YOGA: Beyond the Mat

Yoga feels like the new trendy thing, right? There’s always a group in the park with their new pastel yoga mats early in the morning. But yoga is more than just an excuse to wear your favorite pair of leggings. So, what even is yoga? Like actually?

There are many different types, but generally sessions include postures that flex various muscles groups as well as breathing exercises and meditation. With regular yoga practice you can build strength, awareness, and harmony in both the body and mind. Check out these reasons why including yoga in your daily routine is the best thing you will do all year!

5 Reasons To Make Yoga Part of Your Daily Routine

1. Increased Body Awareness
   Yoga isn’t about physcial appearance, rather, it’s about listening to your body and developing inner awareness. Yoga studios usually don’t have mirrors. Why? Because the point of yoga is focused inward, not outward. As we start to listen to our inner monologue, we can become less critical of and more satisfied with our bodies and learn to appreciate what our bodies are actually able to do rather than what it looks like.

2. Healthier Heart
   Studies have shown that Yoga can lower blood pressure in people who have hypertension, lower blood sugar levels for people with non-insulin dependent diabetes, as well as improve lipid profiles for those with coronary artery diesease. Due to it’s stress relieving and cardiovascular benefits, yoga is frequently included in cardiac rehailitation programs. Hells yeah for a healthy heart!

3. Increased Blood Flow
   Relaxation and breathing helps blood to circulate. Movement brings more oxygen to our cells, which then function better because of it. And gently twisting our body brings freshly oxygenated blood to our organs. Sounds like a win, win, win to me!

4. Improved Sleep

   The constant stimulation that surrounds us in our modern society can be very taxing to our nervous system. Yoga and meditation invites you to turn off the outer stimuli and focus inward. This much needed down time promotes better, uniterrupted sleep, which means you will feel less tired and stressed through out your day.

5. Calms the Mind and Improves Focus
Some of the common poses used during a yoga session are inverted, such as a shoulder stand. The inverted position helps to bring more blood flow and oxygen to the brain, thus increasing alertness, awareness, and memory. This can be especially helpful to those struggling with ADHD symptoms.

Meet Our Yoga Expert

Sydney Parker is Modern Eve’s resident yoga expert! She knows the importance of the mind-body connection and is eager to share it with you. Sydney is offering donation based yoga classes open to anyone Tuesday mornings and Thursday evenings! Click here to get the zoom links emailed to you. See you there!