Do you need a reason to get up out of bed and get to that pre-work morning yoga class? Or motivation to stop off at the studio after work when all you want to do is go home?
The benefits of daily yoga are more than mastering that headstand for Instagram. Check out the reasons to get that yoga workout in below.
The Benefits of Daily Yoga
Who doesn’t love getting to the occasional yoga class? But it’s hard to get there and make time – but here are ten reasons why you should.
1. It Lessens Pain
When you do yoga, you’re not only stretching out all your muscles and tendons. You’re actually strengthening them.
The positions in yoga aren’t meant to be an easy stretch, it’s a workout in itself. When you workout and stretch muscles that were or are hurting you, it helps heal them.
We’re not just saying that it was proven. In a study with eighty people with back problems, people had less pain in just a few weeks.
Scientists think it’s because it stretches muscles you’d usually avoid using (because they hurt) and it brings more space to your spine.
2. It Makes You Fertile
While doing yoga if you’re completely infertile won’t help you get pregnant, it can move things along for people without fertility issues. If there’s nothing wrong with either partner and you can’t get pregnant, try integrating yoga.
You need to do it regularly to see the benefits, but you could see the baby benefits. We all know that yoga helps people relax, but it can relieve bodily tension.
Opening your hips and your pelvic muscles can bring more blood to the uterus. The more blood flow, the healthier the monthly cycle, and the more hormones you’ll produce.
Men can reap the benefits too. The more blood flow that gets to their organs can push sperm motility.
All that, with a functioning partner, adds to good luck when you’re trying to make a baby.
3. It’s Exercise
Unless you’re doing a power vinyasa, you can’t write off yoga as your full cardio routine. But it’ll work for a day where you need a break from the treadmill.
Yoga’s constant muscle tension and concentration burn more calories than you’d think. All the benefits of exercise come with a regular yoga practice.
Just make sure you get some other cardio in during the week, for at least 30 minutes of an elevated heart rate.
There are cardio versions of yoga, like hot yoga, which burn more calories. However, hot yoga is intense and very dehydrating. It’s a good low impact workout for those that need a break for their joints.
If you don’t like it or feel like it takes too much of a toll on your body, try Buti yoga. It’s like yoga mixed with African dance, with a side of belly dancing.
4. It Makes You Smarter
Ok, so doing yoga won’t increase your IQ, but it will increase your mental clarity. Like exercise, it does that already.
But the stress relieving properties of yoga and the meditation aspect do even more. When you’re less stressed and scattered, your brain functions as a better-organized machine.
Then, you can organize your day better and have more focus on the tasks at hand. Finally, meditation helps you learn to dismiss distracting thoughts.
Which is helpful when it’s three p.m. and you’re writing an email but all you can think about is leaving and going to Starbucks.
5. It Helps You Sleep
Spending some relaxing time on the yoga mat can help you sleep! Again, it’s one of the benefits of general exercise.
However, the meditative effects of yoga and learning to control breathing are both helpful when you can’t sleep.
With less stress in your body and your mind (previous benefit), you’ll have more fulfilling zzz’s once you get to sleep. Waking up refreshed just because you spent an hour stretching?
Yes, please!
6. It Helps With Depression
If you have depression, nothing is going to automatically cure it. But things can help! Like doing yoga, around three times a week.
Along with producing exercise-friendly endorphins, practicing being in the moment and meditating gives your brain a break from depressive thoughts.
It helps with anxiety too. It’s hard to obsess about a thought when you’re trying to remember to breathe, hold in your core, lift your leg, and not fall.
Of course, yoga is only a tool in the toolbox of treating depression, so don’t use it as a replacement for medication or therapy.
7. It Makes You Happier
Doing yoga over time helps your brain re-wire for happiness. Yes, you read that right. The more you practice meditation and do yoga, the stronger the positive part of your brain gets.
You can expect to be less emotionally reactive and have a clearer mind in times of crisis. If that’s not worth doing yoga regularly, we don’t know what is.
8. It Lowers Inflammation
When you think about inflammation, what do you think about? Probably something swollen, right?
Well, inflammation happens in a lot of ways in the body, and yoga can help shut it down. Scientists are researchers are starting to see more and more proof that we process emotions throughout our body.
So if there’s unexplained inflammation somewhere, doing some yoga healing time may help it go away.
As well as seeing long-term effects, people who practiced yoga regularly didn’t get as high of a blood pressure spike in stressful situations.
9. It Keeps DNA Healthy
Finally, Scientists think that yoga helps keep our DNA cells young. As DNA replicates, it gets shorter and shorter each time.
Doing regular yoga seems to slow the shortening of DNA strands. We can’t help the eventual dying off of the strands, but slowing it down means they can replicate more times before they die.
That means your body doesn’t age as quickly, and everyone wants that!
10. It Can Make You Taller
While you aren’t going to visibly get taller like you’re wearing heels, you can grow about a half inch to an inch from regular yoga.
You’re not actually growing, you’re putting more space between your bones – like there’s supposed to be.
Get Some Mat Time
The benefits of daily yoga are more than we can list in an article of ten things. It’s a great exercise for people with low mobility or who need a break from the regular gym.
It can keep you healthy, help you get pregnant, and make sure you’re thinking clearly.
Want to know 5 reasons to get a personal trainer? Click here.