Top 5 Health Benefits Of Yoga - An Ancient Fitness Practice

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If you’ve ever wanted to try yoga, it’s the right time for that.

Yoga is one of the simplest forms of exercise you can do to enhance your mind and body health. All you need have is a yoga mat and some comfortable clothing. Whether you are a fitness fanatic or just beginning to exercise, yoga may be the best exercise for you. Yoga is a mind-body workout that includes physical postures, breathing techniques, and meditation.

With all that said, today in this post we’re going to discuss the top 5 health benefits of yoga.

Let’s check out them one by one below!

The 5 Benefits of Yoga

1. Improve Your Flexibility

By watching the people who do yoga poses, we can surely say that they are pretty flexible. Especially, when they performing poses like the downward-facing dog, standing forward fold, and seated forward bend. But, this doesn’t mean you need to be flexible to do yoga exercise, but if you practice yoga regularly and stick with it, you’ll see a gradual increase in your body’s flexibility. And the improvement in your flexibility eventually improves your posture and body alignment.

2. Develop Your Body’s Strength

A study on yoga revealed that the participants who practiced 8 weeks of Hatha Yoga increased their muscle mass and improved their physical strength, actually, they were able to perform more pushups and sit-ups than before they started practicing yoga. The common postures like the four-limbed staff pose (Chaturanga) and boat pose are the bodyweight exercises in yoga that stimulate muscles the same way pushups, crunches, and planks do. Building body strength, flexibility, and stamina are some of the well-known benefits of yoga.

3. Improve Your Sleep

Yoga is a gentle and restorative approach to wind down the tiredness and stress of your day. A survey found that more than 55% of individuals who did yoga found that it helped them get better sleep and more than 85% of individuals said yoga helped them to reduce stress. Also, according to many studies, yoga has been shown to be helpful for sleep in older adults, people with arthritis, pregnant women, and other groups of people. And, this is one of the beloved benefits of yoga.

4. Reduce Your Stress and Anxiety Level

Yoga involves breathing exercises that allow you to pay attention to your breathing. We all know that deep breathing can help us relax almost instantly, which can help us get relief from stress and anxiety. And you know what? When yoga is practiced with true intention, it can help you relax your mind and body and give you the peaceful feeling of oneness. Based on Yoga Journal research, yoga postures that combine controlled breathing, relaxation techniques and stretching exercises can help you reduce your stress level, lower your blood pressure level, and improve your heart function. Surely this is one of the best benefits of yoga that you want to get.

5. Help You Lose Weight

Just like any other exercise forms, practicing yoga also help you to lose weight. Even though most of the yoga exercises are not as fast-paced as some cardio and HIIT workouts, you still burn significant calories from doing yoga which drives weight loss. Based on a Harvard Health study, a 155-pound weight person can burn up to 149 calories during 30 minutes of Hatha yoga workout, this is the most common class of yoga in yoga studios and fitness gyms. Surely, losing weight is one of the effective benefits of yoga. So, use yoga as a tool for your weight loss.

Conclusion

Many kinds of research and studies show that adding this ancient practice into your lifestyle can help you boost your mind and body health. And, just name the few benefits of yoga above, but there are endless.