Boost Your Health with Yoga

Yoga has been in existence for at least 5,000 years and used by people to improve strength, tranquility and overall health. Yoga practice has been used in alternative medicine for a very long. The combinations of breathing exercise, physical postures and meditation are used. It is also one of the most common used therapies in alternative medicine.

Science is now adding in evidence and building a strong reason for using yoga on the proven health benefits it can provide.

Research has established that yoga can benefit with health issues in a broad scope such as back pain, headaches, obesity, anxiety, depression, sleep problems and diabetes.

Dr. Sat Pir Singh Khalsa, PhD., assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and assistant neuroscientist in the Division of Sleep Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, that the health benefits of yoga primarily come from yoga's concentration on the association between mind and body.

The most excellent proof demonstrates that yoga is exceptional at decreasing stress and aiding those with stress to be able to cope with it. It improves managing of stress both psychologically and physiologically.

The U. S. National Institutes of Health state that the correct practice of yoga blends:

Physical postures that participants flow into and then hold, before proceeding to the next posture.

Focusing on breathing techniques which make participants more aware of their body.

Provides deep meditation and relaxation allow participants to concentrate on their spirituality.

Dr. Karen Sherman, PhD, M.P.H., affiliate associate professor of epidemiology with the Center for Health Studies in the School of Public Health at the University of Washington, states that all of those things combined have to be in place in order for people to achieve the best results for health and well being.

Yoga can aid those who endure pain and body aches by making the person stronger, demonstrating how they can move with less pain and improving their ability to cope with the pain and relax.

Yoga is an excellent treatment for anxiety and depression. The breathing, relaxation and meditation in yoga provides improvement in a person's well being.

Yoga aides in enhancing the immune system by lowering stress levels. When stress becomes decrease the body becomes more healthy and then can use its own natural defenses.

Yoga has helped cancer patients who endure stress from the ordeal of chemotherapy and radiation. Having cancer is stressful on its own but going through treatments increase that stress. Yoga enables people to better handle the stress and decrease their stress levels.

Researchers from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have discovered that those people who practice yoga are in better control to manage body weight had have a lower body mass index as opposed to those who do not practice yoga.

Both Dr.'s Khalsa and Sherman remark that those who wish to improve their health need to find a qualified yoga instructor who blends all three elements of yoga. The instructor should use the traditional yogic principals.

There are numerous styles of yoga and those that are good for beginners include viniyoga.

Yoga can cause injury if you push too hard. For this reason it has been note that beginners may be best to seek out a traditional yoga studio instead of at a gym or health club.
Sources:

Shannon Galpin

Science Daily

MSN Health