Can Yoga Eradicate Ill-Health?

Most people associate yoga with difficult backbends or twisting one’s body to unimaginable positions. To them, yoga is a tool to increase flexibility. While that may be so, yoga has innumerable other benefits. Chiefly, yoga is a powerful practise that can rejuvenate and revitalize ones’ health.  It is especially helpful for those who are suffering from chronic illnesses like diabetes, obesity, bone and heart problems.

Still not convinced? Let’s look at some of the important benefits of yoga in detail –

1. Good for joint health - Yoga postures are low impact, which means your joints are not stressed when you perform them. Yoga strengthens the muscles around the joints, which means the load that the joints have to carry is reduced.  People with osteoarthritis have reported seeing marked improvements in their mobility and pain management with yoga.

2. You breathe better - Yogic practises like deep breathing pranayama is very helpful in settling down the breath. In the practice, you focus your attention on a point and take deep, slow breaths. It conditions you to breathe from the diaphragm, which is the right way to breathe. Moreover, it calms the mind down and reduces anxiety levels. It can also help with sinus problems.

3. No more stress - One of the widely touted benefits of yoga is it gets rid of stress. After a session of yoga, people feel calm because yoga causes the body to release endorphins in the body, hormones that make you happy. Yoga also calms the mind and stills it, therefore you start to gain perspective on stressful thoughts. Over time, these thoughts loosen their grip on you.

4. Can reduce inflammation - Inflammation is a chief contributor to health ailments like diabetes, cancer and heart disease. Studies have found that practising yoga regularly causes inflammatory markers in the body to come down.  Yoga practices like deep breathing can effectively reduce free radicals in the body and rejuvenate body cells.

5. Improves quality of life - Studies conducted on cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy found that regular yoga practise reduced the side effects of chemo such as nausea and vomiting.  Moreover, yoga has been found to reduce pain and fatigue in the body, thus helping those chronic illnesses manage their symptoms better.

6. Can combat depression - Yoga is known to have an anti-depressant effect on the mind. This could be because it reduces the cortisol (the stress hormone) levels in the body.

Overall, yoga offers significant benefits for the mind and the body. Experience these benefits by taking up yoga on a regular basis and living a happy and joyful life.