A lot of people avoid yoga because they don’t see the benefit of it. After all, how helpful can it be to put your body into a lot of weird (and painful looking) poses? As it turns out, it’s more beneficial than you’d think.
Here are just a few reasons as to why yoga should be included in everyone’s fitness plan:
It’s good for your heart. Numerous studies have shown that people who do yoga on a regular basis tend to have lower blood pressure and are less likely to suffer from heart disease and stroke.
It increases your flexibility. The poses that you perform in yoga make you more limber. Also, when you stretch your muscles, you cause them to release lactic acid which reduces your levels of stiffness and pain. It also improves your range of motion, making it easier to move in the course of doing your day to day activities.
It helps you build strength. Most of the poses that you hold in yoga are weight bearing poses. That means that you have to hold up your own body weight, which increases your muscle mass. So, the longer you do it, the stronger you will become.
It reduces your stress levels. Because yoga is based around breathing, performing this type of exercise on a regular basis is akin to meditation. It relaxes you and helps you remove anxiety and tension from your body so that you don’t have to suffer from the stress-related illnesses such as a low immune system or cardiac issues.
It helps you focus. When you start to relieve your stress via focused breathing, you start to let all of your cares and worries slip away. This helps you concentrate on tasks that require a lot of focus as you’ve released any other thoughts that may have sidelined you previously.
Yoga is beneficial to you in so many ways, you’re really doing yourself a disservice if you don’t do it. You work so hard to achieve health and wellness, make it almost a sure thing by adding yoga to your fitness plan – starting today.
