Yoga For Your Health

For centuries those who enjoyed the physical and mental benefits of yoga hot yoga lived mostly in Asia. Over the past 175 years, however, these disciplines have spread their marvelous gifts completely around the globe.

It may help to distinguish first between “yoga” and “hot yoga.” The latter is a specific kind of yoga in which postures are practiced in a room heated to between 95 and 100 degrees. Hot yoga promotes profuse perspiration, which naturally rids the body of impurities. Hot yoga also raises the core body temperature, so it’s not recommended for pregnant women. However, one of the specific benefits of hot yoga is vastly increased flexibility, since the body warmth relaxes the muscles and allows them to stretch more.

What’s more, intense concentration on performing the physical postures of yoga also serves to calm and clarify the mind. Certain poses focus specifically on the central nervous system and include forms of meditation involving breathing and disengaging from troubling thoughts. By releasing physical tension through yoga postures, practitioners discover that their minds also become less stressed.

Among one of yoga forms growing in interest today is known as hot yoga. This variation is performed in a heated room where the temperature ranges from 95 to 100 degrees. Naturally working out in such an environment causes the body to perspire profusely. This profuse perspiration is a goal of this form, because sweat flushes impurities from the body.

For instance, consider how Hot yoga improves flexibility. Yoga poses stretch a body in new ways that bring better range of motion to joints and muscles. This especially improves the flexibility in hips, shoulders, back and the crucial hamstring tendons along the back of the legs.

Yoga also has proved to be a great blessing to those who suffer from stress-related insomnia. It’s common knowledge that regular exercise will improve sleep because it releases physical tension. This can be true of any exercise, but it’s especially true of yoga because mental calm is one of yoga’s goals.

Intense exercise right before bedtime isn’t recommended, but a few gentle yoga stretches can release stress and help promote sleep. Among the poses recommended in the evening, both of which can be done lying in bed, are:

People who spend a lot of time working on computers or driving vehicles can suffer from back pain. Practicing yoga often relieves this kind of discomfort, which results from spinal compression and muscle tightness from remaining too long in one position. The different postures involved also improve body alignment, another key factor in relieving and preventing other kinds of muscle and joint pain.

Those who have such chronic illnesses or physical problems still can engage in less challenging forms of yoga. In fact, many people who suffer chronic pain often are encouraged to practice yoga regularly because it has been shown to be quite effective in pain management. The postures practiced in Hatha Yoga, for instance, serve to loosen and strengthen cramped muscles, ligaments and tendons and increase flexibility. Both these yoga benefits reduce physical pain.

Yoga practice also helps to release endorphins, the chemicals that are the body’s natural pain relievers and mood boosters. This endorphin release results not only from physical movement, but from the deep breathing and meditation practices that are integral to the discipline.

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