5 ways in which yoga can nourish your body and soul.

The word “Yoga” is derived from Sanskrit word yuji, meaning yoke or union. Yoga is five thousand years old Indian art that brings the body and mind together. Physical exercises, meditative practices, and spiritual engagements in yoga not only give the body flexibility but also rejuvenates the soul. Yoga is a therapeutic lifestyle that, if adopted, has the potential to cure a range of illnesses, diagnoses, and stressful situations.

So here are the 5 ways in which yoga can nourish your body and soul.

1. Yoga can improve your posture and spine health.
Asanas or the posture exercises in yoga comprises of standing, twists, forward and backward bend. Standing develop strength and increase awareness of spine alignment. It helps release imperfect posture and create a strong, healthy body. Twists balance the deep spinal tissues, increase the mobility of the spine, and elongate all the muscles, tendons, and ligaments; thus providing a healthy spine. Forward bending stretches the hamstrings muscles and also lengthen the spine. Backward bending provides stretching and toning to the abdomen and the chest and conversely strengthens the back muscles, the legs, and the arms.

2. Yoga improves breathing.
As a consequence of the rapid pace of life, people in the world have adopted upper chest breathing instead of deep diaphragmatic abdominal breathing. This results in a fewer amount of fresh oxygen entering the human body. Pranayama, is a tributary of yoga which demonstrates how to control deep diaphragmatic abdominal breathing. Through pranayama, the respiratory muscles are exercised and bloodstream is oxygenated. Yogic breathing tones the nervous system and cures several diseases like asthma, headache, bronchitis, and insomnia.

3. Yoga improves hygiene.
Proper adaptation of the yoga lifestyle comes with the performance of six hygienic duties. These are washing, nasal cleansing, colon cleansing, rectus isolation, cleansing vision, and cleansing breath. These six cleansing acts sanitize the digestive, respiratory, and nervous systems and consequently help the body stay healthy and hygienic.

4. Yoga can cure depression.
Yoga stimulates the production of endorphins. Endorphins are hormones produced by the body to relieve stress and pain. They are responsible for boosting one’s mood and slowly killing depression. The focal point of yoga is to engage the subconscious mind more than the conscious mind. This practice during yoga transforms the inner self which is core to dealing with depression. There are many other benefits of yoga on the soul such as dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), mood swings, and bad attitude.

5. Yoga demonstrates the power of positive thoughts and how to talk to yourself.
Mantras are words or phrases that facilitate meditation. As we repeat these mantras the more we believe them to be true, the more we learn the power of positive thinking.
Unfortunately much of our self-talk is pessimistic and judgmental which makes us more vulnerable to slip into a cycle of negative thoughts. Svadhyaya, the practice of self-study, makes us more sentient of how we talk to ourselves. By taking the time and searching inside, we begin to learn about ourselves. It makes us question our negativity and cynical mindset. We uncover what matters to us and understand the things that irritate us.

Adopting the yoga lifestyle will help you achieve harmony between the body and soul. As said before, yoga is not just a physical exercise, so finding just a couple of minutes from your hectic schedule will play a significant part in developing and sustaining your overall physical and spiritual health.

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