Six reasons why Yoga is good for you

 In this blog post we break down our top six reasons, based on our experience as practitioners of Yoga on why Yoga is good for you.

Reason one – Yoga is good for your breathing

From a yoga perspective your breath is your prana. Your prana is your life force and vitality, so we are taught firstly how to breath in a way that will support our life force and vitality. Yoga teaches us to belly breath, which for women can be an interesting experience, as we are often taught to suck our belly in and restrict our breathing into our belly to not look like we have a large or pot belly.

 “When I first started practicing yoga, I couldn’t even breath into my belly or didn’t expand my diaphragm because I didn’t want to make myself look any bigger” – Audrie

 “When I studied body psychotherapy, I was taught that when we hold our belly in we are cutting off our life force, at that time I did a lot of holding in my belly as well” - Kristina

This is probably why we love yoga because it gives us permission to breath fully, which improves our lung capacity, life force and vitality. Have you noticed your friends who practice yoga regularly? – they tend to have a radiance to their skin and brightness in their eyes. It’s because they can function a little better as they are drawing in with every single breath what it is that they need.

Reason two – Yoga is good for your body

A lot of people who have taken up a regular yoga practice notice that their body changes quite significantly, in terms of becoming stronger, firmer, and more flexible.

“After a lifetime of being a gym junkie I stopped going to the gym and my only exercise was yoga and walking and people would ask me how I could be so muscular and strong” - Kristina

One of the benefits people don’t realise they gain from a regular yoga practice is that strength comes into the body. Because of the variety of movement and the shapes we put our bodies into during a practice, it also keeps the spine and body you and functional.

It supports you to have a better posture. A lot of the alignment cues (taught in alignment-based yoga styles, such as Anusara Yoga) support you to bring your body into optimal alignment, allows you to stand up tall, shoulders to relax down your back and bring your ears and chin back into alignment with your shoulders. You are taught to use your body as it was functionally designed to do so.

When you are doing yoga well it helps you to keep your body fit, healthy and doesn’t cause further injury – sometimes it supports the therapeutic return from injury. You’re able to balance more easily, take a bigger step, engage your muscles to build strength and stability and move with more ease due to the improved flexibility and functionality.

As your body changes your ability to move through life improves.

Reason three – Yoga is good for your internal organs

There are classes of yoga poses that impact your deep internal organs, particularly twists and backbends, that give them extra support and boost through squeezing, wringing, and rinsing.

Yoga supports your digestive fire and helps you to digest your food in a more efficient way. Your internal organs are important to keep your body functioning optimally. If you are not looking after your internal organs, you may suffer from more illness and disease and may even shorten your lifespan.

“Twists are so great for massaging your internal organs” - Audrie

 Part of the practice of yoga encourages you to eat mindfully and take in foods that will support your system and internal organs to run without too much additional overload. Your internal organs are designed to process nourishment and eliminate toxins, but some of our modern diet puts in too many toxins and causes additional stress on the organ system. We have to efficiently take in the nourishment we require, eliminate the stuff we don’t need and ensure our blood is as clean as possible, that the right balance of fluids is in your system, that your reproductive health is best supported.

When you get on the yogic path more seriously you learn the purification practices and that overall yoga is a purification process for all layers of the human experience. You will naturally begin to eat differently and think about the foods you eat, how they affect your internal organs and the different systems that support your wellbeing at the different stages of your life.

Reason four – Yoga is good for your mind

 We have previously discussed that yoga is good for mental health, in a thankful Thursday episode Yoga Helps Mental Health - YouTube.

Yoga is good for your mind. The physical and meditation practices of yoga help you to practice to calm, still and quiet your mind from the consistent chatter that contributes to your stress and emotional unease. It helps your mind by teaching you to focus your attention on fewer things and allows the multitude of thoughts (mostly negative) that are running through your mind on repeat to be seen for what they are and to be allowed to simply pass on by. You are taught through Yoga to separate yourself from your thoughts by becoming their witness.

If you loop back around to tip number one, the simple act of taking a deep belly breath allows you to calm and still your mind. The act of pausing to take a few deep breaths sends a message to your brain (via the release of hormones) that everything is safe. Your adrenal glands may be able to slow down and stop releasing the stress hormones. It gives you the ability to learn to break your pattern of diving deep into anxiety, depression or fear etc

Your mind is the controller of your life experience. You learn that you are the creator of your experience through the practices of yoga that support your mind. You learn to come to know yourself on a deeper level. Through meditation and even the physical practice you learn to focus your mind on what is most important to you, and you learn to sit with the history of who you are and what comes up until it no longer comes up and affects your life experience.

“A teacher of mine once told me that it is on the meditation pillow that truly come to know yourself deeper” – Audrie

“I often think about the quote ‘to the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders’” - Kristina

 As you learn to harness the power of your mind through the practice of Yoga, you take back control of your life.

Reason five – Yoga is good for living in the present moment

 While Yoga teaches us to live an intentional life, we learn most importantly to live fully in the present moment. Over time you will learn to let go of the worry of what we haven’t done or what may come about in the future and learn that all we can do is take our best action and focus on how we feel in this present moment.

"Living in the present moment gives you the best opportunity to have a great life” - Audrie

You learn that this moment is the only moment that you have. Tomorrow has gone, even the last breath has gone and tomorrow may never come. Yoga helps you to bring your attention to how you are in the moment and to embrace that fully, through postures, breathing, drawing in your senses, focusing your mind on what is happening now and peeling back all the layers of who you think you are, so that who you truly are can be revealed.

Reason six – Yoga is very therapeutic

 Because you learn to live in the present moment, yoga helps you to bring more joy into your life. We’ve talked about the therapeutic impacts on your mental health but if you have physical issues in your body, such as pain, Yoga is also a great source of physical therapeutics.

“They way I use Yoga in my life is that it is a preventative practice. I’m preventing myself aging badly and keeping my body as physically fit, healthy and vital as I possibly can” – Kristina

If you already have back pain, or an injury or are working with a physical misalignment in your body working one to one with a well-trained yoga teacher, who has training in yoga therapeutics, or works in an alignment-based yoga system can support you to heal your physical pain, injury and misalignment.

In summary, there are so many ways that yoga is good for you. We encourage you to begin the practice of yoga today and start taking advantage of these benefits.

Join our online studio to bring your Yoga practice home and allow you to take advantage of the benefits of Yoga anywhere, anytime.