Benefits of Yoga (A Blog Mini Series)

You're never too young, old, inflexible, or novice to reap the health benefits of yoga. Yoga, the Sanskrit word for "union", is a practice that uses posture and breathing techniques to induce relaxation and improve strength, and its health benefits may surpass those of any other activity. Whether you practice yoga to relax, stretch, breathe, meditate, or simply because it's in fashion, you may not realize the numerous health benefits of yoga. And while there are many different kinds of yoga, ranging from the more gentle hatha yoga to the more strenuous, like Bikram yoga (which is performed in a 105°F room) or power yoga, every form of yoga improves your health from head to toe.

 Benefits of Yoga to Your Bones, Muscles, and Joints

• Yoga keeps your body strong; it involves all the muscles in your body to hold and balance yoga asanas (poses). The various yoga postures strengthen your feet, legs, hands, abs, lower back, legs, and shoulders.
• Yoga's stretching and breathing exercises improve your flexibility, helping joints, tendons, and muscles stay limber.
• Yoga improves your endurance, especially the more athletic forms of yoga such as ashtanga, power, vinyasa, and Bikram yoga. These rigorous yoga practices follow a specific sequence of poses (asanas) that become more challenging as you progress.These forms require you to keep your body in constant motion between poses, resulting in a strenuous cardiovascular workout and improved core strength.

Regular yoga practice will create multiple and noticeable benefits to your health. Try some yoga postures today! And as your instructor will no doubt tell you at the end of your practice: Namaste.

Lovingly borrowed from http://www.yogawiz.com