Yoga For Beginners : Yoga Benefits For All Ages

Whatever your age, yoga can enhance your lifestyle...

As well as being fun for children, learning yoga develops self-discipline and can enhance their physical and mental health. Asanas are good for developing coordination and help to improve concentration and memory. Regular practice can enable young people to keep their natural flexibility for many years.

It can help teenagers to keep their youthful flexibility and give them the inner strength to say no to negative influences.

Older people often find that gentle yoga exercises allow them to retain mobility and may relieve problems such as arthritis and poor circulation.

During pregnancy, yoga promotes good health in both mother and unborn child. Yoga asanas lessen the effects of such problems as overweight, backache, and depression. Most women who practice yoga find that it can make labor easier and shorter. Although some asanas have to be modified during pregnancy, their essence is perfectly suited to this time of expanded self-awareness. Pregnancy is also a very good time for meditation.

Everyone can benefit from following a regular yoga routine, as it counteracts many of the problems suffered in modern life. Asanas release the physical tensions caused by hours of sitting, deep breathing gives vitality by increasing the supply of oxygen to the brain and meditation enhances the powers of concentration. Yoga improves strength and flexibility in the mind as well as the body, and aids relaxation. Yoga can enable one to relax fully, and promotes sound sleep; it also improves digestion and stimulates circulation. It frees the practitioner both physically and mentally, often heightening intuition and creativity

Benefits of Yoga --No Matter What Your Age

1. Pain Relief

Yoga is a wonderful form of natural pain relief. Among people with chronic low back pain, doing yoga for just 12 weeks led to greater improvements in back function than usual care,2 and yoga for 6 months has been linked to significantly less disability, pain, and associated depression. It’s not only back pain that stands to benefit, either.

Yoga has been found to benefit many types of pain, including that from fibromyalgia, arthritis, joint pain, neck pain and more.

2. Anxiety and Depression

One of the great things about yoga is that it’s a mind-body exercise, which means it has benefits for both your physical self and your mental/emotional self. Whether it’s the rhythmic, deep breathing, the meditation/relaxation, the promotion of "mindfulness," the exercise or a combination, research shows:

Yoga may be an alternative to drugs for relieving depression3

Yoga may reduce stress, anxiety, and depression, improve sleep patterns, and enhance overall well-being and quality of life4

A review of yoga as a therapeutic intervention shows it’s an effective form of mind-body medicine for “psychopathological (e.g. depression, anxiety)” and other conditions5

Yoga increases the levels of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) in your brain, which may offer natural “anti-depressant” benefits

6And according to the Harvard Mental Health Letter:7

"... for many patients dealing with depression, anxiety, or stress, yoga may be a very appealing way to better manage symptoms. Indeed, the scientific study of yoga demonstrates that mental and physical health are not just closely allied, but are essentially equivalent. The evidence is growing that yoga practice is a relatively low-risk, high-yield approach to improving overall health."

3. Increase Flexibility and Balance

As you get older, your flexibility and balance can suffer, increasing your risk of potentially serious falls and fractures. Engaging in yoga is an enjoyable way to turn back the hands of time, in a sense, and actually enhance your muscular strength and body flexibility, rather than lose it.

One review of studies involving people in their 60s and 70s found that yoga led to moderate improvements in gait, upper/lower body flexibility, lower body strength, and weight loss, with researchers concluding, "Yoga may engender improvements in some components of fitness in older adults."8

Through improvements in balance, posture, and flexibility, yoga can help keep you nimble and active at any age.

4. Better Breathing and Lung Capacity

If you have a condition that impacts your respiratory function, such as asthma, yoga may be of benefit to that, too. Yoga involves deep, purposeful breathing, and research suggests that such exercises may increase chest wall expansion and forced expiratory lung volumes, which is a fancy way of saying it improves your breathing capacity and respiratory function.9

5. Improved Heart Health

Research into the connection between yoga and heart health is still ongoing, but trials that have been done suggest it can benefit heart disease in a number of ways, including:10

Reducing high blood pressure

Improving symptoms of heart failure

Easing heart palpitations

Lowering other heart disease risk factors, such as high cholesterol levels, blood sugar and stress hormones

Enhancing cardiac rehabilitation

Yoga For Beginners : Yoga Benefits For All Ages