What is yoga?
This is an ancient Indian discipline which improves health, happiness and mind power through breathing techniques, exercise and meditation. Many people practice yoga as a spiritual path. Others do it for exercise. Either way, practising yoga yields many benefits including the following:

Eight benefits of practising yoga

 1. Increased Flexibility
Yoga involves positions that act upon the various joints in the body including those you’re not aware of. If your body is rigid, it becomes remarkably flexible, even in parts which have not been consciously worked upon. The amazing research behind yoga positions shows that seemingly unrelated “non-strenuous” yoga positions act upon certain parts of the body in an interrelated manner. When exercises are performed together, they work in harmony to create a situation where your body becomes flexible.

 2. Increased lubrication of joints, ligaments and tendons
Yoga positions exercise different tendons and ligaments of the body. 

3. Massaging of all organs of your body
Yoga is perhaps the only activity which massages all the internal glands and organs of the body thoroughly, including those such as the prostate gland that hardly gets externally stimulated during your entire lifetime. This stimulation and massaging of your organs, in turn, benefits you by keeping away disease and forewarns you of the first possible instance of the likely onset of disease or disorder.

4. Improved sense of awareness
One of the far-reaching benefits of yoga is that you acquire an uncanny sense of awareness of an impending health disorder or infection. This allows you to take pre-emptive corrective action.

5. Complete Detoxification
By gently stretching the muscles and joints and massaging the various organs, yoga ensures optimum blood supply to various parts of your body. This helps to flush out toxins from every nook and cranny in your body while, at the same time, nourishing them. Thus, yoga helps to delay ageing, increase energy and provide a remarkable zest for life. 

6. Excellent toning of the muscles
Muscles that have become flaccid or weak are stimulated repeatedly to shed excess flab and flaccidity.

7. Relief from pain
Yoga alleviates back pain and pain from other ailments.

8. Enhanced mental well-being
People often report a sense of calm and contentment, not just after the class but long after. Physical exercise consists of three main components:

• Cardiovascular workout
• Strength
• Flexibility

Most exercise will provide you with only one or two of these components at any given time. For example, running, cycling and weight training can only present opportunities for cardiovascular workout and strength. But they cannot help your body to become more flexible. Yoga is the only exercise that can improve your strength, flexibility and cardiovascular fitness.  

There are many different types of yoga. I’ll just talk about hatha yoga, which is the kind I like. This is a slow-paced stretching yoga with some simple breathing exercises. It is a good starting point for you to learn basic poses, relaxation techniques and become comfortable with yoga.

I tend to start things with great gusto. For instance, each morning I’ll begin my day with about thirty minutes of hatha yoga. This might continue for a month and then…dwindle away to nothing. I confess I’m terribly undisciplined; I cannot seem to practice anything on my own for a sustained period of time even though I know I’m benefitting from a new habit. How about you? Do you struggle with this problem? If so, how do you deal with it? I’d love to hear from you.

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