YOGA AND BENEFITS ON MENTAL AND PHYSICAL HEALTH

 

My personal experience with yoga : I’m being following yoga along with diet since 4 months. Many changes are seen within myself, like I became very flexible and I’m able to do many poses very perfectly. Also yoga helped me in reducing my weight. My mind is very quiet and cool after doing yoga. And yoga became very essential part in my life. My request to everyone is please do make yoga as a part of your life to stay mentally and physically strong and healthy.

                       

In spite of the way that throughout the last perhaps twenty years, Yoga has gone from a peripheral movement to a nearly standard one here in the West, my impression is that Yoga is as yet not out and out surely knew. Most everybody has known about Yoga, yet not every person truly understands what it includes.

Yoga started in India a few thousand years prior as an arrangement of physical and profound practices. It was formalized in the second century BC as the Yoga Sutras, ascribed to the researcher Pantanjali. The word 'Yoga' signifies 'association' or 'burden' or 'joining'. Initially, Yoga was (and is in spots where it is polished thusly) a technique for joining a normal flawed individual with the perfect rule, or God. You could compare it to a type of supplication which fills a comparative need, just petition will in general be verbal, while Yoga will in general include activity.

Yoga lends itself to being non-competitive. There are no Yoga teams, and no Yoga trophies to win. There are no Yoga belts to earn. You simply practice Yoga because it's good for you and helps you to feel good while you're practicing it, and you recover at it (more able to do advanced poses) at your own pace. Each posture or pose is meant to at least one degree or another to assist the person performing them to enhance their physical strength, their bodily flexibility and range of motion, and their balance. My understanding is that these desirable attributes originally helped spiritually-minded yogis to be healthy enough to not have to worry about bodily pain so as to better concentrate on God. Here in America the same attributes help us to be more physically healthy, to concentrate better, to relax more fully, and to gain greater control over our emotions.

Yoga is one among the foremost popular physical activities and group classes within the us , although it wasn’t always that way.
Yoga’s reputation began within the West as something that hippies did for spiritual enlightenment after consuming one among several mind-altering drugs; however, today it's a way more mainstream and revered practice that centers on the physical and mental well-being of practitioners.
If you’ve given yoga a try, you recognize that it's the potential to be very effective in treating and soothing a good range of illnesses, issues, diagnoses, and stressful situations. you furthermore may probably know that it’s much, far more than an easy exercise or stretching routine; it requires your brain also as your body.
In fact, it’s one among the few physical activities that do a reasonably thorough job of connecting your brain to your body.
If that sounds fascinating to you, read on to explore the connection between yoga and psychology and appearance at the various benefits of yoga on the mental and physical health of men, women, and youngsters .

The Relationship Between Yoga and Psychology
Although you'll be conversant in the physical practice we call yoga, yoga is really far more than stretching and holding poses; yoga may be a more comprehensive practice—indeed, a lifestyle—that encompasses several life principles, like:

Yama (moral code)
Niyama (self-discipline)
Asanas (postures or poses)
Pranayama (mindfulness of breathing)
Pratyahara (detachment from senses)
Dharana (concentration)
Dhyanna (meditation or positive, mindful specialise in the present)
Savasana (state of rest)
Samadhi

You’ll notice that only asanas and savasana are focused on physical experiences. This is because yoga is far more focused on the practitioner’s “inner” experience than their “outer” experience (i.e., worrying about the body). An authentic yoga practice demands introspection, reflection, and earnest consideration of the self. it's how to attach with our own thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and core values, opening the window into our deeper and truer selves.
Viewed during this light, it’s hard to ascertain yoga and psychology as separate subjects! However, as close because the connection is between yoga and psychology, it’s even more intimately associated with the subfield of positive psychology.

