Support and improve your health with the many healing benefits of yoga! Here are 12 unique ways that yoga helps you heal…

People practice yoga for many reasons – stress relief, physical exercise, a feeling of connection, and more, but one of the main overall reasons why many people start practicing yoga is to improve their health. Yoga has so many benefits – both mental and physical – but in particular, there are a number of real healing benefits of yoga that have been revealed in recent years. Evidence shows that yoga can help with everything from infertility, to insomnia, high blood pressure to Parkinson’s disease, arthritis to lung disease, and more!

There is still much to be learned about why yoga is so beneficial, but much of its benefits may lie in yoga’s unique ability to combat stress and its negative health effects.

According to this article, “medical research estimates that as much as 90 percent of illness and disease is stress-related.” By taking steps to reduce stress in our daily lives, we can achieve better health and longevity, and reduce our risk of many of the diseases of the modern world. Yoga is uniquely suited to help with this, and it also supports your body’s natural healing mechanisms in a number of different ways. Here are just a few of the amazing healing benefits that yoga can bring to your life:

1. Strengthens the immune system. The inverting, twisting and compressing that occurs in yoga postures enhances the circulation of blood and body fluids. This increase in circulation not only improves the body’s ability to deliver the materials needed to allow healing to take place but also activates the lymphatic system to maintain the normal functioning of the immune system.
2. Reduces chronic inflammation. Studies have shown that a daily yoga and meditation practice may be effective at lowering chronic inflammation. If the inflammation response becomes prolonged it can result in cellular destruction and cause inflammatory disorders and non-infectious diseases.
3. Reduces aches and pains. Practicing yoga poses improve muscle strength, flexibility, and range of motion, all very important for the healing and prevention of back pain and musculoskeletal diseases such as arthritis and osteoporosis.
4. Strengthens the lungs. Yoga’s emphasis on deep breathing combined with back bends improves lung capacity and function.
5. Cultivates inner awareness. Long posture holds and meditation encourages shifting our focus inward, which cultivates a deeper awareness of what is going on inside us—physically, mentally, emotionally, and energetically.
6. Improves eating and digestion. A regular yoga practice can reduce your appetite and encourage healthy food choices. Yoga also can strengthen your digestion, and stimulate waste elimination.
7. Promotes a healthy body weight. Yoga can be an effective long-term holistic approach to losing excess weight through burning calories and boosting metabolism.
8. Yoga improves posture. Most yoga poses can lengthen and help reverse abnormal curves in the spine. The body’s posture has been found to affect every system in the body, yoga’s efficacy in creating optimal spinal alignment will also improve one’s overall health and well-being.
9. Encourages emotional release. Unexpressed emotions that are held in the body can create physical tightness, stress, tension, and even pain. Yoga can release emotional tension in the body which in turn encourages physical and emotional healing.
10. Reduces negative thought patterns. Excessive negative thinking can damage the neural structures that regulate our emotions, memory, and feelings. Yoga and meditation are powerful tools to physically rewire our brains to experience more calm, peace, and joy.
11. Improves mood. One of the many healing benefits of yoga has to do not so much with your physical body as with your mental health and outlook. Doing yoga balances the central nervous system and endocrine system and stimulates the release of endorphins – natural mood-elevating neurochemicals. As you practice, your mind relaxes and you’re able to stop dwelling on stressful thoughts and situations.
12. Supports a healthy lifestyle. Practicing yoga also encourages one to lead a healthier lifestyle, through developing the self-awareness and discipline required for positive behavior modification.

Read More at YogaBasics.com…