If you feel a drop in energy it’s tempting have some food, a drink or coffee. Now, using 15 minutes per day to practice yoga could boost your energy and change your mood (and your health) in many ways.
Studies have shown that yoga can improve your health in many ways. It:
1. Improves flexibility and strength
Many yoga poses work simultaneously on strengthening your body parts and making them more flexible. This feels great. As a result, you will sit up straighter, the air can flow through your body more easily and it can alleviate some aches and pains.
2. Restores hormonal balance and fuels the metabolic system
With daily yoga the levels of the stress hormone cortisol will be lowered, leading to less overeating. You will get a better mind-body connection, listen more to your body instead of reaching for food to suppress negative feelings your might have. Poses like the baby pose improve the digestion.
3. Your energy circulates better and doesn’t get blocked
Yoga, with its singular synergy of body and breath work will awaken the main energy centres in your body. It lengthens the spine, thus allowing energy to circulate throughout the whole body, it opens the chest encouraging the intake of more breath.
4. Reduce stress
Many work places now offer lunch-time yoga sessions because it’s been shown that yoga is an amazing stress buster. In many yoga classes there are three elements; poses, breathing link to mindfulness meditation and meditation link to mindfulness meditation. Studies have shown that people who regularly practice all three elements have a lower heart rate, giving the body the ability to respond to stress in a more flexible way.
When experiencing insomnia, practice relaxing asanas or postures, such as forward fold (uttanasana) or lying on your back with your feet up the wall.
5. Breathe better
The different breathing methods in yoga will make you feel more relaxed and balanced and will help you face the day with confidence and calm. You can adopt those techniques to increase or lower your body heat, to calm yourself down, to fall asleep quicker or to get more energetic.
6. Be happier
A study on yoga and meditation.
has shown that practicing regular yoga and meditation results inhigher levels of the happiness hormone, serotinin.
7. Become more mindful
Yoga and mindfulness go hand-in-hand. When practicing yoga, you will shift your awareness to the sensations, thoughts, and emotions that accompany a given pose. That awareness will bring the mind back to the present moment – the main aim of mindfulness link to mindfulness – where it can stay happy and focused.
8. Improve concentration and think clearer
Yoga poses and meditation require you to concentrate on your breathing. This calms your mind and makes you more mentally relaxed. As a result you’ll able to remember and retain more information, because your mental stress and physical tension is being reduced. You’ll therefore be able to think sharper and have more organised thoughts.
9. Live longer
As you know now, yoga will help you increase your level of fitness, reduce your stress levels and make you a happier person. All those elements may add valuable years to your life.
Yoga decreases the risk of heart disease, and it reduces the pace of your breathing which has been directly linked to a longer lifespan. Recent studies have shown that the meditation link to meditation element of yoga might help delay the process of ageing by protecting the telomeres (caps) at the end of our chromosomes, too.
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