Yoga and Positive Psychology
The link between yoga and positive psychology may be a strong one; although yoga started with a rather different focus, it's now commonly practiced as an effort to reinforce well-being. Of course, well-being may be a core topic in positive psychology, which explains the frequent use of yoga in intervention and exercises.
Further, yoga offers a superb opportunity to enter flow, the state of being fully engaged and present within the moment with no attention paid to the time passing. Practicing yoga can help people cultivate mindfulness, develop greater awareness, and improve their ability to specialise in what's at hand.
The inherent similarities between yoga and positive psychology explored through the Yoga Sutras and therefore the Paths of Yoga
How and therefore the Niyamas compare to concepts of positive psychology
Practical interventions you'll use in your yoga practice and your life
The use and natural connection of the YogaFit Essence and Transformational Language
Specialized cueing and pose selection

     

                                                       

Yoga and mental health:

Yoga Provides The Health Benefits Of Physical ExercisePsychologists have long known that moderate exercise is sweet for depression and anxiety. Such exercise can easily be found in Yoga practice. Yoga postures are designed to market physical strength, flexibility and balance. Anyone who has ever taken a Yoga class will attest that there are cardio/heart benefits to be had; your pulse is usually up while performing postures very much like it might be if you were performing more conventional exercise. Though Yoga gets your pulse up and your endorphines pumping, it also provides for several rest periods. These rest periods lend a mild quality to the conditioning that creates it easier to endure than 'marathon' style exercise. You seldom feel as if you cannot continue .
By emphasizing gentle stretching of the joints and spine, Yoga promotes increased range of motion, and joint health. It helps compute muscular kinks and minor problems which may otherwise cause back pain or stiffness. In promoting joint and spinal flexibility, Yoga also seems to market a particular quite mental freedom; there's a definitive feeling of mental ease and luxury that you simply experience at the top of a Yoga class that's linked to being liberal to move muscles that were tight before the category started. It doesn't always last long, but it's very real and really soothing while it lasts. As with any physical workout, Yoga practice concentrates your mind on the physical sensations and on the perfection of the postures. The immersive concentration factor Yoga provides works as a helpful tonic for anxious and obsessional people. The practice of Yoga (or most the other demanding physical exercise) are often an excellent distraction from worry because it forces the mind to attend to the body and therefore the breathing; the instant .
Yoga Promotes Relaxation And Emotional ControlAs very much like us psychological state types wish to emphasize language and verbal or the blunt hammer of Valium) because the best ways of handling emotional problems, body-based therapeutic interventions have a task to play too. After all, the 'stress response that numerous anxious and depressed people have problems with begins with the fight or flight reflex - the physical preparation of the body to defend, or flee. Chronic stress has an impression on the body within the sort of chronic muscle tension and stiffness, and this very stiffness and tension seems to supply a number of the fear and agony that anxious and stressed persons report.
Yoga may be a very effective stress reduction and relaxation tool. Performance of varied postures requires the tensing and stretching then relaxing of muscle groups and joints, which effectively produces relaxation in much an equivalent way that a massage or Progressive Muscle Relaxation (a technique employed by behavioral psychologists) does. Yoga practice also draws attention towards breathing, which produces a meditative and soothing state of mind. Yoga methods for stress reduction and self-soothing are generally cheaper than other professional interventions (Yoga are often finished free if you recognize what you're doing, and classes are not any costlier than group therapy prices), just about safe, freed from side effects, and empowering as compared to medication alternatives.

On  more theoretical note: within the last decade, leading therapists have discovered that coupling a self-soothing, relaxation-inducing group of techniques with action oriented (cognitive behavioral) therapy often produces better results for difficult-to-treat patient populations than action-oriented therapies alone. I'm thinking of Linehan's Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (aimed primarily at Borderline mental disorder patients), and Hayes' Acceptance and Committment Therapy as examples. Yoga techniques promoting relaxation, self-soothing and body awareness skills are an honest fit with these newer therapeutic approaches, and might prove helpful in getting impulsive and chaotically driven patients to interact the structured tools and techniques of cognitive therapy that would help them progress.
Yoga Provides Structured Social OpportunitiesWith due reference to stereotypes of yogic mystics sitting cross legged in splendid isolation on a mountain top, most Yoga within the west (and i think within the east) is completed in classrooms. As such, the practice of Yoga on any regular basis becomes a big social opportunity the maximum amount as anything . you do not necessarily get to understand everyone, or quickly, but if you commit yourself to the practice of Yoga, you will soon enough find that you simply recognize faces within the class, and sooner or later, you finish up making friends unless you are doing something to discourage that from happening. The friendships of our childhood were formed in only such a gaggle crucible, only this one is out there to adults. i do know i do not need to mention that participation in social events may be a thanks to combat depressive withdrawal, but i will be able to anyway (grin!).

