Sure, taking up a hobby in yoga is excellent for your flexibility, strength, and overall agility, complementing any kind of athlete and their athletic endeavors. But, did you know that yoga holds similar – if not more – power when it comes to mental health? Yoga has been proven to increase self-awareness, happiness, and clarity. Experts are saying yoga can actually remediate the effects of ADHD, anxiety, depression, insomnia, and so many other disorders that pain people every single day.
Here are 5 essential ways in which practicing yoga will lay the groundwork for a happy and fruitful future:
Anxiety Reduction:
40 million adults in the U.S. live with anxiety today. Anxiety is linked to nervous system responses to triggers in our environment and has a crippling hold on so many adults trying to live their lives right now. When you practice yoga, the movements and controlled breathing enable you to move from a sympathetic nervous system to a parasympathetic nervous system, entering a sustained relaxed state that can’t be wavered. In essence, your nervous system literally calms.
Self Confidence:
Thanks to societal pressures, social media, and TV, we are regularly judging ourselves and comparing ourselves to others. The result? A pretty negative self-perception. Through yoga, you get to know yourself, your body, and your spirit better. While doing this, you are building self-trust, developing sustainable self-confidence that will help you succeed happily in everything that you do.
Depression Reduction:
As you grow to love yourself and understand your body, you will feel less overall depressed about your current situation. With yoga prescribed as a remedy for patients living with depression today, it’s hard to ignore the mental healing benefits that come from this centuries-old practice.
Mindfulness:
Beyond developing self-confidence, yoga helps us to recognize our “shadow qualities,” otherwise known as the personality traits we can’t obviously identify. Coined by Carl Jung, these shadow repositories hold our psychological tensions that affect our mood and happiness. When we are able to access these repositories, we can let the pent-up anger, frustration, and unhappiness go, back out into the universe.
Trauma Processing:
Whether it’s PTSD from serving in the Army, or flashbacks to a terrible car accident, many Americans live with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It’s natural for our bodies to struggle processing trauma, which is where yoga comes into the picture. Regular yoga helps you access these traumatic memories, accept and process them, and let them go by the end.
If anything, consider practicing yoga this week for your mental health and stability. As a society, we need to place more emphasis on positive mental health practices, which is where yoga comes into the picture. As always, consider one of our yoga mats for your yogi lifestyle.
References
https://www.yogajournal.com/lifestyle/5-ways-yoga-is-good-for-your-mental-health
https://adaa.org/about-adaa/press-room/facts-statistics
