With the New Year fast approaching, now is the time to start thinking about your intentions and goals. Fitness and health are typically the top of everyone's list, but this year instead of falling into the same cycle of obtaining a gym membership and cancelling it within the same month, consider a different form of exercise that has proven results!
There's a reason millions of people practice yoga on any given day. Yoga provides so many benefits for both the mental and physical health of our bodies.
In one 30 minute class, you can burn calories, enhance focus, strengthen and tone the body, and so much more! I offer free yoga classes that we can do together live.
This practice is exactly what you have been looking for to start the New Year as the best version of yourself.
Read on for a list of six key ways that you can use yoga for your physical and mental needs.
1. Aids in Weight Loss
Most people don't associate yoga with weight loss, however you will notice that most longtime yogis do have a more slender body.
You'll be surprised to learn that you can burn just as many calories in a 30 minute yoga class as you would spending an hour weightlifting in the gym.
This is because yoga requires you to move, hold, and squeeze your entire body weight throughout most of the practice. It can be incredibly challenging for men at first because they tend to weigh more than women.
Studies have also shown that slower practices, like restorative yoga, have incredible benefits for overweight women.
This is due to the fact that slowing down during a workout encourages cortisol to lower. When this hormone is high, it prevents weight loss.
“The postures focus on relaxation and stress reduction and are more feasible for overweight individuals.”- Dr. Araneta
2. Full Body Detoxification
Healthy detoxification and elimination systems in our body are crucial for full body health. If one of these systems isn't working properly, disease can manifest.
Stagnation throughout the day like sitting at a desk, prevents proper circulation through our bodies and lowers the rates by which we can remove toxins.
The poses performed in yoga allows these systems to perform optimally. Through poses like twists, forward folds, and inversions, our body is placed in unfamiliar postures that allow bloodflow to increase.
Yoga is like a lympahtic drainage massage that you can perform on yourself that prevents infections, disease, and other pathogenic illnesses.
3. Strengthen and Tone
Maintaining strength, especially as you age, is vital to keep the natural structure of your body strong.
Our musculoskeletal system protects our organs, keeps us upright, and allows us to move.
As our muscles deteriorate with age, full body exercises like yoga provides the right amount of tension on these muscles to keep them strong and allow you to feel younger longer.
Yoga gently lengthens and strengthens the muscles which is why yogis have the long and lean look.
4. Increase Flexibility and Mobility
There is no other workout that can help you lose weight, grow your muscles, and increase flexibility.
Through our day to day, tensing up is natural. We do it automatically when we are stressed and that stress ends up being held in our muscular tissue throughout our body.
Through stretching, we release this tension and in turn, release stress.
Opening up the body allows our joints to feel more mobile. An increase in mobility will prevent common back pains and aches that occur as we age.
5. Improves Memory and Focus
Brain health can be improved through the practice of yoga.
When you do yoga, your brain cells develop new connections. These changes occur in brain structure as well as function, resulting in improved cognitive skills, such as learning and memory.
An important aspect of yoga is balance and focus. When you lose focus in yoga by allowing your mind to wander, you tend to fall out of poses, so yoga encourages you to stay focused and aligned throughout the practice which helps calm the mind.
6. Increase in Mindfulness
Power Yoga, can be incredibly physically demanding, but a style called Yin Yoga, can be challenging on the mind as you find complete stillness.
In your day, you probably can't think of a time where you just allowed your mind to stop racing and you tuned into your breath. Most likely, you breathe shallow and quick, but if you watch a baby breathe you will see they take long, slow breaths from their bellies.
In yoga, the breath is key, and the breath guides us to deeper levels of relaxation and calmness.
Finding stillness on the mat, will teach you to look for it off the mat, and promote a sense of peace as you move through the stresses of life.
Start your yoga journey by joining my ✨FREE ✨All Levels Yoga + Meditation Class
Register here to get a reminder before I go LIVE.🙏
- ♡ Allisun, your yoga instructor ~
Interested in becoming a blog contributor / vegan mentor at Veginner Cooking? Contact us!
Comments