in the opposite direction from a previous pose or returns your spine to a neutral position.

Twists

• Twists are generally advised to stretch and strengthen your back and abdominal muscles, increase the flexibility of your spine and improve your circulation.
  
  
• As the body is twisted and released, a fresh flow of blood moves in the body thereby improving the functioning of your internal organs.

Balancing poses

• Balancing yoga poses are great for improving your balance and coordination as well as developing your ability to remain grounded in a pose.
  
  
• Keeping your body balanced encourages you to focus, quiet and balance your mind.

Forward bends

• Forward bends stretch the entire back of your body, especially your hamstrings.
  
  
• Forward bends especially beneficial to release tension, calm your mind and soothe your nervous system.
  
  
• Similar to back bends, forward bends help keep your spine strong and supple.

Back bends

• A great challenge for any yoga performer is to perform back bends successfully.
  
  
• Bending backward helps strength your back and keep your spine strong and supple.
  
  
• Back bends also open the front of your body, especially your chest.

Yoga for Beginners

Our body works like machinery that is a combination of several joints. Similar to the machine parts, the joints in our body also need movement and lubrication time to time on a regular basis. While the lubrication is provided by the food we eat, Yoga and other physical activities are required for essential joint movements. A bitter truth is that in our day to day life some of our joints tend to get overused, while some are barely used.

Although we all get used to this condition of our body but the bad effects appear at a later stage, when health problems occur. Yoga is especially helpful to maintain the flexibility and healthy condition of joints because most of the yoga asanas are developed to increase the basic movements of joints.

Benefits of Yoga for Beginners

• While the muscles which are focused during a particular yoga asana, work out, the rest of the body muscles get relaxed. Hence concentration on the movement of a particular muscle comes easily.
  
  
• Old Age people and those, whose movements are restricted, also can perform these movements without much strain.

Yoga basics of beginners

• Youths below 12 years of age are advised not to practice Yoga asanas for long and also to avoid maintaining asanas for very long.
  
  
• Yoga gives maximum results if practiced for at least half an hour or more daily. Start with beginner yoga poses.
  
  
• It is however advised to practice yoga asanas in early morning; as the concentration is maximum at that time but one is short of time then yoga can be practiced in the evenings as well
  
  
• Yoga experts recommend practicing yoga asanas empty stomach. Any solid food must be consumed at least 3 – 5 hours before practicing and liquids 1 hour before.
  
  
• Choose a place to practice that is spacious, clean, airy and far from disturbances.
  
  
• It is recommended to practice yoga on a mat or carpet below but not on the bare floor.
  
  
• Tight fittings are not allowed to be worn while practicing. Only loose, comfortable and clean cloths must be worn.
  
  
• Undergarments are mandatory.
  
  
• Spicy foods must be avoided during yoga practice, only a vegetarian diet must be followed.

Yoga Postures of beginners (Asanas)

• Ashtanga Yoga describes yoga asanas as its 3rd limb. Not only we get a good physical health, but also learn how to control our mind and increase concentration power.
  
  
• Most of the yoga asanas are based on the very slow and steady movements. Unlike other forms of exercise (Jogging, swimming) rapid movements are excluded in yoga poses.
  
  
• The most important advantage of yoga asanas is that the body gets relaxed which subsequently, reduces the stress & strain of mind and body.
  
  
• Unlike other physical activities, we burn comparatively fewer calories during Yoga practice.
  
  
• Yoga helps to bring down the body’s metabolism rate thereby decreasing the rate of aging process.

Benefits of Yoga

If one can collect and pack all the benefits of yoga in the form of a pill or tablet, perhaps no one would ever hesitate to take that tablet. The reason being that no other pill or therapy can give so many benefits to our body.

Some yoga poses as described to work as cleansing practice for the body the have proved very beneficial to treat various physical disorders without any medication. Further, Yoga is incredibly helpful in:

Improving Flexibility – Yoga poses improve flexibility of body because not only one part but all the joints, muscles, tendons and ligaments of the body move and become active.

Massaging Internal Organs – Though different physical activities like jogging, swimming have health benefits but yoga is the only one that acts upon all the organs and even the glands and massages them by increasing the flow of blood. One can be surprised to know that the prostate gland which gets externally stimulated hardly ever in or life is stimulated by practicing yoga.

Yoga is a holistic approach to one’s fitness and acts upon all of one’s body parts. This organic rub down and stimuli, subsequently, does us good by keeping disease at bay. It also helps provide an intuition, at the first possible instance, of a probable advent of illness or disorder.

Total Internal Detoxification – Different toxins are easily washed out of our body as yoga poses increase blood supply to various body parts thereby massaging the different organs. The way different muscles and joints are stretched, the whole body gets nourished.

First-rate firming up of muscles – All those muscles that which become weak flabby or are sagging are firmed up by getting rid of excess fat and floppiness.

However, regularity, punctuality and will power are the keys to get real benefits of yoga. The most beautiful point is that yoga brings coordination and synchronization in the mind and body. All these massive bodily benefits are merely spin-offs of this wonderful practice. This proves beyond, doubt, that the mind and body are closely interlinked.