What Does the Research Say About Yoga and Mental Health?
Tons of work has been conducted on the impacts of yoga on psychological state .
The overall consensus is that yoga has many positive effects on psychological state that transcend the consequences of other low- to-medium-impact physical activity and these effects are likely thanks to chemical changes within the brain.
It seems that practicing yoga actually facilitates a greater release of gamma-Aminobutyric acid (GABA) from the thalamus; GABA acts as a kind of “grand inhibitor” of the brain, suppressing neural activity.
This can mimic the consequences of anti-anxiety drugs and alcohol—yep, doing yoga can cause you to desire you only had a pleasant , relaxing cocktail! This finding indicates that yoga can actually work to assist to “reset” your brain to a calmer, more collected state, supplying you with the baseline mood you would like to affect the strain you encounter a day.
Yoga makes a superb alternative or complementary treatment for issues that need medication and/or therapy, because it is natural, accessible for all, and comparatively easy to interact in. additionally , it's an honest choice because it's one among the few treatment activities that connect the mind to the body.
In therapy, you generally don’t use your body in any significant way; when taking medication, you generally don’t emphasize the mind-body connection, or maybe believe it much—after all, you only hope it works, and you'll not care much how it works! The most important pieces of kit you would like for doing yoga are your body and your mind
Practicing yoga emphasizes the connection between our minds and our bodies, and encourages you to use both at an equivalent time. A yoga session requires precise and mindful movement, but it also involves mindful thought and enhanced awareness.
Unlike once you choose a run or life weights, yoga is merely in “full effect” when both mind and body are completely engaged. This marriage of your psychological state and your physical state offers a singular opportunity to form a strong impact on your psychological state .

The Benefits of Yoga
You’ve likely heard about the various benefits of yoga that transcend alleviating or buffering against mental illness; benefits like:
It builds confidence
It helps you learn to breathe, both literally and metaphorically
It causes you to more conscious of your posture in the least times
It causes you to more mindful
It boosts your strength and endurance
It helps relieve stress
Aside from the anecdotal stories about the wonders of normal yoga practice, there's also peer-reviewed evidence to support the advantages of yoga.

For example, reviews of the literature suggest that yoga is a minimum of somewhat effective in lessening symptoms of depression, reducing fatigue, relieving anxiety, and reducing or acting as a buffer against stress, and sometimes boosts participants’ feelings of self-confidence and self-esteem.
Yoga are often especially helpful for those battling post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Several studies on yoga applied to PTSD treatment show that yoga can have outcomes almost like those of talk therapy. The results of yoga on PTSD symptoms highlights this link between the body and therefore the brain, and therefore the potential of yoga to facilitate that connection and skip right over the barrier.
Many PTSD symptoms are physical, like the increased pulse and perspiration that sometimes accompany “flashbacks” or vivid memories of trauma. Yoga could also be especially helpful in addressing symptoms like these, because it can target the physical symptoms of stress, anxiety, fear, and depression.
The Physical Benefits of Yoga
The beauty is that folks often come here for the stretch, and leave with tons more
Overall, although yoga could seem sort of a relatively mild sort of exercise, regular yoga practice may result within the same health benefits as many other sorts of exercise but with less of an impression on joints and more relaxation!
In addition to having an equivalent impacts on general health as other sorts of exercise, there's some evidence that yoga is even more beneficial than most sorts of exercise when it comes to:
Increasing balance
Improving baroreflex sensitivity
Reducing fatigue
Enhancing flexibility
Healthy pulse
Healthy pulse variability
Improved kidney function
Lessened or buffered menopausal symptoms
Relieving pain
Relieving or inhibiting psychotic symptoms
Improving quality of life
Reducing sleep disturbances
Improving social and occupational functioning
Increasing strength
Lowering obesity
Reducing stress
Reducing cholesterol
Yoga also can assist you beat the symptoms of insomnia and depression and boost your energy, happiness, and encourage a healthy weight.
The Benefits of Yoga for Men
Besides the physical and mental benefits listed above that are great outcomes for anyone who engages in yoga, there also are many benefits that men often specifically appreciate about practicing yoga. For example, yoga can help men:

Enhance their athletic performance through improved flexibility, internal awareness, better respiratory capacity, better circulation and motion efficiency, and greater energy.

