If you’ve never tried yoga before you may have an image of sleek young women in leotards twisting themselves into pretzel shapes with seeming ease, and perhaps you are put off by that because you are neither sleek, young, nor perhaps even female. The thing is, yoga can benefit men and women of all ages and all shapes and sizes, so it is certainly worth finding out more about it, and perhaps giving a class a try. You’ll be amazed to discover that yoga can prevent disease, and relieve aches and pains as well as help you balance your mental health.
One of the most obvious benefits of yoga is that you improve your flexibility. You may feel at a loss during the first class, watching everyone touch their toes with ease when you can barely reach your knees. The thing is, you build your flexibility with every practice. Over time you will become looser and you too will be able to tuck yourself into tight poses. You’ll notice that your aches and pains ease too, because yoga helps to realign your body and ease tightness and inflexible muscles and ligaments that over time cause problems with your posture, as well as pain in your hips and knees.
Following on from the first advantage you’ll notice a genuine toning of your muscles, and this will help guard against arthritis and back pain.
Yoga takes you through a full range of motion which is important for healthy cartilage which requires squeezing and soaking through movement. Without movement the cartilage can wear out and this exposes bone. Yoga can therefore protect your joints from degenerative arthritis. The vertebrae will also get a good workout through twists and forward and backward bends meaning your disks will stay supple. Weight-bearing yoga exercises will strengthen your arms and legs, and this can reduce the risk of fracture as you get older and become more brittle.
A regular yoga session will soon help you to feel your body and what it is doing when and where. You’ll quickly improve your balance simply because you’ll start to sense when you are not properly balanced. This is of particular importance for those people who have poor posture or knee or back issues.
You may think yoga is a mild form of exercise, and in many ways it is, however some yoga movements are aerobic and they will increase your heart rate. You can do any of the movements more vigorously if you wish or you can take flow or Ashtanga classes. Research shows that yoga can lower your resting heart rate and increase endurance. You’ll also take in more oxygen and increase your blood flow. More oxygen around your body helps to relieve swelling. Improved supply of oxygen to the blood cells can help heart or kidney problems and cut the level of clot-promoting proteins in the blood, decreasing your risk of heart attacks and strokes.
It’s a fact that yoga makes you happy. Any exercise will lead to an increase in serotonin levels, of course, but additional research from the University of Wisconsin, noted that with yoga ‘the left prefrontal cortex showed heightened activity in meditators’ meaning greater levels of happiness and better immune function. The findings were even more dramatic among those who were dedicated to yoga over a long period of time. Yoga can improve your state of mind too, by slowing down the mental loops of frustration, regret, anger, fear, and desire that we all suffer that can cause us stress. Easing our stress leads to fewer associated health problems, meaning less risk of everything from migraines to heart attacks. A quiet mind means a longer and healthier life.
You’re already quite aware that you need to improve your diet and increase your exercise, aren’t you? Well, yoga will help you do both. You’ll feel more motivated to address your health concerns. Yoga encourages mindfulness and this may translate to what you eat.
In yoga you concentrate on every part of the move, feeling it, and breathing with it. It’s close to meditation. Focusing on the here and now regularly helps people to perform better in their daily lives. Research suggests yoga improves coordination, reaction time, memory, and even your IQ. You’ll be less distracted by your thoughts, and if you’re having problems with anxiety, you may see an improvement too. Yoga will help you find inner peace through regular practice. It’s like taking a mini-holiday.
There are several types of yoga that can really help you relax and live in the moment. A further advantage of this is that you provide more downtime for your busy body and brain, and in turn this can ensure better sleep. Improved sleep helps you to function better and improves stress levels and how you handle stress on a daily basis.
The problem with low self-esteem is we end up being really mean to ourselves. We over eat, over work, take drugs or drink alcohol in excess, we smoke, we starve ourselves of fun and sleep. Of course we’re going to pay the price for this with our mental and physical health. Yoga can be a positive influence on our lives because it slows us down and gives us time to reflect. You’ll feel more worthwhile because you are cherishing your body through the yoga postures and your breathing. You may even get in touch with a more spiritual side.
