Yoga has grown from its ancient roots into a worldwide lifestyle phenomenon. Besides being a spiritual practice, it also provides an excellent exercise regimen for people of all ages. It increases strength and flexibility, strengthens your heart, and improves balance and endurance. It even improves your cognitive skills, such as memory and attention.
Flexibility
Flexibility refers to the range of motion of your muscles and joints. Being flexible improves your ability to bend and twist, which helps reduce the risk of injury when you’re doing other exercises or going about your day-to-day activities. Flexibility also improves balance and posture.
Yoga focuses on stretching the muscles and joints of your body to increase flexibility. Some yoga poses can be challenging, but you can modify the exercises to meet your fitness level. For example, you can use props to make the stretches more comfortable and accessible.
Regular physical activity, including yoga and fitness exercises, increases your strength and flexibility. Combined, these exercises give you a well-rounded approach to enhancing your physical abilities. In addition, yoga and fitness exercises have been linked to lowered blood pressure, heart rate and body fat. Studies have also shown that yoga may improve your immune system function. These benefits can translate to greater lifelong health and wellness.
Strength
Yoga poses require a lot of balance and core strength, which makes them excellent workouts for your entire body. Stronger muscles provide support for your joints, decreasing the risk of injury during yoga poses and increasing your ability to hold a pose longer.
The more physically demanding styles of yoga can also improve your strength. However, Denis notes that these forms of yoga build functional strength (which helps you move better throughout the day) rather than maximal strength (that you get through power training).
A handful of studies have found that regular practice of yoga can help prevent frailty in older adults. One study in particular found that incorporating yoga into a weekly exercise regimen improved the strength, balance and flexibility of participants. However, to see improvements in these areas, you’ll need to do a combination of both yoga and strength training. Doing both on separate days can allow your muscles to recover between workouts, allowing you to push harder during your strength sessions.
Balance
Balance is more than just about the ability to stand up straight. It’s also about your body’s proprioception, the ability to sense where it is in space and make small adjustments to stay upright. This skill becomes more important with age, and yoga poses that require you to move in a range of positions can help improve balance, according to research (2).
The balancing postures of yoga are ideal for working on this, but all the other poses in a well-rounded yoga practice can also improve balance. For example, seated side bends open up the sides of the body and the rib cage, making it easier to maintain stability.
A recent study (3) surveyed studies that looked at changes in balance and FOF through yoga, and found evidence of improvement in a healthy population. However, the quality of reporting and study design varied greatly, making it difficult to compare results across studies.
Mental Health
Incorporating yoga into a healthy lifestyle provides a comprehensive approach to managing mental health. In addition to its physical benefits, yoga also helps to improve mood, decrease stress, and boost concentration.
All types of exercise trigger the release of helpful brain chemicals such as endorphins, and yoga is no exception. Yoga also provides an opportunity to slow down and breathe deeply, which can help reduce feelings of anxiety and depression.
Yoga has been shown to physically change the structure and function of parts of the brain that play a role in memory, attention, awareness, and thought. In one study, participants practicing yoga demonstrated improvements in these areas of the brain, along with reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety.
A consistent yoga practice may also help to prevent or alleviate many physical conditions, including fibromyalgia and chronic pain syndrome. Moreover, yoga can help to improve sleep patterns, which are often disrupted by mental illness. This can significantly impact healing and overall quality of life.