when you look in the mirror and when you move your body. The new flexibility you’ll enjoy can be obtained by practicing stretching exercises for a few moments a day.
You’ll wonder at the ease of these valuable, yet gentle exercises and will soon look forward to every yoga session. After awhile of practicing yoga, most people say that they have a new attitude and a new appreciation of life.
Yoga as an exercise is nearly perfect – and yoga as a stress reliever and mind relaxer can slow down the ravages of time as we age and help every aspect of our mental concentration and well-being. Enter the practice of yoga with an open mind and expect to feel better than you ever have.
How Yoga Benefits All Age Groups
Whether you’re six or sixty – or beyond, yoga can enhance your life, both mentally and physically. A child can benefit from yoga’s self-discipline and mental and physical dexterity.
A senior citizen can benefit from the increased mobility, improved concentration and memory and much more. Practicing yoga regularly will naturally improve every aspect of the functioning of your body and mind.
Here are some simple aspects of yoga that will physically and mentally help all age groups:
•Flexibility – Yoga exercises are fun for children and help them keep the natural flexibility they’re born with. Older people can also become more flexible and can also help with health problems such as arthritis and bad circulation – no matter what time in life they begin the yoga practice.
Teens can also benefit from the mental aspects of yoga by building their inner strength so they’re more able to resist hormonal urges and bad influences.
•Eases Pregnancies – Young mothers can benefit from yoga exercises, both mental and physical. The backaches and poor circulation that sometimes occurs during pregnancy can be alleviated with gentle, but effective yoga exercises.
One word of caution – before practicing yoga during pregnancy, check with your health care professional to be sure that you’re performing the correct exercises for yours and the baby’s health.
•Obesity – All age groups where there are overweight conditions can benefit from the practice of yoga. Overeating that results from anxiety, depression and genetic maladies can be greatly helped by the meditation and poses of yoga.
When you build a more powerful body and have a more empowered mind, you can resist urges much easier than you can when you’re physically and mentally impaired.
•Asthma and Allergies – People of any age group who suffer from allergies and the debilitating effects of asthma can benefit from the deep breathing and relaxation techniques of Yoga.
Deep breathing opens passageways and delivers much needed oxygen to the body and mind. Yoga’s relaxation techniques were found to be very helpful in children who suffer from asthma.
•Concentration and Memory – Children who suffer from ADHD can greatly benefit from the Yoga exercises that concentrate on focusing the mind.
If you have a child in school, you’ll likely notice a marked improvement in his or her concentration abilities. Practicing yoga after the age of 50 can do wonders for your memory and to keep the disease of Alzheimer’s at bay.
The vitality and sharpness that can be developed by practicing yoga techniques are necessary for any age group. All of the yoga asanas are designed to help the body physically and mentally – increasing creativity and intuition besides the obvious physical benefits.
How Yoga is Helpful Physiologically
Yoga is responsible for creating a fine balance between the endocrine and the nervous systems in a human body and therefore it is very successful in influencing the good functioning of different body organs and systems directly or indirectly.
Yoga provides a unique interconnectedness between the physical, mental, and emotional levels of human body and gradually makes way for an easy understanding of various restrained areas of existence.
All this in turn helps in attaining some psychological benefits for human body that further relates to the following points:
•Blood Pressure
High blood pressure or hypertension can be prevented and also treated by regular practice of yoga.
The exercise and relaxation that yoga offers to human body plays an important part in curing high blood pressure.
Decrement in respiratory rate and increment in respiratory efficiency is one of the chief features of yoga for the prevention of the High Blood Pressure.
Yogic breathing in combination with biofeedback and other techniques of yoga help in lowering the blood pressure and reduces the necessity for medication for high blood pressure.
•Pulse Rate
Regular practicing of yoga drastically lowers down the pulse rate and brings them under control.
There are three main components of yoga: Asanas, Pranayama, and meditation, which contribute directly in maintaining a stability between respiratory system and its organs. This in turn helps in attaining a co-ordination between different organ systems and reducing the pulse rate.
•Circulation
Yoga helps to improve circulation by efficiently moving oxygenated blood to the body’s cells. Yoga also provides ideal kind of sleeping pattern and normalizes body weight.
This also helps in improving the circulation system of human body and reducing the necessity for any kind of medication.
Anxiety is termed to be one of the chief reason for unstable circulation system and the art of yoga directly acts as a preventive tool against anxiety thereby creating high grounds where circulation is well taken care of.
•Organs
Yoga comprises of gentle exercises that are designed in such a manner so as to provide complete relief from the dangerous effects of stress on proper functioning of the organs within the body.
Different asanas allow stimulation of the different organ and glands.
Yoga allows great exposure of the interior experience to the individuals and therefore co-ordination and functioning between the different systems is very smooth.
•Immunity
Yoga makes stronger the immunity system of the human body and therefore creates a strong defensive wall against ill effects of some of the most threatening diseases in life.
Yoga improves the immunity in human body by the process of gate-regulating mechanism and increases the secretion of white blood cells that are important for a good health.
•Metabolism
Yoga also helps in breaking down of glucose and fatty acids and thus stabilizes the process of metabolism.
There are some asanas that helps to stimulate the performance of few of the inactive or sluggish glands. This allows enormous level of optimum hormonal output.
The primary aim of yoga is to improve the functioning of thyroid glands as it is highly powerful in attaining proper mechanism for metabolism.
The mechanism of metabolism is stabilized during the process of yoga as most number of calories is burnt during the process.
•Gastrointestinal
Gastrointestinal region of the body (stomach) is also benefited through regular exercising of yoga. Usual exercises of yoga benefit both men and women in improvement of gastrointestinal areas.
Yoga is an efficient tool that brings about the co-ordination between proper mental health and efficient functioning of gastrointestinal areas.
Mental health and gastrointestinal