How Yoga & Meditation Influence Our Overall Well Being
Yoga and meditation originated in ancient India and are lately gaining popularity all across the globe. They are considered pathways to create harmony and balance between mind, body, and soul.
While yoga can benefit physical fitness, meditation takes care of an individual’s mind. However, practicing meditation after Yoga regularly helps balance the entire nervous system for holistic well-being.
According to US yoga statistics, the number of yoga practitioners in the United States has nearly doubled in the last decade, of which 52% use yoga and meditation to get mentally and physically stronger and 42% use it to feel calm and happy.
Let us understand what is yoga or meditation and how they benefit your health!
What is Yoga?
Yoga is a means to connect your inner soul with the supreme spirit. The practitioners are needed to focus on their breathing, energy, and consciousness in tandem with unique body movements.
The 7 types of yoga are, karma yoga which focuses on actions and duties, bhakti yoga on devotion, jnana yoga emphasizes the wisdom of reality, raja yoga focusing especially on the human mind, hatha yoga (yoga of balance), vinyasa yoga (movement intensive), and ashtanga yoga (for physical strength).
What Do You Mean By Meditation?
Meditation or Dhyan works on the mind. It requires one to abstain from distractions and concentrate on one thing at a time. You’ll need to focus energy on transforming your thoughts for self-reflection and contemplation.
Therapeutic Medical Benefits of Yoga and Meditation
- Help keep the joints active
- Reduce pain and help with arthritis
- Stabilize heart rate
- Impart strength and flexibility to the body
- Promote inner peace and improve your sleep cycle
- Keep blood pressure in check
- Enhance your respiratory system
- Help in weight management
- Help keep stress, anxiety, and depression at bay
- Help you relax and keep negative emotions away
- Improve concentration and memory
- Impart productivity boost
Yoga and Meditation for Addiction
How do yoga or meditation help with addiction?
With regular practice of yoga and meditation, you can resist cravings, manage stress, improve sleep, cope with withdrawal symptoms, and let yourself heal from within.
Yoga also helps with refining physical appearance and this induces more confidence in the recovering patients. On the other hand, meditation can help calm their emotional triggers and consequently ensure reduced cravings and less likelihood of relapse.
Check out the WhiteSands Addiction Treatment and opt for specialized wellness programs to help you get through substance addiction and associated trauma using guided yoga and meditation.
Yoga And Meditation For Overall Well-Being
Brain Function
On the scientific scale, yoga helps release appropriate chemicals to moderate the mind and body, create new neural connections, and restore the lost ones, therefore improving concentration, creativity, and memory. It also advances clarity of thought, analytical skills, reasoning, and latency.
Mental & Emotional Health
People diagnosed with mental health can practice yoga and meditation to treat their anxiety disorders, depression, stress, and fatigue. Yoga asanas and meditation or pranayam target wholesome psychological healing to aid with severe mental illnesses, proven by experimental studies.
Physical Health
Is yoga enough to keep you physically fit?
The answer is yes!
Yoga postures instigate all the joints, muscles, and senses along with accurate breathing techniques in order to boost strength, balance, and flexibility.
It all depends on the type and intensity of yoga asanas you choose. The study suggests that around 20 to 30 minutes of yoga a day is enough to satisfy your body’s fitness requirements.
You can even combine yoga with other forms of high-intensity exercises to get the desired results quickly.
Follow yoga with exercise and conclude with 15 minutes of meditation session for overall betterment.
Conclusion
Yogic philosophy suggests that the human body is composed of various dimensions that need to remain in a state of co-balance for effective functioning and disturbances in any one of them can affect the equilibrium of the entire system. And a well-balanced yoga and meditation practice is the ideal way to achieve just that.
A calm, collected, and happy mind along with a fit & active physique simultaneously gives you comprehensive health, superiority, and well-being.
You can begin with short sessions and as your body starts responding, you can keep increasing your limits.
Immerse yourself in yoga and meditation and feel the change yourself!