Yoga is worth trying because it is a great all-round exercise that offers physical, mental and emotional improvement. Postures, breathing techniques and meditation are part of the package and the benefits quickly accrue, so give it a try today.
Created by Tom Vermeersch
Tom Vermeersch is a certified Psychologist and Bach flower expert with more than 30 years of experience.
Even the brightest minds have setbacks!
We all want to be successful but many of us find the path to achieving our dreams is blocked by our fear of failure. Whether you’re trying to lose weight, go backpacking around the world or start up a new business, you need to accept that you might fail many times over before you achieve success.
Subtle signs your child is unhappy
According to figures from the World Health Organisation, more than 260 million people worldwide suffer from depression. And it's not only adults who are diagnosed with this illness. Children as young as three or four years old can experience depression.
Standing Up To A Narcissistic Pervert
Whether it's with a romantic partner or a housemate, there's no doubt that a relationship with a narcissist can be very challenging. But are there ways to cope better? Or is it better to leave the relationship?
5 Signs of narcissistic perversion
Narcissism is a term we often see these days. But what does it mean? It's used to describe a person who is full of themselves or overly vain. However, it's not really about self-love.
While you often hear people joking that they have OCD because they like to keep their house clean and tidy, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder can be a distressing and debilitating mental health condition with a wide range of symptoms.
What can you do if your kid doesn't want to go back to school?
What can you do if your kid doesn't want to go back to school? Here are our hints and tips to help if your child is expressing a refusal to go to school.
20 natural ways to prevent and relieve headaches
Headaches can be a real nuisance, especially if you get them frequently. Luckily, there are many natural ways to prevent and relieve headaches without needing to reach for over the counter medication.
Being happy is something everybody strives for, but unfortunately there are a lot of people who go through life unhappily. A lot of people take life how it is.
Nowadays, it can sometimes seem almost everyone has a mental health issue or learning disorder. But, are we too quick to label people, or is it that we are more aware of the problems? This article looks at some of the issues surrounding these sensitive questions.
You see the word "toxic" everywhere these days, but what does it really mean? You've almost certainly come across someone who fits the description. Dealing with difficult personalities can be challenging and emotionally exhausting, to say the least.
If you’ve never tried yoga before you may have an image of sleek young women in leotards twisting themselves into pretzel shapes with seeming ease, and perhaps you are put off by that because you are neither sleek, young, nor perhaps even female. The thing is, yoga can benefit men and women of all ages and all shapes and sizes, so it is certainly worth finding out more about it, and perhaps giving a class a try. You’ll be amazed to discover that yoga can prevent disease, and relieve aches and pains as well as help you balance your mental health.
One of the most obvious benefits of yoga is that you improve your flexibility. You may feel at a loss during the first class, watching everyone touch their toes with ease when you can barely reach your knees. The thing is, you build your flexibility with every practice. Over time you will become looser and you too will be able to tuck yourself into tight poses. You’ll notice that your aches and pains ease too, because yoga helps to realign your body and ease tightness and inflexible muscles and ligaments that over time cause problems with your posture, as well as pain in your hips and knees.
Following on from the first advantage you’ll notice a genuine toning of your muscles, and this will help guard against arthritis and back pain.
Yoga takes you through a full range of motion which is important for healthy cartilage which requires squeezing and soaking through movement. Without movement the cartilage can wear out and this exposes bone. Yoga can therefore protect your joints from degenerative arthritis. The vertebrae will also get a good workout through twists and forward and backward bends meaning your disks will stay supple. Weight-bearing yoga exercises will strengthen your arms and legs, and this can reduce the risk of fracture as you get older and become more brittle.
A regular yoga session will soon help you to feel your body and what it is doing when and where. You’ll quickly improve your balance simply because you’ll start to sense when you are not properly balanced. This is of particular importance for those people who have poor posture or knee or back issues.
You may think yoga is a mild form of exercise, and in many ways it is, however some yoga movements are aerobic and they will increase your heart rate. You can do any of the movements more vigorously if you wish or you can take flow or Ashtanga classes. Research shows that yoga can lower your resting heart rate and increase endurance. You’ll also take in more oxygen and increase your blood flow. More oxygen around your body helps to relieve swelling. Improved supply of oxygen to the blood cells can help heart or kidney problems and cut the level of clot-promoting proteins in the blood, decreasing your risk of heart attacks and strokes.
