HOW CAN YOGA POSITIVELY IMPACT YOUR MENTAL HEALTH

Yoga enhances inner awareness by directing your focus to your body's current capabilities by holistic practice that integrates asanas, meditation, breathing techniques and relaxations. It aids in cultivating breath control and mental and physical strength, rather than emphasizing physical appearance.

Given its focus on breathing exercises and meditation, which helps in calming and centering the mind, it's not surprising that yoga offers mental benefits like decreased anxiety and depression. What might be more unexpected is that it also enhances brain function.

Lifting weights enhances muscle strength and size. Similarly, practicing yoga fosters the development of new connections in brain cells and alters both the structure and function of the brain, leading to enhanced cognitive abilities like learning and memory. Yoga fortifies areas of the brain crucial for memory, attention, awareness, thought, and language. Consider it as a form of weightlifting for the brain.

Any form of exercise can enhance your mood by reducing stress hormones, boosting the production of endorphins—chemicals that make you feel good—and increasing the flow of oxygenated blood to your brain. However, yoga might offer extra advantages. It can influence mood by raising levels of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), a brain chemical linked to improved mood and reduced anxiety.

Incorporating yoga into your lifestyle improves both mental and physical well-being.