the benefits of yoga

Yoga helps you to strengthen your body and soul. It helps you to drift yourself away from the hectic , stressful daily life issues and learn to know yourself, listen to yourself better. Not only physically but also helps spiritually and you can gain a lot of positive results.

At the start of your yoga journey first you can just practice the physical aspect of it and let your body get familiar with the asanas (postures), after getting more comfortable with these postures, you can add more awareness to breathing exercises and finally can focus on meditation aspect.

If you are new to yoga make sure you wear light and comfortable, airy clothes.

Avoid having big, heavy meals. Try not to eat at least 1.5 hours before you step onto your mat.

It is always wiser to start your practice with some mobility exercises, and is very important to warm your body up especially before diving in to binds, backbends etc.

Crown Chakra; Improves Mental Strength & Calms Nervous System

Regular yoga practice helps you to be able to combat stress caused by daily life scenarios.

Our nervous system is a control network that connects and balances all the systems in our body.PNS (peripheral nervous system) is a part of the nervous system which is made of somatic and autonomic systems. Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) is the autopilot of your body, regulating breathe, digestion, heartbeat etc. where body looks after itself to these functions and we don’t naturally focus on them. ANS controls the nerves when we come across to stress where it is called fight or flight situation and helps to deal with stressful moments.

Regular yoga practice and correct breathing exercises increases neurotrophic factors. Some basic changes happens in the brain, such as;

Yoga helps to regulate the Cortisol levels which is a hormone causing stress and if not controlled in can cause inflammation. So a great way to lose some unwanted pounds.

Increases the GABA (Gamma aminobutyric acid) which regulates central nervous system and reduces stress and anxiety and creates the feeling of calm and relaxation.

Brain derived Neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is increases and helps to ease the sympthoms of depression and chronic pain.

With practicing yoga 3-4 times a week regularly, you will see how you can start to feel more relaxed and focused. It will be easier to control your monkey mind and invite more relaxation into your life. Within practising asanas we create a stress to our muscles. And by time learning how to deal with this stress helps us to combat the stressful situations life presents us in a more affective and easy way.

Third Eye Chakra; Sleep Better

Yoga helps to stretch and relax our muscles, regulates our breathing, increases melatonin levels and improves mindfulness. With relaxing our nervous system and preparing our body to rest ,our sleep patterns get better.

With regular practice, you can fall asleep quicker and have more restful, longer sleep.

In a recent survey done in U.S.A %55 of yoga practioners says they have better quality sleep after starting yoga.

There are yoga styles like Yin yoga or Yoga Nidra where you can hold the restful postures longer and focus on your breathe which will make your body and mind ready to a better sleep.

Breathing techniques like Ujjayi Breathe and Nadi Shodhana helps to use the full lung capacity, calms nervous system , brings balance and harmony to mind. Cleanses the energy channels and help you to inhale and exhale better, longer with quality. You will start to feel calmer, grounded more focused. A good regular breathing exercise can even help you to ease asthma, migrane, headache issues and help you to have a better quality sleep.

Throat Chakra; Reduce Back, Shoulder, Neck Pain

Your daily yoga practice has massive benefits on reducing back- neck- shoulder pains. With the repeated asanas, you improve your flexibility, enhance your strength and create awareness to balance of your body when you sit, stand, walk during the day. Your body gets stronger. The muscles in your back-neck-shoulder lengthens with stretching postures and and releases tension. You focus on the core area of the body ,making this area stronger to be able to practice most asanas correctly and a stronger core gives you more balance and improves the posture.less tension is hold on shoulders and spine. Yoga enhances our understanding of alignement on the limbs and on the spine and with correct and improved alingement again you keep a better posture where the tension on back- neck area reduces.

Heart Chakra; Lowers Blood Pressure

Yoga has benefits to our cardiovascular system. It improves heart rate variability.(HRV) HRV is controlled by autonomic nervous system. With managing stress levels, improving your sleep patterns, adding more quality and awareness to your breathing techniques, finding your own way of combatting with stress can improve your circadian rythms and improve your HRV.

Yoga has proven to have a good impact on lowering blood pressure. With the help of asanas where you actively use your muscles and bring more oxygen to your body, meditation and correct breathing it reduces stress, improves circulation,that helps to reduce blood pressure. Meditation helps sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems developing balance and enhances the HRV.

Solar Plexus Chakra; Stronger Body

Yoga practice improves your flexibility and balance. It enhances your power. Slow , steady movements, holding postures for certain time with using your body weight helps to build strength and tones your muscles.Your core gets stronger, which also helps you to correct your posture and create better balance and so you can dive into asanas with better success.

Repeated flexing, contracting, stretching movements and elongating your muscles you become more flexible and stronger. Asanas also help to improve the collagen fibres of your fascia so you can move, strech better

Not only the muscular system but asanas move our joints and bones almost into all directions. Especially creating awareness on the spine we develop better postures and stronger back.

Sacral Chakra; Better Immune System

Stress and inflammation weakens our immune system and makes us more open to diseases. Again if practiced regularly yoga can help to strengthen our immune system. Our brain controls the release of hormones from our glands. External conditions can have impact on this release and distracts the balance. Yoga practice can increase the anti-inflammatory cytokines( proteins that encourage the growth and activity of immune system cells and blood cells) therefore can have a positive impact on inflammation. Even only an eight week practice of Gentle Restorative poses can reduce the chronic pain associated with joint pains caused by such as arthritis. With increased endorphins and blood flow, the energy levels are boosted. Reducing chronic inflammation and boosting immune system your body can heal itself quicker and create a better quality and healty life style.

Root Chakra; Balances Mind & Body

Stretching your muscles, improving your breathing and letting your body benefits more oxygen intake, regulating hormones and your nervous system, invites your body to relieve stress and anxiety. With the help of meditation, you can start to control your mind. Start to control the monkeymind and its whispers. Improve your focus, start to learn to let go.. and stay in your moment. Yoga helps us to find our way to break our rigid thoughts and learn to let go what is not serving us anymore. Discovering our bodies and go deeper in our minds and finding the knots, the tensed areas that are collecting negativity, emotional and physical. With the harmony the yoga practice brings, we learn hoe to undo these knots and let go.. and next balance and harmony is welcomed to our mind, body and life. Ofcourse as it is the life’s natural cycle, now and then there will be new obstacles, new reasons to get stressed or undo your balance. With keeping yoga in your life you can benefit its positive sides and carry on working on cleansing your path and maintain your balance.

If practiced regularly and in a correct way, yoga has many benefits. Not only physically but also spiritually you can gain a lot of positive results.

Yoga helps you to strengthen your body and soul. It helps you to drift yourself away from the hectic , stressful daily life issues and learn to know yourself, listen to yourself better.

At the start of your yoga journey first you can just practice the physical aspect of it and let your body get familiar with the asanas (postures), after getting more comfortable with these postures, you can add more awareness to breathing exercises and finally can focus on meditation aspect.

If you are new to yoga make sure you wear light and comfortable, airy clothes.

Avoid having big, heavy meals. Try not to eat at least 1.5 hours before you step onto your mat.

It is always wiser to start your practice with some mobility exercises, and is very important to warm your body up especially before diving in to binds, backbends etc.