The Three Main Benefits Of Yoga
Ages back, about four thousand years ago, Yoga was practiced in India, and today it is popular all over the world and in numerous different styles and forms. Not only is the popularity of this form of exercise remarkable, but also is the results and benefits that people are getting from Yoga every day. The benefits can be broadly split into three different groups – physical, mental and spiritual benefits. Which benefits are most important to an individual will vary based on their preconceptions and motivations, but anyone can experience beneficial results in all three areas from a prolonged use of Yoga.
Physical Benefits
The first types of benefits are those purely on a physical level. Yoga is mainly considered as a group of exercises. Some disciplines will use these exercises to prepare the body for a deeper meditative process, but they will still experience physical benefits from performing them as exercises. The breathing exercises aka Pranayama has immediate health benefits due to the high intake of oxygen into the system. This oxygen is transported by the blood to our organs and tissues, which will become sick without sufficient oxygen and nutrients. Commonly these tissues and organs may starve of nutrients due to many reasons including poor oxygen intake (quality & quantity), circulation of bad blood or diseases within the body.
Yoga increases the oxygen intake, removes blockages in the circulation to ensure it’s safe delivery and also stimulates the lymphatic system to aid in the removal of toxins from our system. It also boosts our bodies’ auto immune system to deal with any invading disease or viruses. Beyond this internal health which many people take for granted, Yoga will also greatly increase a person’s balance, flexibility and muscle strength.
Mental Benefits.
The mental benefits of Yoga are certainly very impressive. Many people see this as the most important benefit that we can gain from Yoga. The ability to focus on one’s breathing has a natural consequence of allowing extraneous thoughts to melt away and a state of calmness to be introduced. This is not a feat to be taken lightly as it provides a valuable skill in the ability to remain calm amidst turmoil. A mother can use this when everything happens at once in the home, a businessperson can use it to focus on a single task despite everyone around him being panicked or a soldier can use it to block out the bullets and noise and focus on an important task.
Yoga also requires a high level of discipline from those practicing it – both the discipline required to perform the exercises themselves and the discipline needed to stick to a regular exercise regime. Those who have mastered yoga and pranayama, this becomes naturally easy for them.
Spiritual Benefits
Usually beginners of yoga will not understand the spiritual aspects for some time. It is tough to count the benefits of spiritual attainments. Yoga itself is built around a philosophy that includes its own set of ethics, but these are seldom taught as part of Western Yoga practise. Instead the spiritual benefits we talk about tend to be a personal acceptance of yourself and contentment with your place in life. For some people it goes beyond that but discussing spiritual feelings is always difficult to do so broadly. In conclusion, spiritual satisfactions cannot be measured generally because every individual’s belief system is as unique as the person itself.
