Despite being completely locked into a digital society where faceless interaction means more than nourishing personal mental health, spiritual and traditional practices are becoming more ingrained in our daily lives, they’re actually getting pretty trendy again. We’ve come to the end of our tether when it comes to the emotional black holes that a digital world is having. Because of this, we are seeing a rise in popularity of wellness and mindfulness techniques. In a nutshell – Yoga is back with a vengeance.

1. It Strengthens Your Immune System

What did you do to strengthen your immune system today? Are you prone to coughs and colds? Chances are that you are living your life at 100 miles per hour, eating on the go, working long hours and getting little sleep. All in all, it is likely that you are always operating in your fight or flight mode and your stress hormones are ever present.

Yoga helps to lower our stress levels and calm the nervous system, which in turn signals to the immune system that it can relax and stop attacking all of the foreign bodies in the system; inflammation will begin to decrease. Our lungs are also thoroughly exercised during the deep breathing during a yoga session and circulation to vital organs is increased both of these elements contribute to a strong and healthy immune system and better health.

2. It Encourages You To Eat Mindfully

Through Yoga, you become more aware and connected to your emotions, and without a doubt – many of our choices that surround food are influenced by the emotion we were feeling at the time. As a mind –body connection is built, you become more in tune and in control of the emotions that are involved with any cravings and binges. 

Food inherently is connected to our wellbeing. Picking foods that are full of saturated fat and refined sugar or carbohydrates is going to have a toll on our overall health, our motivation, and our productivity levels. Making smart, informed and healthy decisions surrounding food will lead to how content, happy and confident we feel.

3. Your Sleep Is Improved

A study that has been carried out on the effects of yoga for people that suffer from both primary and secondary insomnia has shown that after a course of 6-8 weeks of yoga, there were significant improvements sleep. From the length of time, it took them to fall asleep, the total time that they slept and the quality of their sleep.

Issues relating to sleep are often linked to stress and anxiety and a lack of sleep contributes to our long-term physical and mental health. Sleep is a function of our parasympathetic nervous system and yoga increases the dominance of this system.

4. Protection of Physical Injury

Yoga complements many other forms of exercise and enables us to safeguard against injuries that could occur, it also supports the body in functioning at its very best meaning that it is able to heal injuries quickly and effectively.

Osteopathy and Physiotherapy experts, Total Health Clinics report, “Through increasing your strength and flexibility, yoga helps to highlight areas of your body which may be underworked in your other workouts. By allowing you to focus your time on developing unattended muscles, they will soon function to the best of their ability.”

5. Supports Emotional Health

Dealing with emotional pain and trauma is unbearably difficult – even when you have a good support network. We are prone to developing repetitive thought patterns that only intensify our feelings of turmoil. Through yoga, the emotional and spiritual aspects of our being are united with the physical and we this is when we begin to experience feelings of well-being.

The fluid movements of yoga influence mental and physical emotional release and balance our energies and the healing effects can be felt after just completing one session!

There you have it, 5 solid reasons for you to explore and introduce yoga into your life. Good luck and Namaste!