5 Health Benefits of Yoga

Spending more time at home does not have to mean sacrificing your health and wellness goals or buying bulky and expensive exercise equipment, especially with the health benefits offered by daily yoga practice. Adding yoga to your morning routine can help build strength and manage stress, as well as improve your posture as you work from home and ease some of the low back or arthritis pain you may be experiencing. Yoga has also been shown to improve flexibility and help you sleep better when part of a daily routine.

Strength Building

Yoga, like calisthenics, uses your body weight and various positions to build up your strength. Holding a pose strengthens your targeted muscles, toning and strengthening them so you can hold your body in those positions for longer and graduate to more difficult poses over time. The breathing technique used in yoga, as well as the slow and deliberate movement between positions, helps increase blood flow to your muscles. This warms them up to help limit injuries from daily activities or more strenuous workouts such as running or even work tasks. Adding bodyweight exercises to your routine can give you a warmup and stretch which is still building strength, helping you meet your fitness goals easier. For those who are looking for an easy way to get into better strength, the ability to do yoga at home without expensive equipment or an audience can be the most comfortable way to build a daily exercise habit.

Posture Improvements

Whether you work on your feet or at a desk all day, poor posture can lead to health complications such as joint pain and skeletal misalignments. The stretching, movement and positions highlighted by yoga can help correct your posture in the long-term as well as provide immediate relief to stiffness related to the way you sit, walk or twist during your day. For workers who are on the computer all day, yoga can strengthen core muscles used to help you comfortably sit upright as well as stretch leg muscles which have been relatively stationary for long periods. You can find online videos or position charts designed specifically for improving posture and even print out pictures of yoga routines to keep by your workstation to remind you to stretch and move in healthy ways throughout your day.

Better Flexibility

Yoga has long been hailed as one of the best ways to improve your flexibility and has been incorporated into some physical therapy treatments to regain your range of motion after surgery or injury. Beginners of this practice can get discouraged when they cannot settle as far into a pose as instructors or classmates, but getting as deep into the stretches as you can without pain and breathing into where you feel the stretch can relax those muscles and let you ease deeper. The more you practice, the more flexible you become. Bodybuilders will use yoga stretches as a warmup and cool-down for weightlifting routines to help counteract some of the flexibility problems which accompany bulky muscles.

Ease Low Back and Arthritis Pain

According to experts, both building core strength and improving posture can ease low back pain while working on flexibility can reduce the discomfort of swollen and arthritic joints. The advice for most people who suffer these things, and many more, is usually to find healthy ways to move more. Since yoga can be done just about anywhere and uses a variety of poses targeting different parts of the body, medical professionals will often recommend exercise routines that incorporate the practice.

Manage Stress and Sleep Better

Morning and evening stretching sessions, as well as meditation, have been shown to help manage stress and improve sleep for most people. With the right yoga routine, you can stretch and meditate at the same time while targeting specific parts of the body you want to work on for posture, flexibility or strength. Some of the positions can even be started before you get out of bed, to ease yourself into the day and warm up your stationary muscles.

There are numerous health benefits to adding yoga to your daily routine, from stretching a newly awakened body before beginning your day to targeting your core muscles to relieve back pain. Whether you use streaming videos or printed posture pictures, you can use yoga as a healthy movement away from your computer and break up your day, reduce stress and build strength.