Why Yoga Should Be a Part of Your Daily Fitness Routine
Jim Johnson
If you would like to really put your daily fitness routine in overdrive and get better results than you ever have in the past, you really should consider adding yoga exercises into your home fitness workouts. Aerobic exercise is great for burning calories, and strength training works very well for strengthening your muscle groups. But yoga goes far beyond either of those forms of exercise and can benefit you both physically and mentally. Let's see how.
Physical Benefits
1. Flexibility -- strength training helps improve muscle mass but it does very little to improve muscle flexibility. And studies have shown that short powerful muscles are prone to injury. So one of the major benefits of yoga exercises is the prolonged stretching found in many of the yoga positions and poses.
2. Balance -- especially as we get older balance becomes more critical. It also allows you to move more easily and comfortably. Most yoga positions stress some form of balance in order to maintain the position.
3. Energy level -- higher levels of energy often come through higher levels of relaxation in the body. Tension on the other hand is an energy killer. Yoga exercises help lower stress and tension and and improve oxygen flow in the blood. All of that helps lead to a higher energy level.
4. Pain management -- many people today suffer with chronic pain, often in their back. Much muscle pain has its roots in tension. If you can get your muscles to relax, often the pain can even disappear. This is another great benefit of the relaxation techniques found in yoga.
Mental Benefits
1. Through the yoga positions and breathing exercises you are helped to focus inward rather than on the outward distractions of your life. This introspection can help clear your mind and focus your attention on the more important things in your life.
2. Stress levels can be greatly reduced by a regular yoga exercise routine. As was already mentioned, many yoga poses and breathing techniques encourage extreme relaxation of body and mind. This can help you let go of daily stress and it's damaging influences.
3. Yoga can help promote a feeling of inner peace and tranquility because many yoga practices encourage time for meditation, which helps you gain control over your own thinking instead of being at the mercy of negative thoughts.
As you can see, there are lots of very good reasons for including yoga exercises in your daily fitness routine. Why not start learning more about yoga right away, and put it to work for you?
About the author:
You can find free yoga exercises and free
yoga poses by visiting our Home Fitness website.
The latest information and news on Yoga Articles :
Yoga instructors will travel with shuttle bus passengers at CVG airport on November 25 and November 26.
Yoga in a chair (Louisville Courier-Journal)
If the idea of getting down on the floor to strike a yoga pose makes you say, "Ouch!" instead of "Om!" you can bypass mats and go directly to chairs at Urban Active. The Louisville-area health club offers a 45-minute "Ch. Oga" class ? and it's literally yoga in a chair.
Yoga plus one (Courier-Post)
Inhale. Stretch. Exhale. Pose. Yawn. Sound familiar? Luckily, there's hope for the yoga-tired. Hybrid classes featuring yoga along with what may seem like its polar opposites are cropping up everywhere.
Yoga workshop set for this weekend (The Iowa City Press-Citizen)
A three-hour workshop on addressing back pain through yoga will be this weekend.
Study aims to determine yoga's benefits to breast cancer survivors (Courier-P...
The Ohio State University Medical Center is setting out to prove what many breast cancer survivors have long suspected: Yoga helps strengthen the immune system as well as the bodies of those recovering from the disease.
Yoga: Ancient Indian practice has been turned on its head (PhysOrg)
You can do it in the air. Or by sea. You can do it if you're young. Or old. Or in 100-plus-degree rooms (Bikram yoga).
Meditation and yoga prescribed for Wall Street brokers (EARTHtimes.org)
New York - The constant fluctuations on Wall Street can grate on even the toughest businessman's or businesswoman's nerves. In search of a remedy, more and more brokers are taking calming classes in yoga and meditation, the New York Times reported. W...
Therapeutic Yoga Workshop (Jackson Free Press)
Butterfly Yoga in Fondren is hosting yoga teacher, author and columnist Doug Keller , E-RYT 500, for a weekend Yoga Therapy Workshop , Dec. 5 through 7.
Yoga master travels to area to teach her trade (The Frederick News-Post)
The gymnasium at the William R Talley Recreation Center transformed Tuesday from basketball courts into a yoga studio
No connection with BJP, says yoga guru Ramdev (rediff.com)
Ruling out joining any political party, yoga guru Ramdev, who shared the dais with Sangh Parivar leaders in Panipat recently, insisted he had "nothing to do with the BJP".