three ladies kneeling on yoga mats with their eyes closed and palms in prayer pose.

Yoga: Benefits of the Body and Mind

Yoga is a discipline which connects the body and mind by combining poses with breathing, concentration and relaxation exercises.

Yoga is a practice that provides both physical and mental benefits. In this article, we will explore some of the ways yoga can positively impact your body, and improve your mental health and overall well-being.

This article is in association with Red January.

Using Yoga For Gentle Muscle Strengthening

One of the main advantages of yoga is that it can strengthen the body!

The muscles are worked statically by practising yoga, concentrating on aligning the body in yoga poses. Using gravity to help with poses helps to ground yourself and keep you balanced. Specific poses target different parts of the body for a varied muscle workout, such as the abs, back, arms or legs. Other poses, like the warrior pose, uses all the muscles in the body.

Yoga particularly helps strengthen the core muscles in the back and abdominal area, which help stabilize our bodies and maintain good posture. Strengthening them thus helps to improve posture and prevent back pain.

Improving Flexibility

In yoga, the repetition of poses and regular practice, as well as controlled breathing, helps to improve flexibility. This is not innate and can be acquired through simple practice. Breathing correctly gradually relaxes the body, helping it to become more flexible. It prevents any discomfort during stretches, which can sometimes be intense, and limits tension in the body.

The flexibility acquired through practising yoga helps to:

• Improve mobility
• Increase range of motion
• Feel more comfortable in your everyday movements

Increasing the flexibility of our muscles and tendons also limits the risk of injury during fitness activities.

A man and woman sat crossed legged with their eyes closed doing yoga.

Yoga Helps You Relax

More than just a sport, yoga is a time to reflect on yourself, a short break to relax and experience moments of serenity in our everyday lives.

The main way of achieving this is through breathing exercises (pranayama) in yoga that help to relax the mind and reduce stress. The breathing techniques used have multiple benefits: they can be calming, invigorating, and even balancing.

Concentrating on breathing and balancing poses, which require stability and anchoring, enables you to focus on the present moment, the here and now, and forget everything else around us. This distancing of ourselves from our everyday lives helps us to take a step back from our worries and problems and instil a sense of letting go.

Good For Your Health

In addition to strengthening the body and providing a well-deserved rest, yoga is beneficial for your health. Firstly, working on your breathing helps to manage stress and anxiety, which can impact the quality of your sleep. The mental and breathing exercises relax the mind and help eliminate negative emotions and promote healing sleep. And better sleep means better quality of life!

And finally, some yoga poses also provide a sort of gentle massage for our internal organs, also revitalizing the rest of the body by helping the energy circulate better. So, by teaching us to breathe better, yoga also helps improve blood circulation and thus improve the function of our internal organs. As a result, it helps to strengthen the immune system and increase your general health.

Our #MoveYourMind Initiative

Whatever your preferred style, whether it's gentle or dynamic yoga, the benefits of yoga should no longer be a mystery to you. So why not get yourself a yoga mat and start reaping the benefits?
Whether you prefer to practise at home, outside or in a studio, simply find yourself a quiet space you can relax, breathe and unwind in for a moment to reconnect with your body and mind.

Try Yoga This Red January

There's a lot going on during Red January, a nationwide movement that aims to empower people across the nation to make a positive change and start the new year by staying active and making healthier choices.
Click here for more information.

Register for Red January 2023 HERE
Get your kit HERE