What This Means For You
When you turn your yoga practice into a complete lifestyle, ahimsa can guide your daily interactions with yourself and others. Anyone, regardless of experience, can get frustrated when the physical components of yoga dont move forward as quickly as planned. Keeping ahimsa in mind as we practice yoga lets us move out of negative thoughts about the body. We can then accept ourselves totally, no matter how flexible, how strong we may be in any given moment.
This translates to all aspects of our lives. In the physical sense, non-violence means not pushing yourself over the edge. You can, of course, still challenge yourself so that you can grow in fact, you must. But embracing ahimsa means not pushing yourself to harm.
You shouldnt put much stock in holding a handstand long enough to please your ego if it brings you harm. Likewise, you shouldnt hold on to resentment or jealousy against yourself or someone else. Embracing ahimsa instead will improve your own well-being as well as those around you.
Let go of expectations of what you should do. Stop clinging to the need to scold yourself with negative, violent thoughts. When we do this, our bodies respond. Instead of bringing in those negative emotions and working against us, our bodies start working with us.
You Could Ease Asthma Symptoms
You don’t want to ditch your conventional care for treating asthma, but research shows that yoga could be a great complementary treatment to help ease symptoms. A small study, published in BMC Pulmonary Medicine, looked at 57 adults with mild to moderate asthma and found that those who added a yoga routine to their schedule for eight weeks dramatically lessened their symptoms and needed to use medication less often. This may be thanks to the breathing practices that are associated with yogaoften called pranayama.
Gets Me Out Of My Own Selfish Head
I don’t know about you, but the vast majority of my thoughts are about me. If I am hungry, what I should wear tonight, what I did yesterday, what I am going to do tomorrow. Me, me, me. I think about me all the time and it is the root of misery. The more I think about me, the less happy I am. Yoga reminds me to direct that internal obsession to the external needs of others. The more I prioritize helping those around me and caring about the beings on this planet, the more peace I feel inside myself.
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Helps You Sleep Deeper
Stimulation is good, but too much of it taxes the nervous system. Yoga can provide relief from the hustle and bustle of modern life. Restorative asana, yoga nidra , Savasana, pranayama, and meditation encourage pratyahara, a turning inward of the senses, which provides downtime for the nervous system. Another by-product of a regular yoga practice, studies suggest, is better sleepwhich means youll be less tired and stressed and less likely to have accidents. Sleep is one of the key benefits of yoga that nearly every practitioner can experience no matter what their skill level.
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Say Om For Better Health
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Releases Tension In Your Limbs
Do you ever notice yourself holding the telephone or a steering wheel with a death grip or scrunching your face when staring at a computer screen? These unconscious habits can lead to chronic tension, muscle fatigue, and soreness in the wrists, arms, shoulders, neck, and face, which can increase stress and worsen your mood. As you practice yoga, you begin to notice where you hold tension: It might be in your tongue, your eyes, or the muscles of your face and neck. If you simply tune in, you may be able to release some tension in the tongue and eyes. With bigger muscles like the quadriceps, trapezius, and buttocks, it may take years of practice to learn how to relax them.
Increases Your Heart Rate
When you regularly get your heart rate into the aerobic range, you lower your risk of heart attack and can relieve depression. While not all yoga is aerobic, if you do it vigorously or take flow or Ashtanga classes, it can boost your heart rate into the aerobic range. But even yoga exercises that dont get your heart rate up that high can improve cardiovascular conditioning. Studies have found that yoga practice lowers the resting heart rate, increases endurance, and can improve your maximum uptake of oxygen during exerciseall reflections of improved aerobic conditioning. One study found that subjects who were taught only pranayama could do more exercise with less oxygen.
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Reasons Why You Should Practice Yoga
Yes, the obvious is true: Most yoga classes are attended by a majority of fit, flexible females in tight clothes. But, contrary to what you might think, its not just a sport for sexy ladies. And we have tons of reasons why you should be doing itother than picking up women.
With yoga, youll hone your mental focus, rid your system of toxins, and maybe even boost your performance in the bedroom. Youll even be able to touch your toesimproved flexibility is a bonus for just about every sport.
Yes, the real results of regular yoga practice are quite practical, and you dont need any special equipmentjust a few square feet of space and a mat. Heres how that extra bit of stretching will not only enhance your other workouts, but also your life.
Drains Your Lymphs And Boosts Immunity
When you contract and stretch muscles, move organs around, and come in and out of yoga postures, you increase the drainage of lymph . This helps the lymphatic system fight infection, destroy cancerous cells, and dispose of the toxic waste products of cellular functioning.
