7 Ways you didn’t know Yoga could help!

Yoga has been practiced for over 5000 years, but last year alone saw more than 250 scientific studies being conducted on the therapeutic effects of the discipline. The possible ties it has with health and well-being, point to being effective in especially chronic diseases such as multiple sclerosis, as well as lifestyle- related diseases such as obesity and cardiac problems.

Modern lifestyle is one that allows us to do more in less time, and is easy to go by…  but its numerous side effects have researchers in medicine and health-care looking for solutions in  yoga and other forms of alternative medicine.

Yoga naturally provides a lot of health benefits without the use of any costly equipment. One known fact about yoga is that as little as eight weeks of yoga can improve flexibility and reduce stress, but if you’re wondering how else yoga is beneficial, you’ve come to the right place.  It is surprising to know the multitude of ailments that can be remedied by including Yoga into your daily life. Yoga (while providing the usual health benefits), proves beneficial in other ways, such as:

1.     Improving concentration and creativity: It is an excellent way to improve your concentration levels and boost your creativity levels. Since it acts as a great stress-buster, yoga helps get creative juices flowing, while also calming the mind and removing tension through its inherent meditation.

2.     Helping with insomnia: Insomnia also called as the lack of sleep can be treated with yoga. The physical exertion when combined with the meditation techniques prove to be a lethal combination to insomnia and give even beginners a sound sleep. There are several asanas that can be practiced  These asanas will help promote sleep.

3.     Strengthening the heart and lungs: Slow yoga helps in the improvement of blood circulation, and when paired with its breathing exercises, yoga tones the heart and strengthens it, while improving the flexibility of cardiac muscles as well as the lungs.

4.     Improving intuition and boosts creativity: When stressed, the mind gets occupied with a lot of things, and moves into the defensive-offensive mode depending on one’s personality, while also blocking one’s inner gut-feeling and intuition. Yoga, by means of relieving stress and also giving room to concentrate on one’s thoughts, helps to get creative juices to flow, and allows one to focus on intuition as well as the in-built ‘gut-feeling’.

5.     Fighting obesity, toning muscles: Just like exercise, yoga helps to tone muscles and reduce body fat, but in a better way because it helps to burn more fat and feeds the blood more oxygen.

6.     Aiding digestion and absorption of food: Hatha yoga poses help even in curing chronic digestive ailments, and allow food to get properly assimilated because of the exercise as well as increased oxygen supply to the digestive system.

7.     Boosting the immune system: Since it tones the whole body as well as internal systems, such as the lymphatic system, yoga is very effective in boosting the immune system. Diseases such as the common cold along with other bacterial and viral diseases can be easily prevented with the help of yoga.

Yoga, if practiced and made as a part of daily routine will surely give great results with natural health benefits which include peaceful mind, great body and high spirit.