Yoga has grown in popularity due to its incredible benefits for your mind and body. If you didn’t know, yoga has been around for about 5,000 years and is rooted in Indian philosophy. There are many types of yoga out there, from a relaxing yin practice to the more sweat-inducing ashtanga or power yoga practices. And that’s the beauty of yoga. There is something for everyone and at every level. So why should you add yoga to your weekly routine? Well, here’s five reasons you should give yoga a try.
Yoga Reduces Anxiety and Depression
If you suffer from anxiety or depression, yoga is a wonderful way to ease the symptoms and boost your mood. Yoga helps reduce your stress response, lowers your blood pressure, and stabilizes your emotions. These combined benefits help restore balance to your mind and ease the tension in your body. This result is due to the mind and body connection , created by yoga and meditation. Meditation and breathwork relax your mind, while the yoga poses relax your body and strengthen the connection between the two.
Yoga Can Improve your Hair Health
This one might surprise you, but yoga can actually help prevent hair loss. You see, your scalp needs proper circulation and oxygen to grow healthy hair. Yoga helps enhance hair growth by improving the blood flow circulation in your body (and to your scalp). Beyond the physical impact of yoga on your hairline, the meditative benefits also support your hair goals. Stress is a huge cause of hair loss and in today’s world, it’s pretty easy to feel stressed. When our bodies are exposed to stress for too long, we might experience telogen effluvium. Telogen effluvium is a hair loss condition that is triggered by stress or trauma and leads to extreme hair shedding. If you are experiencing hair shedding or hair loss, combining yoga with natural hair restoration therapies like LLLT can help regrow your hair
Yoga Enhances your Energy and Vitality
If you are experiencing a late afternoon crash in energy, then you might want to give yoga a try. Yoga has been found to energize your body, brighten your mood, and ease tension. Since yoga helps improve circulation, reduces inflammation, and improves your mood- it just might be better than a cup of coffee to get you moving through your day.
Yoga Supports Healthy Weight Management
When you want to lose weight, you might automatically think you need to hit the treadmill or ther gym, but don’t forget to add yoga to your weightloss routine. Yoga has many benefits for weight management including:
- Enhances muscle tone
- Improves metabolism
- Reduces stress
- Burns calories
If you want to burn extra calories, check out a hot yoga class or a vinyasa yoga class. You can burn an upwards of 400-600 calories in just one hour of these classes. And while that calorie burn is high, you are also being gentle on your joints and improving flexibility while you lose weight. You could call this a win/win.
Yoga Can Improve Your Heart Health
Heart disease is on the rise, in fact every year about 655,000 Americans die from heart disease. In an effort to discover more ways to lower heart disease numbers, scientists have found a connection to yoga and a healthier heart. You might be wondering how a yoga class can improve your heart health and the answers might surprise you. Yoga can lower cholesterol, lower your heart rate, lowers your blood pressure, and of course reduces stress. These combined benefits help protect your heart from disease.
If you want to experience the many benefits of yoga, try out a local class or download a yoga app to start your journey. There are many different types of yoga classes out there from fast paced to relaxed, so take your time to find the right style of yoga for you.
About the Author
Tiffany Fuller is a writer with a passion for holistic wellness, working for illumiflow, a revolutionary brand dedicated to helping you fight hair loss.