Practicing Yoga for Your Health and Wellness

I love yoga! It wasn’t always this way if I’m being honest. For a very long time, yoga was something that I just couldn’t get into.

It wasn’t because I thought it was hard, or I that I wasn’t capable of doing it, or anything along those lines. I just couldn’t’ get into it because doing yoga requires you to engage all of your muscles, and I always felt extremely tired afterwards.

Yoga is meant to make you feel relaxed and energized, not exhausted. But for me I was always exhausted after a yoga session, so I just sort of distanced myself from practicing yoga for a while.

Flash forward about 5 years and here I am, a lover of yoga!

As you can see this love and appreciation for yoga did not happen overnight. It took time, practice, patience, and above all really learning the relationship my mind and body had with practicing yoga.

There are so many reasons why yoga is good for our health. Yoga helps to improve muscle strength, blood circulation, it can help to regulate your blood pressure, support your joints, improve your posture, and so much more. These are all functions of our body that need to be in tip top shape if we want to be at our best, and live our healthiest lives.

While yoga is not the only way to achieve these health benefits, it’s a great option for people who don’t live an active lifestyle. This is a great way to naturally improve your health, transform your body, and expand your wellness practices without making a commitment of any kind.

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As mentioned, there are so many positive health benefits to doing yoga. While yoga may seem like something you would do for stretching purposes, the reality is that it’s not only for stretching your body.

Yoga is a combination of breathing techniques, exercise, and meditation practices that strive to improve one’s overall health and wellness. The main purpose of yoga is to create harmony with the body and the mind.

So, what are the benefits of doing yoga? Here are a few just to start:

• Increased flexibility
• Increased muscle strength
• Helps to tone the body
• Improve energy levels
• Can help with weight loss and maintaining a healthy weight
• It’s a great form of cardio
• Can help you protect your body from injuries

And that’s just a few!

The best part is that yoga is for everyone! Like seriously.

Everyone can benefit from practicing yoga. Not only does it help you improve your overall health, but it also promotes happiness, self-love, and living an active lifestyle without putting in much effort.

The overall goal of yoga is to help people live longer, healthier, and much happier lives which, let’s be honest, is something everyone wants.

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Yoga and happiness

Practicing yoga can significantly increase your happiness.

Think back to all the moments when you may have been overwhelmed with stress or anxiety, and no matter what you tried nothing seemed to be able to help ease the overwhelm. Those moments suck big time! But they don’t have to.

Yoga helps to combats stress and anxiety by training your mind and body to engage in deep relaxation practices. A key part to practicing yoga is surrendering all control. Instead of trying to control the way your body moves with each move, or the strength you have to hold a certain position, you just simply let your body be.

Let it move as it will and don’t try to force anything. In turn you will find that your mind will respond the same way. The result? Actually, allowing yourself to relax while letting go of the things that you can’t control, and not putting so much force on trying to control the things that you can.

The best part about practicing yoga for happiness is that it will have long-term benefits when it comes to improving your everyday mood. Yoga isn’t a hit or miss. It takes time to really find your own rhythm and flow, and to adjust your body to the awkward positions.

However, with enough practice you’ll find your rhythm and flow and begin to see and improvement in your daily mood almost instantly.

Yoga and self-love

Yoga is really a journey of self-love. There are many reasons why someone would begin practicing yoga. For me it was the result of increased levels of anxiety and depression which really had a huge impact on my self-esteem.

As crazy as this may sound practicing yoga can really help increase your self-esteem. This is because you learn to love yourself unconditionally, flaws and all. Yoga really strives to get you comfortable with your own body.

The way it moves, the way it responds to your actions, the way you fuel it, and most importantly the way you care for it. Yoga can help you tap into this awareness of your body and train your mind to be accepting of who you are from the inside out.

With yoga you spend time in movement and you take up space that you may not do in your everyday life. It is because of simple techniques within yoga, such as the combination of breathing techniques and meditation practices, that you are able to really tune into yourself and be aware of everything.

In doing so you may find that there are so many thoughts that float around in your head, so many moments where you resist your body from moving as it pleases, and so many opportunities of practicing self-love that you let go by. All of this may ultimately be the result of you just not loving yourself enough to be free to be who you are authentically.

