My Top Benefits of a Yoga Practice!

Yoga appears to be everywhere these days and its popularity is only increasing. We have all been told we should be doing it, but why exactly?

It may seem like yoga is the latest trend or fad, but it’s actually a practice that originated in India thousands of years ago. Yogis for millennia have known about these practices and have dedicated their whole lives to them, science is finally catching up and confirming what these spiritual seers already know to be true.

There are so many benefits of a yoga practice, and as soon as you start you will notice the effects, so even as a beginner you will reap the rewards. These benefits are compounded by a consistent and regular practice.

Below I discuss the main benefits of yoga, which should be achieved through any style of yoga class:

-          The most obvious are the physical benefits. Through the physical aspects of a yoga practice you will become more flexible and mobile. Doing the things that you love will become a lot easier. Your body will not feel as tense and those niggles that you once accepted as a part of just existing, will start to ease. If you are a cyclist, yoga will increase your rate of recovery and you will less likely become injured from cycling. If you like to rock climb, then yoga will improve your core strength enabling you to climb for longer with ease. If you are a parent, then playing with your children will be more enjoyable as you won’t have to worry about aches and pains as you chase after them.

-          Yoga will provide you with a deeper connection to your body. Your body will feel more stable and you will have an improved awareness of how it feels and moves. This new-found clarity will improve your form when running or lifting weights and will also help you to tune in to what your body needs. You will intuitively know when you need to rest or be active, eat more or less, or be alone or sociable.

-          A yoga practice enables you to become more self-assured, stable and able to move through your life with courage, conviction and strong sense of purpose. This is due to the fact that yoga encourages you to become the observer of your mind. You start to notice what triggers different thoughts and you begin to see which thoughts are useful and those which are harming you. Becoming the witness to the thoughts that you are experiencing gives you a clearer sense of Self. It enhances your true essence, the part of you that is not influenced by societal expectations, conditioning or past traumas.

-          The meditation component of a full yoga practice helps you to become calmer and more grounded, it provides a strong foundation for coping well during tough times and an ability to deal with the stresses of life more easily. Meditation causes you to deal with past traumas and negative experiences that you have not fully processed or acknowledged. These unprocessed impressions are stored in our mind and body and accumulate as we progress through our life. When we meditate, these impressions start to come up, whereby we can then set them free. This pile of repressed ‘stuff’ that is getting in the way of our true happiness starts to diminish and we become a lot lighter. The everyday stresses of life appear smaller and more manageable as we are no longer carrying around the negative traumas and experiences from our past.

-          Yoga gives us the ability to relax easily and self-soothe when required. This is because yoga puts a big focus on the breath. By controlling the breath and slowing it down, we activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which moves you away from ‘fight or flight’ mode and in to a state of rest. When things are tough and we start to tense and take shallow breaths, we are able to switch to a deeper, more nourishing breath which calms down our nervous system until we feel ready to take the next step. From here we can act from a place of calm and clarity rather than emotion and stress.

So there we have it, these are just some of the benefits of a yoga practice. But yoga is a rich, deep tradition that has been practiced for thousands of years and the only way to get a true understanding of yoga is through experience.

Have I convinced you to try a yoga class yet? If so, check out my online and real-life yoga classes…. you won’t regret it!

Or get in touch if you have any questions at all :)