HOW YOGA CAN HELP REDUCE STRESS
It’s amazing how yoga can help reduce stress!
Yoga is so much more than just physical activity; it’s also relaxation for your mind, calms your spirit, and helps to bring focus and peace.
Sure, Yoga is awesome for weight loss, improving your flexibility and mobility, and developing muscular endurance.
But you’ll find that the more you do Yoga, the healthier you will become in every area of your life!
How Yoga Can Help Reduce Stress
Yoga works to reduce stress in a surprising number of ways:
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It reduces cortisol. Cortisol is the “stress hormone” produced by your body in response to stress. One of the best ways to reduce cortisol is to exercise. Exercise actually purges cortisol from your body and decreases the production of this stress hormone. You’ll find yourself walking away from the Yoga session much more relaxed physically and mentally because there is less cortisol present in your system.
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It releases physical blockages. When you have knotted muscles or tension spots in your body, you’ll often find that the resulting pain will add to your feelings of stress, both physically and mentally. Pain makes us more irritable and quicker to anger, and can make even minor movements and light exercise more difficult. But thanks to the twisting, stretching Yoga poses, you can loosen up those tension spots and knotted muscles, restoring pain-free movement and drastically improving the quality of your life.
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It regulates hormone production. Yoga doesn’t just get rid of cortisol; it also floods your body with feel-good endorphins. These endorphins give you the “high” that’s common after physical activity. You’ll find that you feel better, happier, and more at peace overall because of the dopamine and other endorphins coursing through your system. Stress won’t be able to touch you!
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It grounds you in the present. With Yoga practice, the focus is on staying in the moment, on paying attention to what you’re feeling now and letting everything else—from the past and in the future—slip away. This does wonders to reduce both anxiety and stress! You won’t be worrying about what already happened or what might happen, so because you’re in the moment and only concentrating on your workout, you find much more mental calmness.
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It makes you more attuned to your body. The more you focus on how your body is feeling during every part of your Yoga workout, the more mindful you’ll become overall. You’ll begin to notice pain spots before they form, or you’ll feel your muscles tightening or fatiguing to warn you to stop working out before you injure yourself. Greater awareness of your body will lead to better physical movement overall.
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It improves your breath control. A huge part of every Yoga workout is paying attention to your breathing patterns, how you breathe in, out, and hold between each breath. This is actually VERY important for both your physical and mental health. Better breathing means more oxygen in your body to supply your organs, muscles, and brain. And, because of the meditative, hypnotic nature of regulated breathing patterns, you’ll find your mind becomes calmer and anxious thoughts clear away.
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It uses meditative techniques. Every Yoga workout involves some sort of meditation practice. Some are more mindfulness based that center you on your surroundings or the exercise you’re doing, but some utilize more spiritual techniques that remove you from your body with the goal of elevating your mind and soul to a higher plane of consciousness. Meditation has been scientifically proven to be VERY effective for reducing stress. It gets rid of your worries over past mistakes and concerns over future problems, even for just a few minutes while you’re going through the Yoga session. The result is better physical and mental health!
The truth is that Yoga is one of the most relaxing forms of exercise you can do.
Make no mistake: it is exercise. Going through all of those poses and sequences will push both your cardiovascular and muscular endurance to their limits. You’ll find that your fitness overall improves because you’re paying extra attention to your mobility and flexibility. Yoga is great for weight loss, improving your metabolism, speeding up digestion, and even enhancing brain function.
But in addition to the exercise aspect, Yoga is also amazing for your mental health. As you can see by our list above, it pushes aside all of the worries and anxieties that fill your mind, so you can find peace while you’re working out. The meditative techniques, breath control, and body self-awareness you learn through your Yoga practice will all work together to keep you calm throughout the rest of your day.
With Yoga, you’ll become a calmer, more centered person with greater control over the things that stress you out!
How Yoga Can Help Reduce Stress: Find Out More with Get Yoga Lean
Get Yoga Lean is our solution to help improve both your body and mind with one simple, highly effective workout program!
Each workout is designed to push your muscles and cardiovascular system to their limits, enhance flexibility, and encourage better joint mobility. You’ll find you’re sweating harder and working more than you ever thought possible.
But we also make sure to incorporate plenty of the mental health-boosting aspects of Yoga, too: meditation, regulated breathing patterns, and mindfulness techniques. These will help to bring you calm and banish the anxieties you’ve been wrestling with every day.
You’ll never regret the time you spend doing Yoga. You’ll be fitter in body and mind both, because that’s just what Yoga does! You’ll take back control of your life and feel better than ever before.
Give this workout program a try and see how Yoga can help reduce stress and lose weight at the same time.