The best part about adding yoga to your life is that you don't need to be an athlete to feel its effects on a range of motion. Yoga is for anyone and it is never too late to start. By doing a regular yoga practice you will help create a supple body, so you can prevent those niggling injuries and feel refreshed and energised.
2. A Calm Mind:
Yoga has many physical effects but unlike other forms of exercise, yoga is very interested in exercising the mind and helping keep it calm. Stress is a major problem and yoga is well suited to help alleviate stress.
By doing yoga poses, focusing on your breathing, being in the present moment and adding short meditation practice, you can give stress the boot from your life. In a 2018 study in the Journal of Preventative Medicine, the authors concluded that "yoga has an effective role in reducing stress, anxiety, and depression [and] that [it] can be considered as complementary medicine" to medical treatment thus reducing the "medical cost per treatment by reducing the use of drugs". Yoga will give you the mental edge to make clear and calm decisions so that stress and anxiety are stopped before they even begin.
3. For overall health:
Yoga will help you become more flexible and provide mental clarity; it will also help improve your health and wellbeing. Many studies have shown yoga can reduce cholesterol, stop the progression of heart disease, reduce the symptoms of chemotherapy, fight depression, reduce chronic pain, and promote better sleep.
This is just a sample of some of the many things that yoga can do to help improve your health. By developing a regular practice of even 10-20 minutes a day, you can tap into these effects in your life. In my opinion, it is better to do 15 minutes five times a week than it is to do 60 minutes once a week. By coupling a yoga practice, with the other things you do to stay healthy, you can unlock these effects and improve your life.
Yoga can help you achieve your goals for 2019 by enhancing your health, increasing your strength and flexibility, and reducing the symptoms of stress, depression and anxiety.
All these benefits are just waiting for you to start, so make 2019 the year you set aside some time for yourself to develop a regular yoga practice. It will bring about positive change in your mind and body and help make this year, your best yet.
■ Tim Seutter is a firefighter, yoga teacher and manager at The Loft Yoga and Pilates Studio, Whangārei