Yoga for Mental Wellbeing

For many, yoga is a form of exercise and offers a great combination of building both physical strength and flexibility. We couldn’t agree more: yoga can provide a fabulous work out! However, yoga also offers multiple benefits for mental health and wellbeing, and this is what we want to introduce you to in this week’s blog post.

Yoga for Mental Health

Self-care and mental health are hot topics and for a good reason! Worldwide, it’s become very clear that we need more tools for mental health care. The ancient art and science of yoga combines physical postures, breathwork, and mindfulness which offers a holistic approach to wellbeing. All of these aspects can support our mental health.

Yoga can help our mental wellbeing by:

• Reducing stress
• Improving sleep quality
• Increasing relaxation
• Lowering anxiety
• Improving emotional balance
• Promoting healthy coping strategies
• Boosting energy levels and reducing fatigue

And these are just to name a few!

Yoga for Building up Resilience

To quote a renowned yoga teacher, Leslie Kaminoff, “each yoga class is like a controlled stress experiment”. In a yoga class, we take our bodies and minds into challenging postures or sequences of movements and learn to breathe through them. This is a transferable skill and very much needed off the mat as well!

Through our yoga practice, we can learn to tolerate stressful moments and learn to breathe through them. This is easier said than done, but with regular practice yoga can help us build up resilience in our everyday lives and be a long-term health care tool, both physically and mentally.

Meditation is a big part of yoga and mindfulness practices. If you want to know more about the benefits of meditation to our mental health, read our article on the topic here.

Photo credits:

Photo no. 1 by Marcus Aurelius at pexels.com

Photo no. 2 by Cup of Couple at pexels.com