It’s a fact that yoga makes you happy. Any exercise will lead to an increase in serotonin levels, of course, but additional research from the University of Wisconsin, noted that with yoga ‘the left prefrontal cortex showed heightened activity in meditators’ meaning greater levels of happiness and better immune function. The findings were even more dramatic among those who were dedicated to yoga over a long period of time. Yoga can improve your state of mind too, by slowing down the mental loops of frustration, regret, anger, fear, and desire that we all suffer that can cause us stress. Easing our stress leads to fewer associated health problems, meaning less risk of everything from migraines to heart attacks. A quiet mind means a longer and healthier life.
You’re already quite aware that you need to improve your diet and increase your exercise, aren’t you? Well, yoga will help you do both. You’ll feel more motivated to address your health concerns. Yoga encourages mindfulness and this may translate to what you eat.
In yoga you concentrate on every part of the move, feeling it, and breathing with it. It’s close to meditation. Focusing on the here and now regularly helps people to perform better in their daily lives. Research suggests yoga improves coordination, reaction time, memory, and even your IQ. You’ll be less distracted by your thoughts, and if you’re having problems with anxiety, you may see an improvement too. Yoga will help you find inner peace through regular practice. It’s like taking a mini-holiday.
There are several types of yoga that can really help you relax and live in the moment. A further advantage of this is that you provide more downtime for your busy body and brain, and in turn this can ensure better sleep. Improved sleep helps you to function better and improves stress levels and how you handle stress on a daily basis.
The problem with low self-esteem is we end up being really mean to ourselves. We over eat, over work, take drugs or drink alcohol in excess, we smoke, we starve ourselves of fun and sleep. Of course we’re going to pay the price for this with our mental and physical health. Yoga can be a positive influence on our lives because it slows us down and gives us time to reflect. You’ll feel more worthwhile because you are cherishing your body through the yoga postures and your breathing. You may even get in touch with a more spiritual side.
Yoga is worth trying because it is a great all-round exercise that offers physical, mental and emotional improvement. Postures, breathing techniques and meditation are part of the package and the benefits quickly accrue, so give it a try today.
We all want to be successful but many of us find the path to achieving our dreams is blocked by our fear of failure. Whether you’re trying to lose weight, go backpacking around the world or start up a new business, you need to accept that you might fail many times over before you achieve success.
According to figures from the World Health Organisation, more than 260 million people worldwide suffer from depression. And it's not only adults who are diagnosed with this illness. Children as young as three or four years old can experience depression.
Whether it's with a romantic partner or a housemate, there's no doubt that a relationship with a narcissist can be very challenging. But are there ways to cope better? Or is it better to leave the relationship?
Narcissism is a term we often see these days. But what does it mean? It's used to describe a person who is full of themselves or overly vain. However, it's not really about self-love.
While you often hear people joking that they have OCD because they like to keep their house clean and tidy, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder can be a distressing and debilitating mental health condition with a wide range of symptoms.
What can you do if your kid doesn't want to go back to school? Here are our hints and tips to help if your child is expressing a refusal to go to school.
Headaches can be a real nuisance, especially if you get them frequently. Luckily, there are many natural ways to prevent and relieve headaches without needing to reach for over the counter medication.
Being happy is something everybody strives for, but unfortunately there are a lot of people who go through life unhappily. A lot of people take life how it is.
Read the complete article
Nowadays, it can sometimes seem almost everyone has a mental health issue or learning disorder. But, are we too quick to label people, or is it that we are more aware of the problems? This article looks at some of the issues surrounding these sensitive questions.
You see the word "toxic" everywhere these days, but what does it really mean? You've almost certainly come across someone who fits the description. Dealing with difficult personalities can be challenging and emotionally exhausting, to say the least.
Bach Flowers are not medicinal but harmless plant extracts which are used to support health.
© 2025 Mariepure - Webdesign Publi4u
Are you unsure which Bach flowers can help you? Contact Tom for free advice.
