Summer is fast approaching bringing with it the need to get moving. There’s something about the sun which inspires a burst of energy after a long winter. If you’re looking for a complete mind and body makeover, yoga is an excellent place to start.

Before beginning a new exercise routine, always check with a medical professional and make sure your nutrition is on track. Consider natural supplements to ensure your body is in great shape to start working out. Read the latest research about supplements from unbiased websites in order to get the best products. Reviewy will tell you more about specific supplements from brands you can trust.

So, take a look at some physical and mental benefits yoga will bring you to your body. Get inspired to start today.

Health Benefits Of Yoga

1. Increases Strength, Agility And Flexibility

Many sports will increase your strength, while others might improve your agility, but yoga is one of the few few exercise techniques that will increase strength, agility, and flexibility. Yoga helps make sure to strengthen ligaments and connective tissues as well as working on muscles.

2. Improves Cognitive Functioning And Memory

While yoga involves a lot of breathing and stretching, it has been shown that this can enhance your cognitive functioning. ‘Yogis” could really be better at learning, have increased memory capacity, and retain high levels of concentration.

3. Normalizes Body Weight

Even though doing an hour of hatha, or even power yoga, won’t help you burn as many calories as doing a high intensity workout, yoga has a way of normalizing body weight by restoring hormonal balance in the body.

Yoga also incorporates a mind-body awareness aspect that can promote weight loss. During yoga  you can focus on your breathing and pay attention to how you feel. When eating you might learn to eat more slowly in order to savor each bite, and then stop when you feel full in order to avoid overeating.

In addition, yoga can help you feel less stressed and more at peace, and therefore less inclined to eat or drink when you are feeling anxious.

Yoga also helps to lower cortisol levels – the stress hormone in our bodies that affects the fight or flight response. This also has a way to teach our brains to feel satiated. Higher levels of cortisol in our bloodstream are known to be directly related to obesity and fuel virtually all disease, and yoga is an ideal defense to that.

4. Naturally Reduces Pain

There are countless studies proving that yoga can be very effective at relieving pain including fibromyalgia, arthritis, or migraine headaches, and especially back pain.

5. Improves Respiratory Efficiency

Yoga is one of the few practices that utilizes pranayama – the cultivation of life force or chi through breathing. Pranayama is control of breath. “Prana” is breath or vital energy in the body. Prana represents the pranic energy responsible for life or life force, and “ayama” means control. So Pranayama is “Control of Breath”.

6. Lowers Blood Pressure

If you suffer from elevated blood pressure or hypertension, yoga has been shown to be even more effective than dietary changes for improving blood pressure.

7. Enhances Mental Health

Yoga offers so many benefits in the psychological domain. It helps to improve overall mood and sense of well-being, more connectedness with others, lowered depressive states, less hostility toward the self and others, less anxiety, feelings of self-actualization and more. Yoga helps you better manage stress, relaxes the minds and increases concentration.

8. Portable

Perhaps one of the most convenient health benefits of yoga is that you can experience it just about anywhere. All you need is a yoga mat. There are no gym memberships required, and no expensive gear.