Posted on February 20, 2015 by Kate Halsall

A recent newspaper article suggested that Yoga could change your life! Really? WOW! Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE yoga, but whilst I’m not 100% sure that this life changing statement is strictly correct, I do think that Yoga is often misunderstood and stereotyped. It’s not just about sitting cross legged and meditating! So what are the benefits of Yoga?

Whilst some types of Yoga have been proven to help with mental well-being, reduced stress and provide relaxation techniques; I view it slightly differently. As a Freestyle Fitness Yoga instructor and as a personal trainer, I see it in terms of what it does to our musculoskeletal system and how we could potentially utilise it for preventative and rehabilitation treatment; and as I study this subject more and more, what I don’t understand most is why more of us aren’t practising some sort of Yoga!

The Benefits of Yoga – Flexibility, Mobility & Stability

Most yoga involves a range of postures or movements aimed at improving strength and flexibility. It’s the only type of exercise where you can honestly see almost instant improvements (I have seen improvements in flexibility in just one hour!). Increasing the flexibility in our muscles, ligaments, and joints can not only provide pain prevention but treatment too. Yoga movements and postures help to increase our range of motion and therefore stability of our joints; Yoga utilises our core muscles, helps to protect our spine and challenges us mentally. It achieves all these through the following:

• Creates Muscular Strength. There are some studies which indicate that Yoga can contribute to muscle tone simply because some postures utilise multiple muscle contractions to achieve them. However I’m actually referring to strengthening muscles through repetitive and controlled movement – like we do in weight training. A strong core can help prevent back pain, pelvic and hip alignment – so why not use Yoga to help with this?
• Builds Stronger Bones. Yoga is weight bearing exercise. We know that any type of resistance training, whether weighted or body weight is good for strengthening our bones.
• Protects And Improves Posture. We have written a number of blogs of the last few weeks about our personal posture. According to Bhanda Yoga, Yoga postures not only accesses each of our bone’s potential, but it also looks to realign our skeleton with gravity. In a nutshell, it makes it easy for us to maintain correct posture.

There are no downsides! Yoga keeps you moving. You don’t have to be uber flexible or fit to try – we all have to start somewhere! There are some many benefits of Yoga and it just does our bodies so much good, we should all be doing it.

Further Reading:
http://www.bandhayoga.com/sci_keys.html
http://abc-of-yoga.com/beginnersguide/yogabenefits.asp