If you want to start exercising more often, you actually might want to consider trying out yoga. You may not think of it as traditional exercise, but it is still extremely beneficial. Here are some of the benefits of yoga.
Your Stress Will Go Down
One of the main reasons that people take up yoga is to try to combat stress and anxiety. Any time of exercise can actually help you deal with your anxieties, but yoga seems to be particularly beneficial. While high intensity workouts do not seem to reduce stress at a cellular level, yoga does. Normally, exercise can actually increase the amount of physical stress that you put on your body, but it still helps with overall stress because it provides needed distractions and it helps make your brain and body stronger and more capable of dealing with anxieties. Yoga, however, can actually turn off certain genes that cause oxidative stress and inflammation. Unlike other types of exercise, it lowers your heart rate and blood pressure, which can calm you down much more efficiently than other types of exercise.
Your Self-Esteem Will Improve
Research shows that more men than previously believed have low self-esteem. Luckily, a big part of yoga is telling yourself that you are divine and worthwhile, which can improve your self-esteem. Yoga also helps with self-examination and reflection, which helps you tap into certain emotions that are good for your self-esteem, including gratitude, empathy, and forgiveness.
Sleeping Will Become Easier
Yoga is definitely an extremely good way to treat insomnia because the inability to sleep is often associated with stress. Studies show that yoga improves sleep quality and often renders sleep medication unnecessary. The muscle relaxation techniques that you learn in yoga definitely help your body to feel calm as you fall asleep. Additionally, the ability to breathe slowly and deeply is important when you want to go to sleep. Since breathing exercises are often used in yoga, you will get better at slowing your breath rate and night, which will help you fall asleep quickly. Breathing exercises also treat sleep conditions like sleep apnea, which occurs when you continuously jerk awake throughout the night in order to avoid suffocating because your respiratory system briefly stopped working.
Your Joints Will Get Stronger And Less Achy
Yoga can strengthen key muscles to help you improve your posture and avoid joint pain. Sitting at a desk can ruin your posture, but certain muscle building exercises can do the same. Lifting and other types of muscle training can actually cause you to slump a little bit. However, yoga can strengthen muscles that prevent slumping. The relaxation involved in these exercises also can prevent joint pain, while other types of exercises can actually be hard on your joints. Yoga can also help you improve your flexibility without hurting your joints.
You Will Have an Easier Time at Work
According to the CDC, mindfulness can increase your wellbeing at work and it can decrease the likelihood of burnout and other productivity issues. Since mindfulness is often associated with the meditation techniques that come with yoga, yoga can help you out at work. Mindfulness helps you deal with stress, which is especially important in jobs where you might be worried about burning out. If you are not worried about burnout, yoga can still help you out because it helps prevent fatigue and increase resilience while you work. When your general workplace wellbeing improves, you can start feeling happier even outside of the workplace because work is an important and impact part of your life.
Your Sex Life Will Improve
Research has shown that yoga can actually treat premature ejaculation better than medication. Medication usually works about 82% of the time to treat premature ejaculation, but some studies show that yoga works much closer to 100% of the time. The reason that yoga is so effective must do with the fact that yoga can treat stress, which is one of the main causes of premature ejaculation. Even for men who do not suffer from premature ejaculation, yoga can extremely helpful to your sex life because it improves your mood, increases flexibility, and strengthens your pelvic floor muscles. In fact, studies show that yoga can improve your sex drive, sexual satisfaction, performance, and orgasm.
It Boosts Your Immune System
When you are stressed, your immune system can suffer. Therefore, yoga can definitely help give your immune system a little boost. Additionally, the exercises help you contract certain muscles around organs, which increase the rate at which you drain your lymph nodes, which is an important process in fighting off infections, combating cancer, and draining your body of any toxins. Your cells will also start to function more efficiently, which can also help you avoid diseases.
It Is Still Considered Exercise
If you want to lose weight, then your first thought probably is not yoga. However, as with any type of exercise, yoga will help you burn calories and shed a couple of pounds. Yoga also helps to improve your heart rate, metabolism, strength, and balance. Therefore, it has most the benefits of normal exercise. Yoga also has spiritual and motivational elements that can help you stay inspired to live a healthier and more mindful lifestyle. Therefore, it is unsurprising that research shows that people who engage in yoga are generally healthier individuals.
It Helps With Your Digestive System
Stress can trigger and exacerbate ulcers, irritable bowel syndrome, constipation, and other digestive system problems. Reducing stress through yoga also seems to decrease your risk of colon cancer because movement allows waste to move for freely and rapidly through your digestive system. Without this movement, you can end up with unhealthy growths and tumors on your colon. Many of the twisting poses that are popular in yoga facilitates the required digestive system motility.
Yoga is becoming more and more popular, which makes sense because it is associated with a wide range of health benefits. It reduces stress more than other types of exercises and it is closely associated with living a better lifestyle. Therefore, if you want to find a new way to exercise or to relax, then you should definitely try out yoga.
