Health & Fitness

Is Yoga more than just a physical workout?

Yoga, which is among the most ancient of body disciplines around the world is now used more as a synonym for physical workout. But that is not the truth. Yoga is not just a means to burn your body fat. It is not an alternative for weight training or used just for getting rid of your health ailments. Yoga is a wholesome way of keeping your body enriched and refreshed in all the ways – physically, psychologically, physiologically and biochemically.

People are choosing yoga over other physical workouts because of the fun involved in it. While a normal work out in a gym can wear you out, a yoga workout leaves you refreshed. The various postures, pranayama – the breathing techniques and the meditation techniques used in yoga have immensely rich positive effects on our human body.

Let us have a look to decide if yoga is more than just a physical workout.

Physiological Benefits of Yoga

Yoga, whose practice can be traced back to more than 1000s of years, comes with physiological benefits. The various yogic postures help you in maintaining the equilibrium of your autonomic nervous system. Along with bringing down the pulse and respiratory rates, yoga is highly beneficial for people suffering from hypertension as it can help in reducing the blood pressure levels to a great extent. Your cardiovascular activity, a key to weight loss and maintaining physical fitness, increases while also easing your gastrointestinal abnormalities.

Some of the other physiological benefits that can be reaped from yoga workouts include:

Improvement in the synergic functioning of human body parts
Strengthening the joints
Easing the pain
Increasing the grip strength
Improvement in eye-hand coordination
Improvement in dexterity skills
Improvement in postures
Reduction of excess weight, bringing to normal levels
Increase in energy levels
Increase in immunity
Normalizes the sleep patterns

Psychological Benefits of Yoga

You can take the aid of yoga to improve your psychological aspects also. Yoga is a good medicine for mood swings. Women, who suffer from mood swings during PMS, can always take a helping hand from yoga postures to retain normalcy. It also helps in bringing about a change in your attitude while helping you control your emotions. An increase in positive attitude and the power of self-actualization and self-acceptance can be realized via yoga.

The various breathing techniques involved in yoga helps you get rid of the unnecessary depression and anxiety, while various meditation yoga postures and techniques also aid to improve your concentration and strengthen your memory power.

Biochemical Benefits of Yoga

Practicing yoga regularly brings about a revolution in the biochemical properties of human body. Your excessive levels of sodium and glucose can be brought down to acceptable levels. It also gets rid of the bad cholesterol levels and the triglycerides. The plus point is that your hemoglobin level increases, so does the level of cholinesterase.

Yoga workouts are also ideal for increasing your Vitamin C levels and net serum protein levels. It improves your body immunity power by increasing the number of lymphocytes.

A non-competitive and process-oriented workout regimen, yoga should be made a part and parcel of your daily lives. Practicing yoga regularly can offer you some miraculous benefits.

In short, yoga is not just a physical workout regimen. It is a process which should be embraced for attaining higher levels of a wholesome body and soul.