The Healing Powers of Yoga
By Melanie Slaugh
A few years ago if you had told me that you could use the practice of yoga to help alleviate feelings of depression and self-negativity I would have probably laughed in your face.
Getting out the door and to a yoga class was the last thing I wanted to do as I holed up in my apartment.
It took reaching a breaking point and finally agreeing to go with a friend before I realized how practicing yoga can help increase a positive life outlook, and once I started I never turned back.
Yoga helps you to tap into yourself and channel an inner connection that can offer a variety of benefits for both your physical being and your mental/emotional being.
Finding a connection within you through practicing yoga can help contribute to:
Improved flexibility
As you flow from pose to pose you are working to release any tension or tightness in your muscles. While most people worry that they aren’t flexible enough, the entire practice is dedicated toward continually improving and never judging others for being less flexible.
The longer you practice the more flexible you will become and the more comfortable you will get with your body.
Learning to tap into your body
?One of the main things that yoga teaches you is the ability to really listen and respond to your body. You are encouraged to push out of your comfort zone, but within reason.
There is never pressure to do something that causes you pain or discomfort of any sort, only to continually grow and expand your horizons, both physically and mentally.
Overall balance
Many yoga poses hone in on the ability to find balance through the moves. Your entire body has to work in unison to achieve this successfully.
Yoga also focuses on finding balance in your life as well.
When you begin each practice you let go of your day and your stresses and you focus on finding peace within yourself; throughout the rest of the practice the focus is on lifting you up, celebrating your capabilities, and honoring yourself.
Endurance
Many athletes that focus on high-impact sports such as runners or triathletes benefit from yoga because the focus is on leaning out the muscles and learning to hold poses for extended amounts of time.
It is a total body workout that uses body weight for resistance and is a good cross-training exercise to complement higher impact workouts.
Higher Self Esteem
Throughout your yoga practice you learn to thank your body for everything it allows you to do on a daily basis.
The goal of yoga is to learn and grow, to foster open minds, open communication, and open hearts, and to love your fellow yogis and most importantly to love yourself. It helps to open a whole new level of self-respect.
Every day yoga is helping people achieve new mind-body connections within themselves to contribute to a more balanced and healthy lifestyle.
When you learn to love yourself wholly, imperfections and all, you learn to love others in the same way.
Author Bio
Melanie Slaugh is enthusiastic about the growing prospects and opportunities of various industries and writing articles on various consumer goods and services as a freelance writer. She writes extensively for internet service providers and also topics related to internet service providers in my area for presenting the consumers, the information they need to choose the right Internet package for them. She can be reached at slaugh.slaugh907 @ gmail.com.
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Additions by site editor Douglas Eby:
The image at top is used in my post Mariel Hemingway – Healthy living to access our energy and talents.
It comes from the book Finding My Balance: A Memoir with Yoga, by Mariel Hemingway.
“Mariel turned to yoga and its meditative practice in an effort to maintain her center when her life threatened to spin out of control. Having experienced family tragedy, sudden stardom, and the continuing challenges of a full and demanding life, Mariel learned through practice how to find her balance in emotionally disorienting situations.” From summary on marielhemingway.com.
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