Strength, Agility And Flexibility Are All Increased
Many sports will give you strength. Others will give you more agility, but few practices will increase strength, agility, and flexibility all at once. In my years of teaching I’ve seen professional athletes overcome injury by increasing their range of motion with yoga, and victims of a double masectomy regain full mobility after debilitating surgeries that left loads of scar tissue in their bodies. Nothing really compares for repairing the body and making sure that the ligaments and connective tissues are just as strong and pliable as the muscles themselves.
Yoga Enhances Memory & Cognitive Functioning
It may seem strange that a practice which involves breathing and stretching can enhance your cognitive functioning, but yogis could really be better at learning, have increased memory capacity, and retain high levels of concentration. Many of these benefits are attributed to meditation – arguably the goal of all yogic practice, but it can also help you at school or on the job by improving your brain functioning.
Body Weight Normalizes – More Health Benefits Of Yoga
While doing an hour of hatha yoga, or even power yoga won’t likely burn as many calories as doing a high intensity interval workout, yoga has a way of normalizing body weight by restoring hormonal balance in the body.
By lowering levels of cortisol and our nervous system’s constant fight or flight response, not only are we less likely to overeat, or eat to suppress unpleasant emotions, we also train our brains to feel satiated more easily because we aren’t constantly in panic mode. Stress is known to cause obesity and fuel virtually all disease, and yoga is a perfect countermeasure.