Five thousand years ago Yoga was practiced in Northern India, today it is popular all over the world and in numerous different styles and forms. The popularity of this form of exercise is remarkable, but so is the results and benefits that people are getting from Yoga every day, for example Jennifer Aniston does Hatha Yoga and Matthew McConaughey does Bikram Yoga. The benefits can be broadly split into three categories which are physical benefits, mental benefits and spiritual benefits. The benefits are important to all individuals, no matter your motivations and preconceptions, but anyone can experience these results in all three areas from a long time use of Yoga.
Physical Benefits
The first type of benefits are purely on a physical level, as you will greatly increase your balance, flexibility and core muscle strength. Yoga has poses, which is the core of exercises, as you have to hold them for a certain amount of time. Some disciplines will use these exercises to prepare the body for a deeper meditative process, but they will still experience physical benefits from performing them as exercises.
The deep breathing exercise has immediate health benefits due to increasing the intake of oxygen into the system. The oxygen is transported by the blood to our organs and tissues, which if they don't get enough oxygen and nutrients, will become sick. Occasionally these tissues and organs are starved of nutrients due to a number of reasons including poor air intake or quality, bad circulation or disease within the body. Yoga increases our oxygen intake, removes the blockages in our circulation to ensure it's safe delivery and also stimulates the lymphatic system to aid in the disposal of toxins from our system, leaving our bodies auto immune system free to deal with other diseases or viruses.
Mental Benefits
Many people see this as the most import benefit that we can gain from Yoga, as even Doctors would recommend Yoga for their patients to reduce stress and anxiety. It does depend on what your priorities are ,but the mental benefits of Yoga are certainly impressive and can make people calmer. The ability to focus on your breathing has a natural consequence of allowing irrelevant thoughts to melt away and a state of serenity to be introduced. This is not to be taken lightly as it provides a valuable skill in the ability to remain calm under intense pressure. A parent can use this when everything happens at once in the home, a business person can use it to focus on a single task despite everyone around them being panicked or a police officer can use it to calm a situation and stay focused on dealing with an important task.
Yoga also requires a high level of control from those practicing it, as it is required to perform the exercises themselves and also needed to stick to a regular exercise regime. This is something that comes easy to people once they have mastered the basics of the Yoga breathing techniques.
Spiritual Benefits
Generally beginners to yoga will not understand these benefits for some time. There are lots of benefits that can fall into the 'spiritual' category. Yoga is built around a philosophy that includes it's own set of ethics, but these are sporadically taught as part of Western Yoga practise. Instead the spiritual benefits we talk about tend to be about accepting yourself with who you are and being content with your place in life, for example happy about your situation at work. For some people it goes even further beyond that. Overall the level of spiritual satisfaction you get is likely to depend on your own personal beliefs and commitments.
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