H is for Health

 

 As always, a huge shout out to Ninja Minion Master Captain Alex and his army of ninja minions!

My Theme: Yoga.  For those of you who don't know, I've been working on obtaining my yoga teacher's certification for the past year and am just a little over a month from graduating with my RYT200.  As such, I figure there's no better way to spend this month than teaching you folks some of what I've learned.

Probably the single greatest reason yoga has caught on like wildfire over here in the U.S. is its long list of amazing health benefits (though, as I've mentioned and will continue to harp on that is but a tiny percentage of the overall impact).

 

A partial list of the ways in which yoga improves physical health includes:

-Improves flexibility

-Increases muscle strength

-Strengthens spine and improves posture

-Lubricates joints and prevents cartilage breakdown 

-Strengthens bones (because your body is bearing it's own weight)

-Increases blood flow and blood oxygenation

-Drains lymph thereby improving the health of your lymphatic system (making you less susceptible to illness.  This is one of the major reasons yoga is so beneficial for cancer patients) 

-Lowers blood pressure

-Lowers cortisol thereby reducing stress, regulating adrenal glands, preventing osteoporosis and making you happy  (cortisol does a lot of bad stuff throughout our entire body)

-Increases serotonin thereby improving sleep, regulating appetite and, again, making you happy (serotonin does a lot of good stuff throughout our entire body) 

-Lowers blood sugar (great for diabetics like me)

-Lowers cholesterol 

-Improves respiration (people who practice yoga tend to take longer, deeper breaths in general which gives their entire body more oxygen) 

-Prevents digestive problems like IBS and the like (literally massages the organs from the inside thereby improving mobility of wastes out of the body)

-Alleviates pain. Period.  (You name it- injury, illness, autoimmune disorder- there's not a type of chronic pain in existence that isn't improved by yoga)

-Makes your fascia super healthy (as I spoke about on Thursday) 

-And so on, and so on, and so on...

They're coming out with new studies literally every single day on other ways in which yoga improves health so the list is only going to grow.  Scientists are sort-of losing their minds over how effective it is (while folks who have been studying the progression of yoga over the past several millennia are going "duh, why do think people have been doing it for 7,000 years?" ^_^)

Have a happy Sunday, all!  And come back Monday for I!