Yoga Benefits Beyond the Mat
You walk into a yoga studio and roll your mat out with a gentle thud, position yourself on the mat and close your eyes. You feel the thoughts in your mind wander and scatter in an anxious and disordered pattern. Inhale through your nose, exhale loudly through your mouth and the scattered thoughts begin to slow down. You become aware of the length of your breaths… inhale for 5 seconds, exhale for 5… The instructor walks into class and begins to talk in a soft tone about coming onto your mat mentally.
What is Yoga?
Yoga’s literal definition is “union” or ‘to connect”. You might ask yourself “to connect what”? Maybe this connection is the movement of your breath and body together; with each inhale you flow into one asana, or posture, and with each exhale you flow into a different one. Maybe the connection is between your body and the earth or every point that you feel your body press into your yoga mat. Maybe this connection is to the energy and the people that surround you.
Builds a Mind Body Connection
Having a mind body connection is so important for many aspects of life! This was the first benefit I personally noticed after my first few yoga classes. My body awareness was heightened, I could consciously isolate muscles while moving through yoga postures. The conscious isolation of certain muscles and groups can play an important role for movement in day-to-day life. It allowed me to focus on small muscles that I neglected in my resistance and weight training and strengthen those muscles for better posture, increased joint stability and injury prevention. I also noticed the impact that my yoga practice had on my athletic performance in gymnastics and diving. The mind body connection I was developing on my yoga mat made it easier to stabilize my core on a balance beam during a routine or quickly engage my legs together and point my toes in a dive as soon as my feet left the diving board.
Improves Active and Passive Flexibility
Passive flexibility is the flexibility you have without applying force. Think restorative yoga or yin yoga, you are completely relaxed in these yoga postures and do not exert any external force to deepen the stretch. Your passive flexibility can be improved by allowing fascia to release; fascia is connective tissue that surrounds your muscles and over time becomes tight. Fascia can be released through massage techniques or stretches that are held for at least 90-120 seconds. This is practiced in restorative yoga or Yin yoga.
Active flexibility is the flexibility you have when a force is applied such as flexing an antagonist or opposing muscle group. For example, when you flex your bicep, you are lengthening your triceps muscle, or the back of your arm. Yoga postures are stabilized by engaging various muscle groups as you flow through postures. In warrior two pose there are many groups of muscles working here, the front knee is bent and in order to keep the knee bent both your hamstring and quadricep muscles are engaged. This posture can improve active flexibility through the hip joint, if you engage your outer hip muscles to open your knee toward your pinky toe, this lengthens the inner thigh muscle. This is just one example of the many ways that yoga poses improve active flexibility and range of motion.
Can Improve Digestion & Gut Health
Many yoga postures are taught in a pattern that follows the compression of the right side of the body to the left, this pattern follows the pattern that waste travels in your large intestine. The pathway of digestion through your colon or large intestine happens from right to left and compression posture in yoga aim to follow this digestive pathway. Next time you take a yoga class, pay attention to the direction of your twists.
Breath is usually taught in yoga classes; this is also known as pranayama or “vital life force”. Some research is demonstrating the using a belly breath or diaphragmatic breathing can help decrease digestive reflux. Belly breathing is practiced by inhaling and allowing your diaphragm to expand into the abdominal cavity which pushes your belly out, then on your exhale your belly deflates, and your diaphragm muscle relaxes back into your chest cavity. According to the American Journal of Gastroenterology, practicing belly breathing can decrease the incidences of gastroesophageal reflux after eating.
Gut health begins with our microbiome, which is comprised of all the bacteria that reside in our digestive tract. The bacteria in out digestive tract play many important roles within our bodies such as digesting food that we cannot, producing anti-inflammatory compounds and even communicating with our brain to signal various reactions. More research is showing a link between poor gut microbiome diversity and mental illnesses and neurological degenerative diseases such as dementia and Parkinson’s. The more diverse the bacteria are in the gut, the healthier the microbiome. Our gut bacteria diversity can be compromised by increased levels of stress, dietary choices, physical activity, medications and even the environment we live in. Yoga can help cultivate a diverse microbiome by decreasing levels of stress and providing movement.
Can Decreases Stress
Society has normalized becoming as busy as possible with minimal time to rest and relax. Even when we have time to relax, we feel bad and look for things to do in order to feel productive. Taking 30-60 minutes to do a yoga session can help get you out of your busy mind and into your body to really be in the moment. Many individuals are overworking and often do not take enough time to do things for themselves. When one does not take time for self-care, emotions and stress can manifest in the physical body as pain or tension and yoga can be a way to release that.
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