The Benefits of Yoga

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Article featured in Avatar - Volume 3, Issue 6 (December 2009).

The Benefits of Yoga
By Katrina and Maria (Gidig)

Salutations, everyone! As we've all learned by this point in our lives, stress, especially that comes with the holidays, can be overbearing; one can nearly be attacked by the strength of stress at times. Around this time of year, our homes can be hectic with Great-Aunt Eleanor coming to stay for a week. We feel rushed to find the money for presents, food and other celebrations. Among all these stresses, we often forget to step back, take a deep breath, and just let ourselves relax and be at ease. One great way to help us find peace with in ourselves is yoga! With this, we can get a handle on our life. Furthermore, yoga has multiple physical and mental benefits that make this exercise completely beneficial and worth your time!

There are many, many physical benefits of yoga, many that those who do yoga regularly don't even realize! Just a few of the many benefits include an increase in flexibility, organ massage, increased blood flow, muscle toning, and improvements in posture and endurance. Other benefits include psychological benefits such as stress management, boosted optimism, and increased self-control.

Yoga can easily help your muscles become more flexible. It does this by stretching muscles, and reaching muscles and joints not normally used in everyday life. Maybe you’ll be able to do that backbend you’ve always wanted to do.

As odd as it may sound, yoga massages your organs as well. Our normal everyday activity does not always include exercises that massage your organs. As a result of this, your organs become healthier, stronger, and warn you easier in the case of disease.

Yoga increases the blood flow throughout your body as many other exercises do. This helps keep your heart rate going and your body healthy! Furthermore, practicing yoga routinely can decrease your blood pressure, which, unless you are told otherwise by your doctor, can be a very positive aspect of this form of exercise.

Another physical benefit is that yoga aids in toning your muscles depending on which poses you choose! Different classes focus on different groups of muscles, depending on the instructor. However, most yoga classes focus on many of the larger muscles (biceps, triceps, abdominal muscles, etc).

Unsurprisingly (do to all of the many positions held for extended periods of time in yoga), these exercises greatly improve one's posture. As you learn how to hold different poses and strengthen your back, you'll have a much easier time standing and sitting up straight. As a result, you'll not only look more confident, but you'll also be more confident!

Because of yoga incredible knack of increasing endurance both on the yoga mat and "on the field" (metaphorically, of course), many football players, dancers, swimmers, tennis players, and all sorts of other athletes practice yoga in order to better their endurance at their own game.

Obviously, all of the physical and mental benefits combined can be great stress reduction tools. However, this one category is strong enough to stand alone. In yoga, the abnormal positions you are asked to do take all of your brain energy, so you tend to forget the stresses of your every day life and focus solely on the task at hand. It also teaches you to focus purely on the present instead of what we usually think about: the future or past.

Yoga, for many years, has been theorized to reduce depression, which is something that many of us here at TeenHelp have a very strong relationship--either directly, indirectly, or both--with. Many of the world's most famous yoga instructors believe that yoga allows those participating to bring negative feelings to the surface and release those negative feelings of sadness, depression, or anger.

Optimism is often said to be the key to a healthful and fun lifestyle, and yoga is a great way to bring about this optimism. Doing yoga regularly can balance many hormones, giving those who do yoga a sense of stability and happiness about life.

Obviously, yoga does take a lot of self-control while actually being performed. However, many yogis believe that yoga helps to bring that self-control one feels while actually practicing yoga into other aspects of life, such as social situations.

Where Do I Start?

Attending a yoga class can be intimidating your first time if you're not sure what to expect. There's one secret, however, that you should keep in mind. Basically, those attending yoga classes aren't there for you; chances are, they won't even be paying attention to you! Others in the class are there for themselves and want to obtain these health benefits for themselves. They'll be immersed in their own bodies, minds, and souls, and you should focus on doing the same. Check at local dance studios, YMCAs and other community organizations for schedules of yoga classes. If you're not comfortable with going to a class just yet, check out a "Yoga for Beginners" DVD at your local library and get to work! You never know how much better you're going to feel after trying yoga unless you go ahead and start!