Yoga helps to turn self-resistance and low self-esteem into self-love. With that you will learn how to be more patient, more forgiving, and much kinder to yourself.

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Yoga and living an active life

Yoga is a form of exercise which is what I love most about it. Think of it as a combination of strength training and cardio. Your build muscle, tone your body, sweat like hell, work on your weight goals all at the same time!

As mentioned, before I was never really the yoga type and there were many reasons as to why. When I was trying to get into yoga I was at a point in my life where exercise wasn’t really a habit let alone a priority for me. Instead, I wanted to be this healthy and fit girl who care deeply about her health, but I didn’t want to put in the hard work to make it happen. Which made practicing yoga hard.

Turns out a big part of being healthy requires you to be active, and practicing yoga counts as a physical activity.

I love to exercise. It increases my mood, my self-esteem, gives me tons of energy, and most importantly makes me feel good about myself! Well guess what, yoga does the exact same thing! It can even be used as a substitution for a workout when you have no motivation to push through a workout.

At the end of the day while yoga may not be your traditional way of exercising, you can and you will get the positive health benefits from yoga that you would from simply exercising.

This includes being able to lose weight, build muscle, tone your body, improve your stamina, and even transform your body in whatever way makes you most confident.

Yoga and your body

Finally, the heart of this whole post.

Yoga can change the relationship you have with your body tremendously. Much like encouraging self-love, yoga really requires you to learn your body and accept it as it is, so that you are able to focus on caring for your body.

We exercise for many reasons. This may be for reasons such as we want to feel good about ourselves, we want to take care of ourselves, or we want to change the relationship we may have with our bodies. Whether the reason yoga can help.

One reason practicing yoga was so hard for me was because I was not comfortable with my body. I couldn’t stand the idea of wearing clothes that fit and reveal the shape of my body, and I most certainly could not stand the idea of exercising in the presence of others.

This not only prevented me from making my health a priority, but it also prevented me from creating a healthy relationship with my body. Instead, I had to go through body image struggles, learn to face my insecurities, and furthermore embrace my body before I could even begin to want to change my health for the better.

I had to change the relationship I had with my body in order to change the way I cared for my body.

Through yoga I was able to learn to love and appreciate my body for everything that it allowed me to do in a yoga session, even if it wasn’t as good as the instructor, and that love and appreciation trickled into my everyday life.

Now, I accept and love my body as it is, and I commit to caring for my body in any way that I can. My whole relationship with my body has changed, and practicing yoga consistently has only strengthen the positive relationship that I’ve created with my body.

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How to practice yoga

By now you’re probably wondering how to practice yoga. To be honest, the best way to do it is to find an instructor, whether in a classroom setting or online, who is certified in yoga and can guide you through a session.

Something to keep in mind about yoga is that there are many different levels. There is beginner, intermediate, and advance levels of yoga. You are going to want to make sure that you are following along to a yoga routine that is realistic of your body’s performance.

I’ve found the easiest way to gauge what may be the right level for you is to decided based on your level of commitment to exercising, and your level of flexibility.

Basically, the more you work out and the more flexible you are, you’re going to want to challenge yourself. If you’re not consistent in exercising or you’re not really all that flexible, start with a beginner’s class.

If you want to do a yoga practice that is beginner friendly you can check out this video. What I like about this video is that it’s easy to follow, it will challenge you, and it’s a great introduction to practicing yoga.

Check it out, give it a try and share with me how that experience goes for you!

If watching a video and practicing online isn’t your vibe, no worries. A quick google search for yoga studios near you can point you in the right direction.

Conclusion

Yoga is all about connecting the mind, body, and breath. This allows for you to look inward and bring awareness to yourself so that you can start changing the relationship that you have with yourself.

Practicing yoga is very much like practicing mindfulness. You have to be present, let what comes forward come forth, and just acknowledge those thoughts or feelings without any judgment, without adding or creating labels, and more importantly without feeling a need to change them.

Instead, just allow yourself to become aware of the experience you are having in the current moment. This will train your mind to be more flexible in your way of thinking, which will have amazing results when it comes to your overall health and wellness.

Do you practice yoga? What do you love most about it?

-Xo

Kimora