The quality of your health can make or break the number of opportunities you can seize and the success you’ll experience in life. It’ll be very easy for you to improve your skills, look for a stable job, and create a career in a specific industry if you’re healthy. On the other side of the coin, poor health can become the reason why your career and relationships will fail.
Doing yoga daily comes with several health benefits that can help you make the most out of life. Incorporating yoga into your lifestyle can also boost your body’s ability to function and keep stress at bay.
To paint a clearer picture of how yoga can significantly affect the quality of your life, consider its health benefits:
1. Better Fitness
It’s common for people to think that in order to achieve their fitness goals, they have to pay
for expensive gym memberships, and spend hours using gym equipment or lift heavyweights. Sure, gym facilities are designed to help its members sweat, but this doesn’t mean that this is the sole technique to achieve optimal fitness.
Doing yoga daily provides the same benefits as the gym, but peacefully and safely. Unlike gym equipment that usually focuses on a specific area of the body, yoga combines cardio, functionality, and strength training.
2. Improves Flexibility
Doing yoga daily allows your body to gradually adapt to the practice. Doing simple poses and gradually increasing the intensity and duration of your practice can gradually stretch your body muscles.
Simple yoga poses, such as the plank, work on strengthening your abs, arms, legs, and shoulders. Once your body is already comfortable in this yoga pose, you can try out more complex yoga poses.
Since your muscles aren’t “shocked” by doing advanced yoga poses on your first try, you can prevent muscle spasms and injuries. Doing yoga every day can translate into progress. The more frequent you try out yoga, the sooner your body adapts to the physical demands of the activity.
This is one of the reasons why flexibility isn’t required on the first day of your yoga practice. A few minutes of doing yoga every single day can create a significant difference in your flexibility in the long run. You might even be surprised how flexible your body is after trying out yoga for two straight weeks!
3. Boosts Weight Loss
Your weight can affect your physical and mental health. Being overweight or obese can make you susceptible to chronic illnesses and diseases. Moreover, being too heavy can adversely affect your body image and self-esteem. Over time, this can result in anxiety, depression, and other long-term mental health conditions.
If weight loss is what you’re after, doing yoga daily can help. Spending a few minutes practicing yoga every day can boost your metabolic system and burn fat faster. This will prevent your body from gaining weight.
Additionally, doing yoga daily can also regulate or improve the hormonal balance in your body. Hormonal imbalance can lead to weight gain because of these points:
- Changing hormone levels is actually one of the reasons why most women gain weight during their menopausal age. During the menopausal period, the hormones responsible for regulating metabolism decreases at a significant rate.
- Aside from regulating this hormone, practicing yoga daily can also boost your body’s ability to manage stress hormones. Lower stress levels can mean fewer occurrences of overeating.
- By including yoga practice in your daily routine, the connection between your mind and body also improves. This can help you deal with unpleasant emotions better instead of immediately reaching for food the moment you experience even the smallest inconvenience.
4. Reduce Stress
Everyone experiences stress. However, when left untreated for a long period, chronic stress can trigger mental health problems, cardiovascular diseases, eating disorders, and even menstrual problems.
Doing yoga daily, regardless of how short your sessions are, can effectively ward off stress. People who regularly pose, breathe, and meditate in yoga can regulate their heart-rate variability (HRV).
When a person’s HRV is in its normal range, it’ll be easy for them to respond and manage stress in a more flexible way. This works because a slower heart rate gives the body more time to respond to stress rather than immediately absorbing it.
Start Small
Contrary to popular belief, starting a yoga practice is actually very easy. As beginners, you don’t have to force yourself to do complex yoga poses just to experience the benefits of this activity. Learning how to breathe and knowing how to meditate are two of the simplest ways on how you can start becoming a yogi.
Aside from being a holistic exercise, you can actually do yoga in any location. Are you still learning the ropes on yoga? Practice breathing techniques at home. Do you want to do yoga poses while enjoying nature’s views? Try out yoga in Bountiful, Utah or in another beautiful location to inspire your practice.
Once you covered the basics, you can start doing basic, and beginner-level poses, and invest in high-quality yoga gears. If you’re truly passionate about yoga and its benefits, doing it regularly will become a piece of cake!