On June 21, we celebrated International Yoga Day to spread awareness about the innumerable health benefits of yoga, ranging from gaining flexibility, strength, a calm and happy mind to achieving weight loss and overall good health.
But we need to understand that it’s not just one day. We have to keep our body disciplined with few simple yoga asanas everyday, because by combining yoga with body, mind and breath, we gain countless benefits. As you balance your mind, body, and soul together, the journey of life is peaceful, happy and fully successful. We all know that yoga can cause an increase in strength, endurance and flexibility, which is common. Let’s quickly run through other important benefits of regular practice of yoga:
Yoga keeps you healthy at all levels as it connects our body with the mind and soul. Few asanas like pranayama (deep breathing) and meditative disciplines are useful to keep you healthy overall, by calming down the body as well as mind. Some research has already shown the positive effects of yoga to improve quality of life, and yoga can also be used as an adjunct therapy for some conditions.
Mindful eating means being present in the moment while eating and enjoying it. It’s more about scrutinising the taste, smell and texture of your food and noticing any thoughts, feelings or sensations that you experience while eating. You can inculcate this habit with yoga practice which helps us more on focusing and it has been shown to promote healthy eating habits. These in turn help a person have good control over blood sugar, enhance weight loss and also treat eating disorders.
If you want to reduce stress from day-to-day life and want to have total control over the mind, then practice a few minutes of yoga per day. Yoga, pranayama and meditation, all together, are effective techniques to destroy stress. Yoga can help alleviate stress and the levels of the stress hormone cortisol in our bodies that in turn lead to a decrease in symptoms of anxiety/depression. Once these things are under control, our sleep quality gets better because when stress is low, melatonin, which is the sleep hormone, is produced more in the body.
All of us like to go to a quiet, pleasant and scenic place. But only a few people know that the peace that one wants is present within. Take time out from your daily, stressful life to have this peaceful experience. Yoga and meditation can give you the same benefits as there is no other solution like yoga
for controlling the uncomfortable/wobbly mind.
Inflammation is a very normal immune response in the human body, but if it doesn’t settle and turns out to be chronic inflammation, then it can contribute to the development of diseases, such as cardiac or heart-related disease, diabetes and even cancer. Yoga can help reduce these inflammatory markers in the body and help prevent pro-inflammatory
diseases as well.
With the help of yoga and pranayama, we can increase our awareness and agility. With the increase of consciousness, we can bring back the mind to the current state from which it ran away. By doing so, our mind becomes happy, calm and can easily concentrate on various things.
By practicing regular yoga for a few minutes, you get refreshed and feel enthusiastic throughout the day because it helps in improving blood circulation.
So what are we waiting for? Let’s start practising yoga to get a flexible and strong body along with a sharp and agile mind!