Yoga is an ancient art that started in India about five thousand years ago. It has come to the United States and other parts of the Western world, where it is now practiced by people mostly to be healthy and manage stress. Professionals in the medical field today are also discovering that yoga has therapeutic uses, and so it is being recommended by doctors for their patients-those who have certain medical conditions as well as those who do not, but wish to become healthier or maintain their current level of fitness.
Thus, yoga in the Western world today is a holistic system that improves physical and emotional health, as well as helps cure certain disorders. The doctors who endorse it, and of course the vast numbers of practitioners of yoga (about eleven million in the U.S.), have established yoga as a “legitimate” system for health and wellness, and not merely some health fad.
Non-practitioners, meanwhile, are curious about the touted benefits of yoga. The belief that yoga is beneficial to one’s health is widespread, but not many people really know what yoga does exactly to promote better health.
Below are the physiological benefits of yoga:
Yoga postures stretch the muscles, making them stronger, more flexible and toned. Not just the muscles, but all soft tissues in the body achieve a similar effect: tendons, ligaments, and fascia sheaths around muscles.
Yoga helps relieve fatigue and tension. It also eases stiffness and pain in muscles and joints.
Yoga burns calories.
Yoga improves posture and core strength.
Yoga slows the heart rate and reduces blood pressure. This is helpful in preventing or correcting hypertension and cardiovascular diseases.
Yoga helps to relieve the symptoms of many diseases, including arthritis, asthma and anxiety or mood disorders.
- Yoga improves breathing.
- It stabilizes the autonomic nervous system.
- It improves digestive and endocrine functions.
- It increases dexterity and eye-hand coordination.
- It improves sleep.
- It increases immunity.
- It detoxifies the body.
The list can be made longer, but it contains enough to give an idea of how useful yoga is for physical health.
- Meanwhile, some of the psychological benefits that yoga brings are:
- Yoga improves mood, memory, attention, concentration and cognitive skills. It enhances learning.
- Yoga very effectively reduces stress and anxiety.
- Yoga brings a sense of wellbeing, thereby increasing self-confidence and esteem.
- Yoga promotes feelings of self-acceptance and self-actualization.
Yoga is able to bring about so many benefits because it employs a holistic approach. Hatha Yoga, the branch of yoga commonly practiced in the West, uses a three-pronged approach consisting of physical movements or postures, breathing exercises, and meditation. Yoga is a discipline that does not focus solely on the body, but also on the mind and emotions. In fact, the goal of yoga is to unite the different aspects of a person: his physical body, his thoughts and emotions, and his spiritual being. In its more pristine form, yoga is not unlike a spiritual discipline with loftier goals than just physical fitness. Perhaps the fact that it is an ancient art that has been perfected and practiced for many centuries also explains why it is superior to other health programs that were developed much more recently.