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You Could Boost Your Mental Health
All exercise is linked to lowering symptoms of depression, and yoga is no exception: A review of studies published in Frontiers in Psychiatrysuggested that those with depression, schizophrenia, sleep problems, and other mental health conditions could all benefit from practicing yoga. Plus, Perz says that many people live for the mental benefits they experience. “When asked why we practice, both teachers and students alike tend to mention things like yoga being grounding, yoga a tool to help them be ‘in their body,’ and yoga the magic mood lifter,” she says.
Yoga can also have an immediate mood-boosting effect. “There are so many postures in yoga that help with depression and mood,” Robin Berzin, M.D., functional medicine physician and founder of Parsley Health, told mbg. Some of her favorites for this purpose: camel pose, pigeon pose, and legs up the wall, which help you quite literally open your heart and find new perspective.
“Even when the fog of depression seems impossibly thick,” says Berzin, “connecting with the body is an awesome way to find presence, and presence is like a headlight that lets you see a way forward and out.”
Yoga Relaxes You To Help You Sleep Better
Research shows that a consistent bedtime yoga routine can help you get in the right mindset and prepare your body to fall asleep and stay asleep.
Try It: Legs-Up-the-Wall PoseSit with your left side against a wall, then gently turn right and lift your legs up to rest against the wall, keeping your back on the floor and your sitting bones close to the wall. You can remain in this position for 5 to 15 minutes.
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It Can Improve Your Sleep
Another minor but pleasant benefit is that doing yoga can actually help you get better sleep. This might be due to the fact that a few sequences of poses and movements are intended to be done right before sleep, but regardless, studies have shown that doing some light physical activity before our heads hit the hay can help us get off to sleep more quickly, which usually leads to a much better quality of sleep.
It also might be due to the fact that if you have problems getting to sleep, working on problem-areas through yoga can help alleviate pain symptoms and increase the likelihood of better sleep. Another possibility is that most yoga sessions have a cool-down sequence at the end, which can definitely induce some easy slumber. As someone whos fallen asleep in class many a timeto the point where my mat neighbor and I have a buddy system in case one of us starts snoringbelieve me, this really works and should be done at home.
Because You Look Awesome In Yoga Pants
Doing yoga simply because you want to show off your body in a place where it’s socially acceptable to wear stretchy clothes is not a good enough reason to do yoga, and wont keep you going when your practice gets challenging. Check your ego in at the door, or at least you will when you get on the mat.
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Prevents Ibs And Other Digestive Problems
Ulcers, irritable bowel syndrome, constipationall of these can be exacerbated by stress. So if you stress less, youll suffer less. Yoga, like any physical exercise, can ease constipationand theoretically lower the risk of colon cancerbecause moving the body facilitates more rapid transport of food and waste products through the bowels. And, although it has not been studied scientifically, yogis suspect that twisting poses may be beneficial in getting waste to move through the system.
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Yoga Makes Us Feel That We Are Part Of Nature
The one who practices yoga as a means to slowing down and calming our thoughts builds a connection not only to himself but to the nature around us.
Every human being is internally connected to every other human being and also to nature, animals, plants, everything on this planet. But you are often not aware of it because you are too busy with too many things. when you calm down, you realize these connections and thats what yoga teaches to you.
breathing exercises can help us reconnect, because through our breath we are in constant contact with the outside world.
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Because Yoga Will Change You
Yoga is a means to an end, not an end in itself. You still remain yourself no matter how often or hard you practice. Yoga helps you become aware of your negative patterns, teaches you ways to get over these bad habits, and focuses and calms the mind to prevent you from relapsing into your old grooves. But to actually get to that point that’s on you. All in all, yoga can’t change you, only you can do that.
Betters Your Bone Health
Its well documented that weight-bearing exercise strengthens bones and helps ward off osteoporosis. Many postures in yoga require that you lift your own weight. And some, like Adho Mukha Svanasana and Urdhva Mukha Svanasana , help strengthen the arm bones, which are particularly vulnerable to osteoporotic fractures. In an unpublished study conducted at California State University, Los Angeles, yoga practice increased bone density in the vertebrae. Yogas ability to lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol may help keep calcium in the bones.
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Can Yoga Really Stimulate Digestion Or Wring Out Toxins
Anyone who has taken a yoga class has probably been exposed to wild claims by the teacher that certain poses will do anything from wring out toxins to stimulate a particular part of the colon and alleviate constipation. But the science backing up these kinds of very specific claims was scant, so I asked one of the researchers, Cohen, about where they come from.
” basing it on personal experience, on anecdote, on the lineage of practice that’s been handed down,” he said. “They are probably not basing it on Western-style analytic techniques that followed a control trial design. We just haven’t gotten there yet with yoga research, testing particular poses or breathing techniques for particular outcomes.”
