10 Reasons you should be doing Yoga - The first FIVE

Enhanced Flexibility

Many of the moves and movements performed during yoga require you to find places of discomfort, especially if you are not used to performing such movements to begin with. As you continue with your practice, you will notice that these, once discomforting moves, slowly, but surely begin to become easier and easier with time.

These changes or alternations in flexibility are just like anything else though, as the manifestations are slow in nature. Change does not happen overnight, as we know, but I guarantee if you continue practicing yoga, your flexibility will go through the roof sooner, rather than later.

Builds muscle

You may think it’s quite difficult to build muscle by doing yoga, but this is completely false. While you may not be able to pack on as much muscle as someone who lifts weights, you will notice lean muscle formation from performing yoga. Yoga allows for us to utilize God’s greatest gym, ‘our very own bodies’, to our full advantage.

We can perform movements focusing on ‘time under tension,’ holding poses for prolonged periods of time, specifically targeting certain muscles groups. These muscles are generally muscles that are not trained or used to holding your entire body weight. As you progress and begin to perform more difficult poses, these smaller muscles will become strengthened, allowing for you to push yourself to your limits.

Another yoga technique that I like to perform is continual movement through a flow, focusing more on getting the heart rate up to burn more calories while building muscle at the same time.

Helps to correct poor posture

Yoga is great for postural adjustments. Everything revolves around alignment and once you understand this vital component of practicing yoga, you will be able to reach places you'd never thought possible. Spinal adjustments will become apparent, which will help if you have forwardly rotated shoulders.

This generally comes from weak or inflexible muscles in these regions of the body, but once these muscles or fibers become strengthened, natural correction should start to occur. Poor posture can cause pain and a lot of discomfort, so give yoga a try if you are looking to improve upon your current postural status.

Improves overall balance

It is obvious that yoga improves physical balance capabilities through basic practice. Yoga also helps to improve upon overall balance in your life. You will begin to notice higher energy levels, which will help to power you through long, hard days. Overall mental clarity will become more and more evident and daily decisions or actions will, as a result, appear to be easier.

Without a cloudy or cluttered mind, we are able to focus more on the things that matter most and take care of what needs to be done, usually without negative thoughts or thought processes. The overall work, school, social life balance really cannot be attributed to one or only a few particular factors, but one thing is for sure in that yoga will help to improve upon this level of balance in your everyday life.

Prevents joint degeneration

The cartilage which makes up our joints must be compressed to allow for new nutrients to enter our joints, which really comes by simply using our joints. It may sound too good to be true, but the more we use our joints, the stronger they will become.

Via this phenomena, our joints will remain sustainably healthy, that is if we don’t have any pre-existing conditions which may inhibit our joint strength to begin with. Yoga helps to maximize joint mobility, keeping them healthy and agile for a lifetime.

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Also, stay tuned for the next FIVE reasons you should be doing Yoga