Benefits of Yoga on Mental Health

Yoga, a training for the mind and body, has been around for centuries. It originated in India as a philosophy and a way of life. Yoga is good for mental health because it engages exercise and mindfulness to promote physical, mental and spiritual well-being. Yoga is a gentle workout that can reduce stress levels, making you feel calm and positive. It is also a great way to stay physically fit while enjoying the calming benefits of meditation.

Yoga is beneficial to your mental health because it gives you a break from your busy life and allows you to decompress. Yoga will let you spend time with yourself, without worrying about the troubles that may be in your life or anything else. Yoga can be practiced in group classes or privately with a trainer. While yoga can help clear your mind, it will also strengthen your body and increase flexibility.

Yoga is all about getting up and moving, so it’s no surprise that it’s also quite good for your mental health. What are the benefits?

Happier moods:  Studies have shown that yoga has a positive impact on mood and depression levels, even lowering anxiety in cancer patients.

Calm mind:  During yoga practice, there is a slowing of the breath which helps to eliminate mindless thoughts keeping them from taking over your mind.

Focus:  If you’re often distracted or lost in thought, practicing yoga can help bring you back to the present moment, forcing you to concentrate on the task at hand.

Increased well-being:  By increasing your mobility and flexibility, many people find they feel better overall once they practice yoga consistently.

Relief from depression and anxiety: Yoga is a great way to relieve anxiety and depression, both of which are completely treatable with yoga. Yoga regulates your stress response so you can enjoy inner peace and harmony. It also clears your mind to help you focus on the present, preventing you from making rash decisions or experiencing destructive emotions. By reducing heart rate, respiration, and blood pressure, yoga gives you relaxation without the use of prescription drugs.

Keep your brain young: Yoga has been shown to be one of the best anti aging techniques known. The practice of yoga improves blood flow to your brain, allowing your body to send more oxygen and nutrients, while flushing out toxins and dangerous chemicals.  This allows the brain to function at optimum capacity and reduces the risk of developing dementia into old age. For these reasons it is important to keep up with the regular practice of yoga or meditation.

Reduce the effects of PTSD and similar conditions: Yoga is much more than just a physical practice. It is a journey to find your true essence through simple postures, breathing exercises, and meditation techniques. Since its beginnings thousands of years ago, yoga has evolved into a healthy lifestyle that improves your psychological and physical health. With regular practice, it can help you work with mental trauma like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Helps to reach a state of mindfulness: Yoga is a great stress reliever, and can help you reach a state of mindfulness whenever you need. If your mind tends to run a mile a minute, give yoga a try; it’s an exercise that allows you to quiet your thoughts and focus on the present moment. Doing yoga every day will help you achieve a state of mindfulness more quickly.

Increases both social and self connection: Yoga increases both social and self connection. This is because you connect with your own body, breath, and mind as well as other people when you’re practicing yoga. This social connection can help improve the function of your vagus nerve, which in turn may improve your ability to recover from stressful events and connect with your senses of selves.

Helps in Boosting Confidence: Yoga helps in boosting the confidence of people, create balance between body and mind, helps in bringing an individual to be disciplined, increase self-control and help in coping up with stress. Yoga is not just a modern trend but it has been followed for centuries.

Infuses Positivity:  Yoga is not only benefits our physical being but also positively impacts our minds and works wonders for our mental health.

How to Get Started

Yoga is one of the most popular and beneficial forms of exercise in the modern world—and with good reason. The practice of yoga is full of various and simple techniques that can be performed anywhere, at any time, as long as you have a few minutes. However, if you truly want to reap all of the benefits that come from practicing yoga, it’s always better to take classes in a studio to learn how to do poses properly, but even on your own there are several apps that can help you get started.