What is Yoga?

Yoga is more than just stretching, I wish I had a pound for every time I heard people say I can’t do yoga, I’m not flexible, or it's just stretching. Trust me, yoga has many layers and is definitely far from easy. It is, in fact, a holistic approach that could help your fitness journey.

Yoga is a long-standing practice, did you know it appeared within Western cultures from around the 1890s? Since then, it has developed, but still strongly stands by the principles of physical movement, breathing and meditation. Yoga can bring huge benefits to our physical and mental health, fitness goals, and any other goals we may have.

Yoga's Impact on overall health… There Are Many.

Strength and Flexibility:

As we know yoga is often thought of as just stretching, so of course yoga can indeed help with flexibility, which is an area that can help with range of motion and being able to achieve more within your physical goals. An area that isn’t thought about as much when people think of yoga is strength. Yoga can definitely help with this too, providing both flexibility and strength, which often aren’t seen together.

Poses such as downwards facing down which is the best of both, increase flexibility through the ankle, legs, spine and chest, whilst strengthening the whole body including shoulders, abdominal, legs and arms as well.

Balance and Coordination:

There are many poses in yoga, where we are all wobbling all over the mat, and what a benefit this is. Did you know that balance can help with not only full body strength and connection, but it can also help focus the mind and help us remain calm in situations?

Poses such as warrior three and tree pose can help these, and help us prevent falling, and increase strength in the legs, ankles, hips, abdominal and back.

Cardiovascular Health:

So, cardiovascular health is definitely not something that you think about straight away with yoga, but styles such as Hatha and Vinyasa can really increase your heart rate and get you to a good level of fitness. Through full body movement, there is the benefit of increasing your heart rate whilst decreasing your blood pressure. On top of this, the breathing work involved in yoga can really help with lung capacity and overall circulation.

Stress Reduction and improving sleep

Yoga can help with calming the nervous system down, by helping our systems get into a state of rest and digestion, a state that unfortunately many of us struggle with in this modern lifestyle. Which of course helps our stress level reduce, which can then feed nicely into a good night's sleep. When we are working towards a fitness goal rest is often forgotten about, but without rest and recovery our bodies will not be happy, and seeing development will become hard. A good night's sleep and a good recovery are essential for reducing injuries.

Increased Self-Awareness:

Yoga can help with self-awareness of the body and mind. Overall helping us understand what we need and when we need it, which can be a huge benefit in reaching our fitness or physical goals. The ability to understand when we need longer to warm up, or when our mind is not focused can help us get the most from our training.

How to start with Yoga

Try out a few different classes and styles to see what suits you, not all sizes fit all with yoga, so try them all out and figure out which will help your goals the most. There are many forms of yoga, from quick flowy Vinyasa to strong and slow Hatha and even weighted yoga.

With yoga people often start to notice a difference when they practice consistently, so making this part of your weekly plan can really help.

Why not give it a go and see how this little weekly addition may help you in your fitness and in other areas of your life? Invite the wellbeing in.



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Strengthen Your Practice: How Strength and Conditioning Can Elevate Your Yoga Journey