Why is yoga great for me?

You don’t have to be an accomplished yogi to get amazing benefits from yoga. Yoga is wonderful and can help to calm and destress you. It helps to activate your parasympathetic system (rest and digest) and can leave you nice and relaxed.

When I was an elementary school teacher, I was stressed and anxious all of the time. I started feeling hopeless and knew I needed to do something about it. That’s when I started practicing yoga again. It had been years, but I was committed to sticking with it. I would wake up early in the morning, when the house was nice, dark, and quiet, and do a little 15 min. slow flow. It wasn’t anything fancy. I would sit for about 3 min to do a quick meditation and then I would mostly do sitting or laying poses. Cat-Cow was always my favorite. At the end, I would do a little 3 min Savasana and then a quick minute gratefulness practice (I would say thank you to what I was grateful for). Since I always had a set time for work, it was easy to incorporate. Now that I’m no longer teaching and my schedule is all over the place, I’m having a harder time setting this practice. However, this little barrier is not going to stop me. I plan on restarting, because I’ve been craving it and loved how I felt afterwards.

Besides the reason that I stated above which jumpstarted my practice, there are tons more as to why yoga is beneficial to your health. Here are a couple more reasons:

Stress & Mental Health

• You focus on your breath (pranayama) – when doing yoga, your mind shifts to the present by concentrating on your inhalations and exhalations. This anchors your attention and helps to reduce distractions and promotes a sense of calmness.
• Turning your attention inward – since you are focusing on how the poses affect your body, this mindful movement helps in keeping your mind from wandering and coming into a meditative state which also helps in being aware of each action and movement your body is doing.
• Body Awareness – as mentioned above, since your attention turns inward, you are able to notice the sensations that each pose brings to your body. You might feel tightness, stretching, pain, etc. It’s important to be aware of all of these feelings (especially when encountering pain, which means you need to back off from the pose and see what might be causing it) because it helps in cultivating a deep connection between your body and mind. This in turn helps to also keep you present when practicing yoga.
• Decrease stress and anxiety – while strength training is super important, it releases cortisol, which in women tends to be high because we put so much stress on ourselves. Running here and there, taking care of kids or loved ones, working etc. It can get stressful pretty quickly! Yoga is a great way to decrease this. When you combine physical postures, meditation, & controlling your breath, you activate the parasympathetic system which helps in reducing stress & anxiety.
• Controlling emotions – yoga is great in helping you to become more aware of your emotions, especially if practiced often. If you are stressed all the time, you might be angry, agitated, anxious, or annoyed a lot and not even notice it. With the stillness in the poses and your attention turned inward, you can start to notice how your emotions manifest in your body. What are the triggers for some emotions? What are you doing when this happens? How do these emotions make your body feel? Where are you feeling it the most? This awareness can help you to center and balance your mind a little more!
• Mind, Body and Spirit – yoga integrates all of these 3 and helps to create wholeness and connection to yourself and your environment. It also creates groundedness.

Body Benefits

• Hormonal Balance & Menstrual Health – yoga helps to regulate the endocrine system (creating calmness and lessening stress) and could help to balance hormone levels. Also, if suffering from PMS, certain poses can help in lessening the discomfort. Some poses like Child’s Pose, Cat-Cow, & Reclining Bound Angle Pose could help.
• Improving Strength & Flexibility – if you suffer from muscle tightness, yoga can help in increasing your flexibility (depending on the pose) and releasing the muscle tightness. Strength is also achieved when doing weight-bearing poses. This is not only beneficial when experiencing muscle tightness or weakness, but also to obtain strong muscles and flexible joints to prevent injury!
• Prenatal and Postpartum – yoga can be very beneficial to pregnant women because it can help them to reduce stress and prepare for labor. Afterwards, yoga helps in the postnatal recovery, can strengthen the pelvic floor muscles, and help new mamas mental well-being.
• Better Sleep – when practicing yoga regularly, it can improve sleep by lessening stress and promoting relaxation. This is extremely helpful for women that experience hormonal sleep disturbances and stress during PMS, prenatal, postpartum, or peri/post menopause.

Take Aways

Yoga is amazing and provides tons of benefits. It is a great practice for women of all ages and life stages. Since it is a holistic practice, yoga helps in both physical and mental health by bettering flexibility and strength, while also reducing stress, anxiety, and hormonal imbalances. Yoga can support women during all of their life stages which includes menstrual health, prenatal/postpartum recovery, and peri/post menopause. When you integrate breath control, mindful movement, and meditation, yoga can help women to obtain a balanced and healthy lifestyle which enhances their overall well-being and quality of life. The reason for starting a yoga practice does not matter, what is important is that it provides a versatile and empowering practice that can significantly improve women’s health and happiness.