Yoga can be an excellent way to restore your connection to yourself. As part of my routine workouts, I began incorporating Yoga to balance my physical exercises with my mental well-being.
At one point during my health journey, I was eating healthy, toning and building muscle, and pumping my heart with cardio. I felt great and I was doing the things I thought I should be doing! Except, I couldn’t help but feel like something deeper was still missing.
For one, I needed to stretch more after my workouts, but mainly, the work I was putting into my health felt more like I was just going through the motions. I was in search of something more intentional; a need to feel more connected to myself and my body.
That’s when I decided to add yoga to the mix.
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Benefits of Yoga
Yoga offers so many incredible benefits. According to the National Institutes of Health, scientific evidence shows that Yoga supports stress management, mental health, mindfulness, healthy eating, weight loss, and quality sleep.
Yoga is an excellent tool for health conditions like arthritis or osteoporosis. You can change the exercises to fit your needs.
But Yoga is also great if you’re already in shape and want a challenging workout. It can make other activities you enjoy like dancing, walking, or swimming easier. Yoga can make you stronger and more flexible. It’s a great way to gain energy and center yourself. You’ll also feel more focused and alert. And Yoga can help you feel great and function better in your daily life.
Yoga can also help improve these conditions:
- Poor blood circulation
- High blood pressure
- Arthritis
- Osteoporosis
- Limited mobility
- Lower back pain
- Trouble breathing
- Headaches
- Tension or stress
- Depression
Regularly practicing Yoga creates mental clarity and calmness, increases body awareness, relieves chronic stress, relaxes the mind, centers attention, and sharpens concentration.
On a deeper level, it enables you to finally stop and listen. Calming the mind enough for you to reconnect to what your body is telling you.
So, if you find yourself struggling to feel connected to yourself and quieting your mind long enough for you to listen to what your body is trying to tell you, you too could benefit from trying Yoga.
Here are the Five Ways Yoga Can Restore Your Connection to Self:
Yoga is a holistic practice that allows us to feel connected to the physical and spiritual aspects of our being. Through a series of stretches and poses done in tandem with breathing techniques, yoga offers the powerful benefits of exercise with a heavy focus on the mental aspects. And since yoga is gentle, almost anyone can do it, regardless of your age or fitness level.
1. Break from Distractions
Taking a Yoga class forces you to stay calm and quiet in a room full of strangers. Going to yoga studios, you will be away from the TV, your phone, people requiring your attention, guaranteeing time away from anything that might distract you.
2. Slow Down
The practice of Yoga forces you to slow down. In practice, you lose those jittery and spastic movements and intentionally move at a slower pace to be able to see and hear what you are doing. It’s virtually impossible to hear yourself if you are moving at high speeds all of the time. A nice change of pace from work and life.
3. Breath
Instructors walk you through several breathing techniques that help you slow your breathing and focus on the timing and breath to work effectively through poses and stretches. The slower breath calms your mind, relieves any lingering anxiety, and helps you concentrate on your breathing with intention. A practice you can take along with you after class. When you find yourself in high stress or intense situations, you’ll be able to slow your breathing to help you think and connect with your mind to avoid reactive responses and deal with the situation appropriately.
4. Body Movement
Spending more time and longer poses and stretches allows you to feel the position and posture of your body. It draws more awareness to the way you are positioned and allows for minor adjustments as you feel your way through it.
5. Mindfulness
Yoga practices typically incorporate some component of meditation. Even so, the calm and quietness of the class force you to start listening to both your body and your mind. Yoga helps you quieten your mind and release thoughts through mantras and focused breathing.
Try Yoga to Restore Your Connection With Yourself
Yoga can help you deal with the stresses of life. It can also help prevent or ease back pain and muscle or joint injury and give you self-reliance and self-esteem. Yet, one of the most important benefits of any yoga routine isn’t physical — it’s the quieting of the mind and connection to yourself.
Through yoga, you are learning to pay better attention to your thoughts and body to better hear what it’s trying to tell you. You are fine-tuning your attention, beginning with the body and then moving to the mind. As you get deeper into your practice and restore your connection with yourself, you see the mental and spiritual benefits throughout every aspect of your life.
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