Change your body – and your life – for the better with a regular yoga practice!

Yoga is an amazing form of exercise, as not only does it work all of the muscles throughout your entire body in balance with each other, but it also provides mental benefits as well. Practicing yoga can change your body in so many ways.

Here are just a few amazing things that yoga can do for you:

1.) It works to strengthen and stretch your muscles and can even aid weight loss. A person who weighs 185 pounds can burn approximately 176 calories in one 30 minute session of yoga. While it may not be the same amount as you would burn in a cardio workout, every little bit adds up! If you alternate (or combine) your yoga workouts with cardio sessions, you’ll get the best of both worlds.

2.) Yoga also helps to tone your muscles and build lean muscle mass, which increases calorie burn even while at rest.

3.) Another unique benefit of yoga is that it helps you to become more aware of your body – what it needs and how it reacts to various exercises. This is important because it can help you learn to listen for cues that can help you to avoid injury while working to your full potential.

4.) Yoga increases your flexibility, making it easier to do certain things that may have been difficult for you to do before. Increased flexibility can also help to reduce chronic pain, and lower your risk of injury in everyday life. When you feel more free to move, you’ll want to move even more. In time, with regular practice, you will be able to move your body in ways you never thought possible – and feel good doing it!

5.) Yoga will increase the capacity of your lungs. Due to its focus on deep breathing and breath control, yoga can have a positive impact on your lung capacity and health. With regular practice, you may notice that you feel less winded when you climb stairs or walk uphill. It gets easier and you feel better.

6.) Yoga improves your sense of balance. Many yoga poses focus on balancing and core strength, and this helps you in so many ways in your everyday life. Balance and flexibility are key to healthy aging, and can help reduce the risk of falls and bone fractures as we age.

7.) Yoga works every single muscle in your body – from head to toe. After practicing yoga for a while you will begin to feel strong and supple. Many poses in yoga are designed to work those smaller muscles in your arms and legs that you wouldn’t normally work on in the gym. Holding yoga poses requires enlisting muscles that often don’t get a lot of use throughout your day, which makes you much stronger and more resilient than many other forms of exercise.

8.) One of the biggest benefits of yoga and how it will change your body is simply the fact that it helps you learn to love your body – no matter what size or shape you are! Doing yoga simply makes you feel better about your body and makes you want to do good things for it. Yoga is an exercise which allows your body to be exactly what it is meant to be. When the pressure of expectation is off, you’ll want to take good care of your body by feeding it healthy food, giving it plenty of rest, and taking care of it in other ways as well.

Embrace all of the new power your body has and celebrate the positive changes you’ll see in your body and your life when you make yoga a regular part of your lifestyle!