How Yoga improves your health - part 3

Balances Nervous System: Some advanced yogis can control their bodies in extraordinary way; induce unusual heart rhythms, generate specific brain-wave patterns, & use meditation raise the temperature of their hands by 15 degrees! Us regular folk can use the tools of pranayama and meditation to calm, de-stress & perhaps fall asleep easily.

Releases tension in limbs: Unconscious physical habits performed every day can lead to chronic tension, muscle fatigue, and soreness in the wrists, arms, shoulders, neck, and face, which can increase stress and worsen your mood. As you practice yoga, you begin to notice where you hold tension: Being conscious of these patterns helps us to make incremental changes in daily habits.

Encourages Deeper Sleep: Stimulation is good, but too much of it taxes the nervous system. Yoga can provide relief from the hustle and bustle of modern life. Restorative asana, yoga nidra (a form of guided relaxation), Savasana, pranayama, and meditation encourage pratyahara, a turning inward of the senses, which provides downtime for the nervous system. Another by-product of a regular yoga practice, studies suggest, is better sleep.

Boosts Immune System: Asana & pranayama probably improve immune function, but, so far, meditation has the strongest scientific support in this area. It appears to have a beneficial effect on the functioning of the immune system, boosting it when needed (for example, raising antibody levels in response to a vaccine) and lowering it when needed (for instance, mitigating an inappropriately aggressive immune function in an autoimmune disease like psoriasis).

Improves lung capacity & ability: Yoga also promotes breathing through the nose, which filters the air, warms it (cold, dry air is more likely to trigger an asthma attack in people who are sensitive), and humidifies it, removing pollen and dirt and other things you’d rather not take into your lungs. Yogis tend to take fewer breaths of greater volume, which is both calming and more efficient. A 1998 study published in The Lancet taught a yogic technique known as “complete breathing” to people with lung problems due to congestive heart failure. After one month, their average respiratory rate decreased from 13.4 breaths per minute to 7.6. Meanwhile, their exercise capacity increased significantly, as did the oxygen saturation of their blood.

Prevents IBS & Digestive problems: Ulcers, irritable bowel syndrome, constipation are exacerbated by stress, breath work & meditation help stress. Yoga, like any physical exercise, can ease constipation allowing more rapid transport of food and waste products through the bowels. And, although it has not been studied scientifically, yogis suspect that twisting poses may be beneficial in getting waste to move through the system.

Calms the mind: Yoga quells the fluctuations of the mind, according to Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. In other words, it slows down the mental loops of frustration, regret, anger, fear, and desire that can cause stress. And since stress is implicated in so many health problems from migraines and insomnia to lupus, MS, eczema, high blood pressure, and heart attacks, if you learn to quiet your mind, you’ll be likely to live longer and healthier.

Builds self-esteem: Yoga encourages good health physically, mentally, and spiritually. Yogic philosophy teaches, that you are a manifestation of the Divine, if you practice regularly with an intention of self-examination and betterment, not just as a substitute for the gym, you can access a different side of yourself. You’ll experience feelings of gratitude, empathy, and forgiveness, as well as a sense that you’re part of something bigger. While better health is not the goal of spirituality, it’s often a by-product, as documented by repeated scientific studies.

Yoga can ease your pain: According to several studies, asana, meditation, or a combination of the two, reduced pain in people with arthritis, back pain, fibromyalgia, carpal tunnel syndrome, and other chronic conditions. When you relieve your pain, your mood improves, you’re more inclined to be active, and you don’t need as much medication.

Give Inner Strength: Yoga can help you make changes in your life. In fact, that might be its greatest strength. It can help to overcome inertia and change dysfunctional habits. You may find that without making a particular effort to change things, you start to eat better, exercise more, or finally quit smoking etc.

Physical Guidance: Good yoga teachers can adjust your posture, gauge when you should go deeper in poses or back off, deliver hard truths with compassion, help you relax, and enhance and personalise your practice. A respectful relationship with a teacher goes a long way toward promoting your health.

Helps you keep Medicine free: Studies of people with asthma, high blood pressure, Type II diabetes, and obsessive-compulsive disorder have shown that yoga helped them lower their dosage of medications and sometimes get off them entirely.

Yoga and meditation build awareness: And the more aware you are, the easier it is to break free of destructive emotions like anger. Studies suggest that chronic anger and hostility are as strongly linked to heart attacks. Yoga appears to reduce anger by increasing feelings of compassion and interconnection and by calming the nervous system & the mind. It also increases your ability to step back from the drama of your own life, to remain steady in the face of bad news or unsettling events. You can still react quickly when you need to& there’s evidence that yoga speeds reaction time, but you can take that split second to choose a more thoughtful approach, reducing suffering for yourself and others.

Builds relationships: Love may not conquer all, but it does aid healing. Cultivating the emotional support of friends, family, and community has been demonstrated repeatedly to improve health and healing. A regular yoga practice helps develop friendliness, compassion, and greater equanimity.

Sound Healing: Chanting prolongs exhalation, which shifts the balance toward the parasympathetic nervous system. When done in a group, chanting can be a particularly powerful physical and emotional experience. A recent study from Sweden’s Karolinska Institute suggests that humming sounds, like those made while chanting Om, open the sinuses and facilitate drainage.

Mental Healing: If you contemplate an image in your mind’s eye, as you do in yoga nidra and other practices, you can effect change in your body. Several studies have found that guided imagery reduced postoperative pain, decreased the frequency of headaches, and improved the quality of life for people with cancer and HIV.

Keeps allergies & viruses at bay: Kriyas / cleansing practices, are another element of yoga. Rapid breathing techniques clear the sinuses. Neti pots can help further.

Yoga as Service: Karma yoga (service to others) is integral to yogic philosophy. And while you may not be inclined to serve others, your health might improve if you do. A study at the University of Michigan found that older people who volunteered a little less than an hour per week were three times as likely to be alive seven years later. Serving others can give meaning to your life, and your problems may not seem so daunting when you see what other people are dealing with.

Encourages Self care: In much of conventional medicine, most patients are passive recipients of care. In yoga, it’s what you do for yourself that matters. Yoga gives you the tools to help you change, and you might start to feel better the first time you try practicing. You may also notice that the more you commit to practice, the more you benefit. This results in three things: You get involved in your own care, you discover that your involvement gives you the power to effect change, and seeing that you can effect change gives you hope. And hope itself can be healing.

Supports Connective Tissue: Change your posture and you change the way you breathe. Change your breathing and you change your nervous system. This is one of the great lessons of yoga: Everything is connected—your hipbone to your anklebone, you to your community, your community to the world. This interconnection is vital to understanding yoga. This holistic system simultaneously taps into many mechanisms that have additive and even multiplicative effects. This synergy may be the most important way of all that yoga heals.

Believe yourself healthier: Just believing you will get better can make you better.