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TABITHA DEAN YOGA

Some of the Many Benefits of Yoga

1. Flex test
Improved physical flexibility is one of the first and most obvious benefits of yoga. If you stick with it, you'll notice a gradual loosening, and eventually, seemingly impossible poses will become possible. You'll also probably notice that aches and pains start to disappear. That's no coincidence. Tight hips can strain the knee joint due to improper alignment of the thigh and shinbones. Tight hamstrings can lead to a flattening of the lumbar spine, which can cause back pain. And inflexibility in muscles and connective tissue, such as fascia and ligaments, can cause poor posture.
2. Strength Test
Strong muscles do more than look good. They also protect us from conditions like arthritis and back pain, and help prevent falls in elderly people. And when you build strength through yoga, you balance it with flexibility. If you just went to the gym and lifted weights, you might build strength at the expense of flexibility.
3. Posture & Spinal Problems
Poor posture can cause back, neck, muscle and joint problems. As you slump, you may flatten the normal inward curves in your neck and lower back which can cause pain and degenerative arthritis of the spine. Spinal disks, the shock absorbers between the vertebrae, crave movement. Many asanas in yoga include a backbends, forward bends or spinal twist which help keep your disks supple.
4. Joint Account & Bones
Asanas take your joints through their full range of motion. This can help prevent degenerative arthritis or mitigate disability by "squeezing and soaking" areas of cartilage that normally aren't used. Weight-bearing exercise strengthens bones and helps ward off osteoporosis. Downward-and upward-facing dog strengthen the arm bones, which are particularly vulnerable to osteoporotic fractures. In a study conducted at UCLA yoga practice increased bone density in the vertebrae.
5. Flow Chart
Yoga gets your blood flowing. Relaxation exercises can help your circulation, especially in your hands and feet. Yoga also gets more oxygen to your cells, which function better as a result. Twisting poses are thought to wring out venous blood from internal organs and allow oxygenated blood to flow in once the twist is released. Inverted poses, such as headstand, handstand, and shoulderstand, encourage venous blood from the legs and pelvis to flow back to the heart, where it can be pumped to the lungs to be freshly oxygenated. This can help if you have swelling in your legs from heart or kidney problems. Yoga also boosts levels of haemoglobin and red blood cells, which carry oxygen to the tissues. And it thins the blood by making platelets less sticky and by cutting the level of clot-promoting proteins in the blood. This can lead to a decrease in heart attacks and strokes since blood clots are often the cause of these killers.
6. Lymph Lesson
When you contract and stretch muscles, move organs around, and come in and out of yoga postures, you increase the drainage of lymph (a viscous fluid rich in immune cells). This helps the lymphatic system fight infection, destroy cancerous cells, and dispose of the toxic waste products of cellular functioning.
7. Heart Start & Pressure Drop
 When you regularly get your heart rate into the aerobic range, you lower your risk of heart attack and can relieve depression. Also if you've got high blood pressure, you might benefit from yoga. Two studies of people with hypertension, published in the British medical journal The Lancet, compared the effects of savasana (corpse pose) with simply lying on a couch. After three months, savasana was associated with a 26-point drop in systolic blood pressure (the top number) and a 15-point drop in diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number)—and the higher the initial blood pressure, the bigger the drop.
8. Worry Thwarts
Yoga lowers cortisol levels. Temporary boosts of cortisol help with long-term memory, but stressed out people may have chronically high levels which undermine memory and may lead to permanent changes in the brain. Excessive cortisol has been linked with major depression, osteoporosis, high blood pressure, and insulin resistance. In rats, high cortisol levels lead to what researchers call "food-seeking behaviour" (the kind that drives you to eat when you're upset, angry, or stressed). The body takes those extra calories and distributes them as fat in the abdomen, contributing to weight gain and the risk of diabetes and heart attack.
9. Happiness
A consistent yoga practice can improve depression and lead to a significant increase in serotonin levels and decrease in monoamine oxidase (an enzyme that breaks down neurotransmitters) and cortisol. Research indicates that the left prefrontal cortex shows heightened activity in meditators, a finding that has been correlated with greater levels of happiness and better immune function. More dramatic left-sided activation is found in dedicated, long-term practitioners.
10. Weighty Matters
A regular practice gets you moving and burns calories, and the spiritual/emotional dimensions may encourage an awareness of healthier & more conscious options.
11. Low Show
Yoga lowers blood sugar and LDL ("bad") cholesterol and boosts HDL ("good") cholesterol. In people with diabetes, yoga has been found to lower blood sugar in several ways: by lowering cortisol and adrenaline levels, encouraging weight loss, and improving sensitivity to the effects of insulin. Get your blood sugar levels down, and you decrease your risk of diabetic complications such as heart attack, kidney failure, and blindness.
12. Chill Pill
Stimulation is good, but too much of it taxes the nervous system. Yoga can provide relief from the hustle and bustle of modern life. Yoga encourages you to relax, slow your breath, and focus on the present, shifting the balance from the sympathetic nervous system (or the fight-or-flight response) to the parasympathetic nervous system. The latter is calming and restorative; it lowers breathing and heart rates, decreases blood pressure, and increases blood flow to the intestines and reproductive organs and muscles like the quadriceps, trapezius, and buttocks. Another by-product of regular practice is better sleep.
13. Immune Boost
The meditative effects of asana and pranayama have the strongest scientific support. And meditation has a beneficial effect on the functioning of the immune system, boosting it when needed (for example, raising antibody levels in response to a vaccine).
14. Breathing Room
Yogis tend to take fewer breaths of greater volume, which is both calming and improves lung function. A 1998 study published in The Lancet taught a yogic technique known as "complete breathing" to people with lung problems due to congestive heart failure. After one month, their average respiratory rate decreased from 13.4 breaths per minute to 7.6. Meanwhile, their exercise capacity increased significantly, as did the oxygen saturation of their blood.
15. Waste Removal
Ulcers, irritable bowel syndrome, constipation—all of these can be exacerbated by stress. Yoga offers many tools to effectively move waste through the system.
16. Divine Sign
Many of us suffer from chronic low self-esteem. If you handle this negatively—take drugs, overeat, work too hard, sleep around—you may pay the price in poorer health physically, mentally, and spiritually. If you take a positive approach and practice yoga, you'll sense that you are a manifestation of the Divine. Yoga and meditation build awareness. You'll experience feelings of gratitude, empathy, and forgiveness, as well as a sense that you're part of something bigger. While better health is not the goal of spirituality, it's often a by-product, as documented by repeated scientific studies.

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