benefits of yoga to your mind and spiritual well-being include:
•Sharper Concentration – Concentration is one of the essential elements to achieving success. Yoga scientifically creates harmony between the mind and body and helps everything you come into sharper focus.
The Salutation Seal is one of the easiest yoga poses and involves sitting cross-legged on the floor, joining the palms of your hands, keeping the spine straight and taking deep breaths as you rid your mind of worries.
•Relieves Stress – Yoga is highly recognized by mental professionals as a way to relieve stress and its by-products such as depression and anxiety. It works by relieving symptoms that are related to these disorders – bringing a sense of well-being.
Yoga activates the natural relaxation response of the body rather than relaxation by watching television. Any of the yoga deep breathing, meditation or rhythmic exercises can help to relieve the stress we all face in today’s world.
•Relieves Muscle Strain – When your muscles are relaxed, your mind can also relax. The gentle stretching exercises of yoga can switch your mind to concentrating on pain and anxiety to a more normal, relaxed state of the mind.
The Kneeling Lunge Twist and the Revolved Triangle poses will help to relieve muscle strain while increasing circulation to the brain. As your muscles relax, so will your mind.
•Center Your Attention – Yoga is recommended by medical professionals to help those with attention deficit disorders. These disorders can handicap children and adults by causing them to be inattentive and to react impulsively.
ADD benefits from the self-control and self-awareness yoga exercises such as breathing techniques and any that specifically promote rest and relaxation.
•Free the Spirit – An internal mental attitude locked in stress and tension can’t be free to explore life. Tuning in to our breathing and becoming focused on our bodies and minds are the true elements of yoga.
Meditation is the act of being at one with ourselves – no distractions, remembering or thinking. The ego will gradually fade away and you can better free yourself from the bad habits and behavior that is holding you back from experiencing all that life has to offer.
Yoga is often misunderstood as mysterious and only for ‘weirdoes’ who have time to meditate for hours and experience levitation. But, Western scientists and medical professionals are beginning to discover that yoga can help to relieve modern-day symptoms of stress and mental anxiety and anguish.
Anyone can practice yoga and receive its many benefits – whether you only have ten minutes a day or hours. Yoga benefits people of all walks of life and all age groups.
Grow Old Gracefully
Whether you’re a young beginner to the practice of yoga or a senior citizen who needs to increase flexibility and mental acuteness, yoga has something wonderful for you.
As you learn and grow from your yoga experience, you’ll find a difference when you look in the mirror and when you move your body. The new flexibility you’ll enjoy can be obtained by practicing stretching exercises for a few moments a day.
You’ll wonder at the ease of these valuable, yet gentle exercises and will soon look forward to every yoga session. After awhile of practicing yoga, most people say that they have a new attitude and a new appreciation of life.
Yoga as an exercise is nearly perfect – and yoga as a stress reliever and mind relaxer can slow down the ravages of time as we age and help every aspect of our mental concentration and well-being. Enter the practice of yoga with an open mind and expect to feel better than you ever have.
How Yoga Benefits All Age Groups
Whether you’re six or sixty – or beyond, yoga can enhance your life, both mentally and physically. A child can benefit from yoga’s self-discipline and mental and physical dexterity.
A senior citizen can benefit from the increased mobility, improved concentration and memory and much more. Practicing yoga regularly will naturally improve every aspect of the functioning of your body and mind.
Here are some simple aspects of yoga that will physically and mentally help all age groups:
•Flexibility – Yoga exercises are fun for children and help them keep the natural flexibility they’re born with. Older people can also become more flexible and can also help with health problems such as arthritis and bad circulation – no matter what time in life they begin the yoga practice.
Teens can also benefit from the mental aspects of yoga by building their inner strength so they’re more able to resist hormonal urges and bad influences.
•Eases Pregnancies – Young mothers can benefit from yoga exercises, both mental and physical. The backaches and poor circulation that sometimes occurs during pregnancy can be alleviated with gentle, but effective yoga exercises.
One word of caution – before practicing yoga during pregnancy, check with your health care professional to be sure that you’re performing the correct exercises for yours and the baby’s health.
•Obesity – All age groups where there are overweight conditions can benefit from the practice of yoga. Overeating that results from anxiety, depression and genetic maladies can be greatly helped by the meditation and poses of yoga.
When you build a more powerful body and have a more empowered mind, you can resist urges much easier than you can when you’re physically and mentally impaired.
•Asthma and Allergies – People of any age group who suffer from allergies and the debilitating effects of asthma can benefit from the deep breathing and relaxation techniques of Yoga.
Deep breathing opens passageways and delivers much needed oxygen to the body and mind. Yoga’s relaxation techniques were found to be very helpful in children who suffer from asthma.
•Concentration and Memory – Children who suffer from ADHD can greatly benefit from the Yoga exercises that concentrate on focusing the mind.
If you have a child in school, you’ll likely notice a marked improvement in his or her concentration abilities. Practicing yoga after the age of 50 can do wonders for your memory and to keep the disease of Alzheimer’s at bay.
The vitality and sharpness that can be developed by practicing yoga techniques are necessary for any age group. All of the yoga asanas are designed to help the body physically and mentally – increasing creativity and intuition besides the obvious physical benefits.
How Yoga is Helpful Physiologically
Yoga is responsible for creating a fine balance between the endocrine and the nervous systems in a human body and therefore it is very successful in influencing the good functioning of different body organs and systems directly or indirectly.
Yoga provides a unique interconnectedness between the physical, mental, and emotional levels of human body and gradually makes way for an easy understanding of various restrained areas of existence.
All this in turn helps in attaining some psychological
