To maintain a balance between oneself and environment is necessary for every human. Despite nowadays greater emotional as well as physical needs are given more priority. This is a reason why people suffer more stress, anxiety and also insomnia which is mainly due to improper lifestyle and physical exercise. Therefore, we need methods and techniques for the attainment of health and harmony; in this respect, yoga acts as an aid to one’s health.
The word ‘yoga’ is derived from Sanskrit and means ‘to join’/to unite’. Yoga exercises have a physical effect and bring a balance between body, soul and mind. Yoga helps us to deal with our problems, worries and everyday demands. It also influences us to understand ourselves, the purpose of life and develops our relationship with God. Yoga leads a spiritual path to knowledge and eternal bliss in the union of eternal self with universal self. Yoga is that supreme and infinite principle. Yoga is that ray of life that is universal cognizant that is awake.
The main aims of yoga in our daily life:
- Develops our Physical health
- Develops our mental health
- Develops our social health
- Develops our spiritual health
- helps in our self-realization
The above-mentioned mentioned goals are to be attained by:
- Showing love and kindness towards others
- Respect is shown towards life and nature
- Finding a peaceful state of mind
- Maintaining a vegetarian diet
- Healthy Lifestyle and positive vibes play an important role
- Behaviour towards culture, nations and religion
- Develops our physical health.
Here are some of the common health benefits of practising yoga:
- Helps reduce stress
- Relieves anxiety
- Improves concentration levels
- Helps reduce inflammation
- Can improve cardiac health
- Helps fight depression
- Improves quality of life
- Could reduce chronic pain
- Promotes quality of sleep
- Improves flexibility and balance
- May relieve migraines
- Promotes healthy eating habits
- Helps increase strength
- Improves immunity
Yoga is not about enrolling into a class. It is about self practice too. Here are some benefits of practicing yoga all by yourself:
- It builds discipline -When we get up 15 minutes early or take off that time from our routine, it builds self-discipline.
- Intimate understanding of your body – With gradual practice, you start listening to your body. You become aware of the resistance in certain muscles or asanas that come naturally to you.
- Understanding the teachings – Certain yoga postures take time and practice. And self practice gives you the best opportunity.
- Giving time to challenging postures – Self practice gives you time to build on a certain asana.
- There are many importance of doing yoga in life and some of them are.
Improves concentration and helps to stay focused:
The importance of yoga in modern life is endless. One of the best lessons yoga teaches us is to focus on the present. In recent studies, it was found that practicing yoga every day improves our IQ and memory. Everyday our focus and concentration get bombarded by our modern lifestyle in form of cell phones, laptops, TVs and social media. Thankfully yoga can bring our awareness to the present moment and help us to stay focused and improve our concentration.
For the city dwellers, yoga works like magic. Regular practice of yoga can improve the coordination and reaction time and help them with their busy schedule. It also improves their concentration and helps them to be less distracted by their thoughts.
The constant breathing practice of yoga helps to relax and shift the balance from the sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic nervous system. And by doing this it lowers the heart rate and breathing and decreases blood pressure.
Helps to build strength:
Yoga plays a vital role when it comes to strengthening your body. Doctors these days suggest their patients perform yoga on a daily basis. For example, for a new mothers, yoga is essential. Yoga helps to strengthen their body and helps them to get back in shape. The reason behind this is, yoga involves a lot of stretching exercises. So even it’s a total body workout, it is a low-impact exercise.
We start losing muscle mass around 40 and by 50 the process only accelerate. If we don’t do anything to exercise our muscles, we will only get weaker and lose independence later in our life. But thanks to yoga, we can prevent this process. Yoga involves a set of exercise where you constantly transition into different positions. By doing this, we challenge our muscles to support the weight of our body and strengthen it. Regular practice of yoga tones the muscles and helps us to look more attractive.
Our busy life makes us go through anxiety, low energy level or even in some cases through depression to balance our work and personal life. In such a case, yoga can bring peace and mindfulness to our life. One of the importance of yoga in modern life is it helps to calm our fluctuating energy level. Yoga is not just an exercise to be lean and thin. It helps us to build strong muscle. And strong muscle does more for us than look good. Doctors now prescribe to practice yoga to prevent back pain and arthritis.
Improves flexibility & posture:
Another importance of yoga in modern life is that it helps us to have a more flexible body and as a result, our life becomes just a bit more manageable. Often we suffer from knee joint pain. It’s because tight hips strain the knee joint due to improper alignment of the thigh and shin bones. Another discomfort occurs due to the inflexibility of muscle is back pain and poor posture. Tight hamstring flattens the lumbar spine and causes back pain. Inflexibility in muscle and connective tissue causes poor posture.
