Benefits Of Yoga For Mental Health
According to Natalie Nevins, DO, the purpose of yoga is “A board-certified osteopathic family physician and trained Kundalini Yoga instructor in Hollywood, California, is to build mental and physical stamina, awareness, and harmony.”
Even though there are more than 100 different types or schools of yoga, most sessions usually involve breathing exercises, meditation, and adopting postures (also known as asana or poses) that stretch and flex different muscle groups.
Yoga is practiced by more than 36 million people in the US and many more worldwide. With a 5,000-year history, yoga is a practice with philosophical and spiritual roots. It is widely practiced for its physical benefits, especially in the US. However, your mental health will benefit significantly from yoga as well.
A yoga therapist can design specialized routines for patients that go along with their treatments and operations. Yoga can help the body heal and the patient deal with their symptoms more pleasantly and quietly.
- Physical Advantage: Dr. Nevins claims that practicing yoga can help relieve people who suffer from chronic pain, such as lower back pain, arthritis, headaches, and carpal tunnel syndrome. Additionally, yoga can reduce daytime sleepiness and blood pressure.
Other health advantages of yoga include:
- greater adaptability
- Improve respiration, energy, and vigor while maintaining a regulated metabolism and increasing muscle strength and tone
- reduction in weight
- enhanced athletic performance protection from injuries, cardio and circulatory health
- Mental Advantage: In addition to its physical health advantages, yoga has many other benefits, one of which is its ability to reduce stress. It is well-recognized that stress has harmful effects on the body and psyche.
Dr. Nevins claims that stress can appear in various ways, including headaches, back or neck pain, trouble falling asleep, drug use, and difficulty concentrating. Ashtanga yoga teacher training can be a very effective way to develop coping skills and a positive outlook.
Because yoga combines breathing and meditation, it may improve a person’s mental health. According to Dr. Nevins, regular yoga practice increases body awareness, lessens chronic stress patterns, calms the mind, focuses attention, and sharpens concentration. It also fosters tranquillity and clarity of mind. “Body- and self-awareness are particularly beneficial because they can help in the early detection of physical problems and allow for early preventive action,” she continues.
How much time should be spent on meditating? How Often?
Our mental and physical health can be enhanced with the help of meditation, which has gained popularity recently. In actuality, 14.2% of Americans, as of 2017, had tried meditation. According to research, regular meditation can help us manage our emotions, anxiety, and stress. Today, an increasing number of people rely on their daily meditation practice to help them feel centered and at ease.
Clinical mindfulness therapies, such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), frequently suggest practicing meditation for 40–45 minutes daily. The Transcendental Meditation (TM) tradition recommends 20 minutes twice daily. Interventions based on the Relaxation Response usually recommend 20-minute meditation sessions (Benson, 1975).
Shamatha meditation, or breath-focused meditation, is practiced for ten to fifteen minutes at a period by monks and nuns in Tibetan monasteries. The nuns and monks performed this multiple times every day. These recommended numbers, however, lack much magic.
Meditation is similar to physical exercise in that we are honing a talent. The more we utilize a skill, the better we use it. Therefore, it’s best to meditate every day to improve your health. There is no need for days off because, unlike exercise, you won’t experience post-exercise soreness. If you can’t meditate every day, you must be kind to yourself and refrain from calling yourself out for having “inadequate discipline.”
A consistent meditation practice, whether daily or less frequently, yields the best outcomes. (Again, the same applies to exercise!) We can develop a closer relationship with our minds when we keep that regularity over a long period.
Conclusion
There are numerous and varied advantages of yoga for mental health. There is no denying that yoga may be a potent tool for managing mental health, from lowering stress and anxiety to enhancing sleep quality. We strongly advise you to try yoga if your mental health is a problem. It might be exactly what you need to bring harmony and tranquility into your life.
You can also join us for yoga retreat in Rishikesh or yoga teacher training in Rishikesh.