Reduces Cortisol And Blood Sugar Levels
Moderate to high intensity workouts can increase your bodys cortisol levels . This is a natural stress hormone and high levels of the hormone can:
- raise your blood pressure
- cause muscle weakness and wasting
- increase your chances of developing diabetes
Fortunately, yoga practice can help reduce the level of cortisol in your body.
Another benefit of practicing it is that it helps reduce the concentration of sugar in your blood. This counteracts the effect of short, vigorous workouts that increase your blood sugar levels .
Regular practice increases the sensitivity of your body to insulin. This causes more sugar to move into your muscles from your blood. Moreover, insulin-producing cells within your pancreas become more sensitive to increased blood sugar levels.
In the long run, the effect of yoga on blood sugar will also help you manage or even prevent diabetes.
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Increases Your Blood Flow
Yoga gets your blood flowing. More specifically, the relaxation exercises you learn in yoga can help your circulation, especially in your hands and feet. Yoga also gets more oxygen to your cells, which function better as a result. Twisting poses are thought to wring out venous blood from internal organs and allow oxygenated blood to flow in once the twist is released. Inverted poses, such as Headstand, Adho Mukha Vrksasana , and Shoulderstand, encourage venous blood from the legs and pelvis to flow back to the heart, where it can be pumped to the lungs to be freshly oxygenated. This can help if you have swelling in your legs from heart or kidney problems. Yoga also boosts levels of hemoglobin and red blood cells, which carry oxygen to the tissues. And it thins the blood by making platelets less sticky and by cutting the level of clot-promoting proteins in the blood. This can lead to a decrease in heart attacks and strokes since blood clots are often the cause of these killers.
How Do I Get Started With Yoga Classes
You don’t have to be flexible to practice yoga. In fact, yoga will help you become flexible. Because there are many different styles of yoga, ranging from gentle to vigorous, you will want to find a teacher and style that suit your needs, abilities, limitations, current physical condition, and class schedule.
Make sure the teacher knows about any health conditions and your level of fitness. Don’t force any movements or poses. Mastery will come with practice. Wear comfortable, stretchable, or slightly loose clothing and expect to take off your shoes.
A yoga class should make you feel invigorated, calm, and not in physical discomfort. Try to attend a yoga class twice a week or more. Classes usually last 60-90 minutes.
Some of the other guidelines for practicing yoga are as follows:
- Remove contact lenses, wrist watch, and other accessories, and tie up long hair.
- Do not attempt yoga on a full stomach.
- Use a nonslip mat that is long enough for you to lie fully stretched on your back.
- Do a warm-up session. The muscles need to be fluid for the complex stretches.
- Practice in a quiet and peaceful environment.
You can take steps to prevent stress in your life.
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If You Do Yoga Every Day You Will Get Stronger
Looking for a good way to tone your arms, chisel your abs, and add definition to your legs and back? Try hitting the mat to do yoga every day, says Lynell Ross, a certified wellness coach and personal trainer. “You will become stronger and physically fit because you use your body weight to strengthen all your major muscle groups,” she explained to The List. “It takes great strength to build up to certain poses that require coordination, poise, and power.”
In addition to helping you on your quest to getting ripped, yoga can also strengthen you without any high impact movements, too. “Yoga is one of the best ways to train muscles without jarring, pounding, or lifting heavy weights,” Ross continued. So, if you have trouble with those exercises due to joint pain or injury, yoga might be the answer!
Some forms of yoga may be better than others if your main goal is strength training, such as Ashtanga or power yoga. Don’t worry too much about making common yoga mistakes or doing yoga moves wrong when you’re starting out you’ll get better as you practice!
Rakul Preet Singh Chooses Stretching Over Stressing With Aerial Yoga: Here’s Why You Should Try It Too
- Rakul Preet Singh took to Instagram to post a picture of herself doing aerial yoga and choosing ‘stretching over stressing’. Here are some reasons why you should do it too.
Actor Rakul Preet Singh is a huge fan of aerial yoga and often posts videos and pictures of herself practising the fitness technique. Today is one such day. On Tuesday, the star took to Instagram to post a picture of herself doing an aerial yoga asana that stretched her entire body.
Rakul, who is dating Jackky Bhagnani, chose stretching over stressing at the gym, as she did an intense full-body aerial yoga stretch for a workout today. She posted a photo of herself doing the asana with the caption, “Choose stretching over stressing #regainingcontrol #backontrack #2022.” With the routine, the actor kickstarted her journey to regain control over her body after a long break from yoga. She added that her fitness regimen will now be back on track.
Take a look at Rakul’s post:
Aerial Yoga Benefits:
Meanwhile, professionally, Rakul has Doctor G with Ayushmann Khurrana, Runway 34 with Ajay Devgn, Attack with John Abraham, and Indian 2 in the pipeline.
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