The Mind and Body Benefits of Yoga

Benefits of Yoga for the Mind

Yoga is good for the mind as it tends to promote mental peace, strength, and well being. Some of the postures test a person for patience, while some for endurance. Some of the most obvious mental benefits of yoga include:

 • Stress Relief: Yoga aids in alleviating stress caused sue to mounting pressure and day to day hectic schedules. It tends to bring that calmness and soothing feeling, which helps a person to keep stress at bay.

 • Promotes Self Esteem: Having pride in oneself is an important trait to have in life. Yoga helps a person boost his/her self esteem by way of a person regarding him higher and higher as he advances and progresses to further levels of asana.

 • Improves Concentration: Yoga involves many different kinds of postures, and some of them specifically help a yoga practitioner to improve his/her concentration.

• Relief from Depression: As a person advances through the various levels of yoga postures, the feelings of stress and depression tend to recede. The reason behind this is that yoga makes the person fitter and stronger physically. Invariably, the feel good factor spills over to the mental make-up of the person, which helps him escape depression.

 • Improves Mental Stamina: Holding yoga postures for long can be extremely challenging to anyone. Even the most experienced of yoga practitioners find that there’s always a scope for improvement. This helps in building mental strength which helps a person take up postures that he/she can’t perform well as a challenge. This strength converts into stamina when the person is able to gradually perform the postures for long enough.

Benefits of Yoga for the Body

As one might imagine, yoga is an n excellent fat burning and an excellent muscle building exercise as well. Some of the prime benefits of yoga for one’s body include:

 • Increases Flexibility: Yoga has many postures such as chakrasana, padmasana, etc., which focus on flexibility of the core and the limbs of the person. Practicing these postures daily will help a person get better at them eventually, which means greater flexibility.

 • Tones Muscles: some of the postures in yoga such as sarvangasana, the control and management of one’s body weight through arm, back, and shoulder muscles is key. Likewise, other postures bring in the movement and toning of muscles present in various other parts of the body.

 • Cardiovascular Fitness: Contrary to what many people might think, yoga is actually very beneficial for one’s heart health. In fact, people with serious cardiovascular conditions such as heart attack, stroke, diabetes, cholesterol, etc. should practice yoga daily. This is because yoga burns up all the waste that is present as deposits in blood vessels and arteries, thereby clearing up the route for a smooth blood flow process.

Therefore, the benefits of yoga are indeed useful and helpful to improve or maintain one’s life.