If you consider starting your hatha yoga practice, think no more! Hatha yoga offers you a constellation of undeniable mind and body benefits. Here is a list of only a few confirmed hatha yoga benefits:
- Toned and energized body
- Healing the painful spots in your body
- Increased flexibility
- Improved mood & lower depression risk
- Reduced anxiety
- A new attitude towards life
- Better concentration
What is hatha yoga?
Hatha yoga combines movements with breathing techniques and mantras. Therefore, hatha yoga helps our body relax, tone and energize. It’s a perfect way to start a day and also makes an ideal evening relaxation routine.
Doing hatha yoga is not just performing the asanas and repeating mantras. It also enables you to shift your mindset and bring more positivity and calmness into your life. Therefore, hatha yoga benefits go beyond the physical ones.
Yoga is also a philosophy of life. No wonder that besides many physical benefits, yoga is a supreme fuel for our minds, too.
The body is your temple. Keep it pure and clean for the soul to reside in.
–B.K.S Iyengar
The advantages of yoga
Since our mind and body are connected, relaxing the muscles and removing the painful nodes in our body is also beneficial for our soul. Apart from other types of physical activities which primary focus is to burn some extra calories quickly, tone our body, melt the excess of fat, or body sculpting, the primary focus of yoga is relaxation, physical health, calming, and finding your inner balance.
Yoga is a complex philosophy of life dedicated to finding our inner peace, activating our chakras, awakening our energy, relax and move all our muscles.
Yoga is not a religion. It is a science, science of well-being, science of youthfulness, science of integrating body, mind and soul.
― Amit Ray
Yoga journey – from a beginner to a real yogi
If you are a novice to the yoga world, it’s hard to get a full grasp of all hatha yoga benefits. We may testify some of them fairly quickly as soon as we start with yoga.
If you make a decision to step into the yoga world, you need to be prepared to change your attitude and be receptive to new ideas. Try to embrace the process and celebrate any positive change you may notice along the way. That’s what yoga is about.
Yoga for physical health
Toned and energized body
Yoga is a great way of energizing and toning your body. Although yoga provides gentle body movements, the different yoga asanas have the ability to activate even the tiniest body muscles. Yoga increases the blood flow to all the areas of your body and provides your body with fresh oxygen and new energy.
Due to the yoga asanas, your body becomes toned, well-shaped, muscles are activated you feel energized. Yes, all the physical activities provide such benefits, but the main difference with yoga its restorative and renewal power. This is also one of the hatha yoga benefits easiest to spot.
Healing the painful spots in your body
If you have sciatica, back & neck pain, painful wrists, or even headaches, you can alleviate the symptoms of all those diseases by practicing the proper yoga stretches and poses that target the right muscles connected to the painful body parts. Relaxing that muscles can bring relief and relaxation to your painful body parts.
Increased flexibility
Yoga stretching exercises lengthen your muscles and therefore provide the increased mobility. You’ll be surprised once you realize that you’re becoming better at certain yoga poses and that you stretch to the extent you were not able before.
Physiological benefits of yoga
Improved mood as a result of energizing our body
Yoga can activate even the tiniest muscles in our body and energize the whole body. You can quickly notice the refreshment and a sudden burst of energy as soon as you finish your yoga workout. You feel awakened, refreshed and energized. Luckily, that’s not all!
You can also notice that your mood is improved as well! Of course, that is not the case with yoga only. Each physical activity is beneficial for our mood. But, I noticed that each time I finish my yoga exercises, I get an unbridled rush of excitement and euphoria. It’s like coming back from another dimension.
A lower risk of depression due to better serotonin production
Yoga invigorates body and stimulates the mind. Due to that, our brain is capable of producing more serotonin, so that we become more resistant to depression. When we talk about relations between yoga and depression, the most significant credit goes to yoga breathing techniques, meditation and visualizations. They all contribute to activating and strengthening positive mental patterns in our brains and weakening the vicious circle of negative mental patterns.
Reducing anxiety and increasing the resistance to stress
Yoga is excellent for relaxing our aching muscles and refreshing our minds. Even if we’re in an anxious state of mind before our yoga sequence, the anxiety slowly fades away as we go farter with yoga poses and breathing techniques.
Also, during meditation, we can visualize positive life situations. That way, we can symbolically inhale and give a life to new fulfilling ideas that are ready to emerge. Also, we can symbolically exhale negativity and toxic thoughts. You can visualize making a distance from your toxic thoughts and letting them go slowly.
A new attitude towards your life
Yoga helps us find our inner peace, be in tune with ourselves, find our life purpose, be grateful, more relaxed and happier. The secret of yoga lies in the fact that each one who practices it frequently and dedicatedly can develop new life philosophy and a holistic life approach. This is one of the hatha yoga benefits we often overlook, but it is as real as the others we mentioned here.
That way, we can distinguish between causes and consequences in our lives more accurately and notice and analyze our emotions and thoughts better. We can even get to know ourselves and discover the entire universe that’s been hiding inside all of us. Meditation and yoga mantras help us to experience a new reality and strengthen new positive mental patterns.
Yoga is the journey of the self, through the self, to the self.
–The Bhagavad Gita
Better concentration
By practicing yoga we also become more mindful. By being mindful, we increase our awareness, improve our perception, focus and concentration. Therefore, yoga is highly recommended in times when you do certain activities with high cognitive efforts. Due to the improved circulation of blood after a yoga workout, your mind can perform better. You can notice that some demanding tasks are easier to complete now. Therefore, yoga is an irreplaceable activity at any time, especially when you need to perform some complex cognitive tasks.
Hatha Yoga Benefits – conclusion
Perhaps yoga is what you need to start feeling better! Since you’re familiar now with the different yoga benefits for your mind, perhaps you’re motivated enough to give it a try. Hatha yoga benefits for your body and mind are really tangible and you can experience promptly as you start practicing it.
I'm a blogger and idealist. I've been exploring mindfulness, mental health, and other psychology and personal growth topics for years. I strive for harmony, self-improvement, inner peace and perfection. I am a narcissist abuse victims advocate and an empath.
Contact: sonja@upbeatimpulse.com
