Want to boost your mood, improve your posture, reduce stress and menopausal symptoms, build a stronger, healthier body, and feel better about yourself? Try yoga! Here are just a few of the many benefits of yoga for women…

Yoga can provide so many benefits – from improved strength and flexibility, to better balance and posture, stress relief, lessened risk of injury, improved mood, reduced anxiety, and even weight loss. Yoga has also been shown to be beneficial to expecting mothers to help prepare for labor and deliver, and for relieving menopausal symptoms.

Yoga also requires little to no equipment, and can be done just about anywhere. With the busy lives we all seem to lead these days, this makes yoga both a good fit for busy schedules, and especially helpful for over-worked, over-stressed women who don’t have time for a regular gym visit several times per week. It’s no surprise that women make up approximately 70% of yoga practitioners in the U.S..

While yoga has many benefits for men as well, this week, we’re sharing some of the awesome benefits that women can receive from doing yoga. Here are just a few, according to WomensHealthCT.com:

#1:  Yoga can help enhance your posture and appearance

Yoga teaches body awareness and can help you naturally contract core stabilizing muscles and stand taller, so you look more healthy and confident.  Good posture can make you look thinner.  Also, active, intense styles of yoga can help burn the most calories.  Ashtanga, vinyasa and power yoga are examples of the more physical types of yoga.

#2:  Yoga can improve your mood

Did you know that taking the time to practice yoga poses throughout the day can help improve blood circulation and your mood?  Studies have shown that a lack of oxygenated-blood to the brain can have a negative impact on a person’s mood.  By stretching, you can increase endorphins and the flow of blood…

#3:  Yoga can help you sleep

Insomnia is an issue that many women face.  Lack of sleep can cause disease, illness, stress and more.  Doyouyoga.com recommends that practicing ten minutes of the following yoga sequence before bedtime can help your body calm down and prepare for a good night’s sleep…

#4:  Yoga can help relieve anxiety and depression

According to Newsweek, about 1 in 5 Americans suffer from a mental illness, including depression and anxiety – with women suffering from these issues more than twice as often as men. Practicing yoga can help quiet the mind and ease worries from our day-to-day lives.  Dorena Rode, a physiologist at UC Davis, uses yoga for her own mental health. “I have overcome addiction, depression and post traumatic stress disorder in my own life. I practice yoga daily, teach others and have done so for decade,” Rode comments…

This infographic shares 12 more wonderful benefits of yoga for women:

Source: PracticalLongevity.com