The Amazing Benefits of Yoga

Weight Reduction
Practicing yoga is one of the best means of weight management. In order to lose weight, you must eat more balanced and burn calories by doing exercise that raises your heart rate on a regular basis. The most common causes of weight gain are increased emotional and mental stress, food habits (i.e. high fructose corn syrup, excessive snacking etc.), lack of exercise and thyroid conditions. Yoga considers all aspects of obesity (mental, physical and emotional.) Some asanas, stimulate the thyroid gland to increase their hormonal secretions. The thyroid gland, especially, has a big effect on our weight because it affects body metabolism. Yoga deep breathing increases the oxygen intake to the body cells, including the fat cells. This causes increased oxidation or burning up of fat cells. Yogic exercises induce more continuous and deeper breathing which gradually burns, sometimes forcefully, many of the calories already ingested.

Reducing Everyday Aches and Pain
Practicing yoga can provide chronic pain sufferers with useful tools to actively cope with their pain and help counter feelings of helplessness and depression. Back pain is the most common reason to seek medical attention. Yoga is believed to reduce pain by helping the brain's pain center regulate the gate-controlling mechanism located in the spinal cord and the secretion of natural painkillers in the body. Yoga has consistently been used to cure and prevent pain by enhancing strength and flexibility. Breathing exercises used in yoga can also reduce pain. Because muscles tend to relax when you exhale, lengthening the time of exhalation can help produce relaxation and reduce tension. Patients who study yoga learn to induce relaxation through self awareness and focus then can use the technique whenever pain appears This focus could help patients "increase their awareness of how they had been moving and positioning their body in maladaptive ways, to relax tense muscles, and to relieve mental stress."

Stress Reduction and Relaxation
One of the most common complaints of modern life is stress. An estimated 70% to 80% of all illnesses are stress-related. Stress contributes to the wide-spread diseases of our century -- heart disease, high blood pressure, and cancer. Reducing stress reduces the incidence of these killers. Plentiful rest, a healthy diet, and proper exercise are three ways to minimize the ill effects of stress. Yoga is a powerful stress-reducing exercise system. Not only does it temporarily reduce stress, but as the nervous system gains strength, your long-term stress level declines.

Body Strength and Stamina
Increased body strength and physical stamina are the most obvious benefits of practicing yoga. Muscles and joints grow stronger. The increased muscle tone and improved posture makes you more attractive. Even gentle yoga practice can provide cardio-vascular benefits by lowering resting heart rate, increasing endurance and improving oxygen uptake during exercise. A combination of lower heart rate and improved oxygenation to the body (both benefits of yoga) results in higher cardiovascular endurance or stamina.

Flexibility
Yoga also concentrates on flexibility. This is one of the major differences between yoga and other forms of exercise. A flexible body is a more comfortable place in which to live. The muscles and joints are more resilient to the jolts and shocks of everyday life. This can help you prevent accidents and injuries.

Better General Health
This age-old science benefits you in ways that are not be obvious to the naked eye. Breathing exercises better oxygenate the blood, cleanse you of toxins, and give you healthier skin. The physical exercises increase circulation and improve the function of your organs and glands. Yoga helps in oxygenating the blood, enabling fresh nutrients to all the vessels and capillaries in the blood. The nervous system gains strength and resiliency. Digestion and elimination function more efficiently. In addition, the immune system is pumped up to increase your over-all level of health and well-being.

Anti-ageing Properties of Yoga
According to yoga philosophy, it's the flexibility of the spine, not the number of years, that determines a person's age. Yoga slows down the aging process by giving elasticity to the spine, firming up the skin, removing tension and toxins from the body, strengthening the abdominal muscles, improving the tone of flabby arm muscles and correcting poor posture. Yoga is a healthy way to make you feel younger with heightened mental prowess. Yoga will take years from your body add years to your life. As you get older, you will take on an ageless appearance.

Mental/Emotional Benefits
Because of yoga's rejuvenation effects on the glands and nervous system, including the brain, yoga results in a positive mental/emotional state. Yoga is an opportunity for introspection and inner awareness. A good yoga session gives you a more positive outlook on life, a sense of balance, and a feeling of internal harmony. It will help you to feel more confident, enthusiastic and generally optimistic. Greater mental performance and clarity gives you a clearer sense of priorities. Most importantly, your yoga practice is something that you do just for yourself. It is a personal affirmation that you are a worthwhile human being, worth spending time with, and worthy of being cared for.

Detoxification
Yoga is perhaps the only form of activity which massages all the internal glands and organs of the body in a thorough manner. By stretching muscles and joints as well as massaging the various organs, yoga ensures the optimum blood supply to various parts of the body. This helps in the flushing out of toxins. This leads to benefits such as delayed ageing, energy and a remarkable zest for life. Your skin is one of the best waste disposal systems in nature. While it is different from your waste-extraction organs like kidneys or livers, your skin is an equally effective organ for removing waste, especially toxic wastes. It does this through sweat. Hence, hot yoga provides the perfect channel for detoxification to happen. In addition to its physical benefits, yoga aids in mental detox as well.

Rehabilitating and Healing Injuries
Yoga used therapeutically can rehabilitate and heal problem areas. Select exercises that do not re-injure already weakened areas and then use appropriate exercises to strengthen the injured area. Yoga also includes opening up to "healing energy." Be patient. Problems usually do not arise instantly nor will they heal instantly.

High Blood Pressure
Yoga asanas can be effective in different ways. In the case of blood pressure they can combat the causes, as well as the effects of high blood pressure and stabilize blood pressure thus reducing high blood pressure and regulating low pressure. Asanas calm the mind and regularize and balance the autonomous nervous system, the center that controls stress. The sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, which are involved in stress reaction also get stabilized?in the practice of asanas resulting in regulation of blood pressure. The effects of hypertension on various systems such as the cardiovascular, respiratory and nervous systems and on various organs especially the heart, lungs, liver and kidneys can be lessened and eventually neutralized by the practice of certain asanas and pranayama.

Vision and Hearing Improve.
Normal vision and hearing, depend to a large extent on the eyes and ears receiving a good nerve and blood supply. The nerves and blood vessels which supply the eyes and ears have to pass through the neck. As we get older, the neck becomes less flexible, like the rest of the spine, and there is a tendency for nerves and blood vessels to be encroached upon as they travel through the neck. This impairs the nerve and blood supply to the eyes and ears, affecting their function. Yoga postures and yoga neck exercises improve the condition of the neck, resulting in better eyesight and improved hearing.

Arthritis
Yoga asanas are designed to provide relief to joints and have had been found to be very effective in relieving arthritis. Exercise is very important to try to reestablish a complete range of motion. Yoga's movements and gentle pressures reach deep into troubled joints. Yoga asanas in conjunction with deep breathing exercises relieve the tension that binds up the muscles and further tightens the joints. Yoga is exercise and relaxation rolled into one - the perfect antiarthritis formula.

Better Sex
Yoga has a rejuvenating effect, improving men and women's sexual health. Yoga considers sex to be a natural function, very beneficial in a loving relationship and, of course, essential for the continuation of the human race. Since yoga releases stress, you can feel more relaxed and open while having sex. Sex is a natural expression of love and of energy. People with a healthy, active sex life are shown to have healthier hearts and reproductive organs, lower instances of psychological problems. increased sexual vitality, confidence and reduced stress. Yoga has a marked effect on the pituitary, thyroid, adrenal and sex glands. This produces a feeling of well-being, prevents premature ageing and extends sexual virility well into old age.

Spirituality
Last, but certainly not least, yoga is practice of uniting with the Divine. All of us have different ideas of the Divine. Yoga is not a religion but rather a meditative practice that can help you experience God in your own way. Through the practice of Yoga, we become aware of the interconnectedness between our emotional, mental and physical levels. Gradually this awareness leads to an understanding of the more subtle areas of existence. The ultimate goal of Yoga is to make it possible for you to be able to fuse together the gross material (annamaya), energetic (pranamaya), mental (manomaya), intellectual (vijnanamaya) and spiritual (anandamaya) levels within your being. The value of discovering one's self and of enjoying one's self as is, begins a journey into being rather than doing. Life can then be lived practicing "Yoga off the mat". When you achieve the yogic spirit, you can begin knowing yourself at peace.

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