Prevent injury and speed up recovery through the healing of inflamed muscles, tissue, joints, and fascia, also because the restoring of animal tissue and increased body awareness, resulting in more caution and fewer injury.

Boost their sex life, by enhancing desire, sexual satisfaction, performance, confidence, partner synchronization, control, and even better orgasms!

Optimize their muscular tonus via increased delivery of oxygen to the muscles.

Lower their stress level through movement.
Increase their mental agility through the sharpening of the mind and improved cognitive function that comes with the meditative exercise of yoga.
This list provides some pretty good reasons for curious men to offer yoga a try! Don’t get jealous yet, ladies—there also are some benefits of yoga that talk to women especially .
The Benefits of Yoga for ladies
The benefits of yoga that are often specifically appreciated by women include:

Helping you to affect hormonal changes during your cycle and through menopause.

Soothing worry and anxiety caused by a health crisis or serious diagnosis.

Lessening stress and reducing the severity and frequency of hysteria and depression symptoms.

Improving your posture.

Improving your appearance through standing taller, feeling more confident, and simpler weight management.
In addition, although we noted a number of the impacts of yoga on PTSD earlier, it’s worth emphasizing that it's going to be particularly helpful for ladies who have suffered some quite trauma.
The Trauma Center at the Justice Resource Institute in Brookline, Massachusetts recruited a gaggle of girls who had been diagnosed with PTSD to interact in an experimental yoga treatment. the ladies attended eight 75-minute yoga sessions over the course of a couple of weeks.
Those who participated reported significantly reduced PTSD symptoms compared with women during a talk therapy group. This won't represent the typical results of yoga for PTSD, but there are a minimum of some cases where it’s as effective as seeing a licensed professional therapist! At that price, yoga is certainly worth a try.

     

                            

10 WAYS YOGA IMPROVES YOUR HEALTH :
Improves your flexibility
Improved flexibility is one among the primary and most blatant benefits of yoga. During your first-class , you almost certainly won’t be ready to touch your toes, never mind do a backbend. But if you persist with it, you’ll notice a gradual loosening, and eventually, seemingly impossible poses will become possible. You’ll also probably notice that aches and pains start to disappear. That’s no coincidence. Tight hips can strain the knee thanks to improper alignment of the thigh and shinbones. Tight hamstrings can cause a flattening of the lumbar spine, which may cause back pain. And inflexibility in muscles and animal tissue , like fascia and ligaments, can cause poor posture.
2. Builds muscle strength
Strong muscles do quite look good. They also protect us from conditions like arthritis and back pain, and help prevent falls in elderly people. And once you build strength through yoga, you balance it with flexibility. If you only visited the gym and lifted weights, you would possibly build strength at the expense of flexibility.

3. Perfects your posture
Your head is sort of a bowling ball—big, round, and heavy. When it’s balanced directly over an erect spine, it takes much less work for your neck and back muscles to support it. Move it several inches forward, however, and you begin to strain those muscles. delay that forward-leaning ball for eight or 12 hours each day and it’s no wonder you’re tired. And fatigue won't be your only problem. Poor posture can cause back, neck, and other muscle and joint problems. As you slump, your body may compensate by flattening the traditional inward curves in your neck and lower back. this will cause pain and osteoarthritis of the spine.

                                                             
      

                                                         

4. Prevents cartilage and joint breakdown
Each time you practice yoga, you're taking your joints through their full range of motion. this will help prevent osteoarthritis or mitigate disability by “squeezing and soaking” areas of cartilage that normally aren’t used. Joint cartilage is sort of a sponge; it receives fresh nutrients only its fluid is squeezed out and a replacement supply are often soaked up. Without proper sustenance, neglected areas of cartilage can eventually wear out, exposing the underlying bone like worn-out restraint .

5. Protects your spine
Spinal disks—the shock absorbers between the vertebrae which will herniate and compress nerves—crave movement. That’s the sole way they get their nutrients. If you’ve got a well-balanced asana practice with many backbends, forward bends, and twists, you’ll help keep your disks supple.

6. Betters your bone health
It’s well documented that weight-bearing exercise strengthens bones and helps keep off osteoporosis. Many postures in yoga require that you simply lift your own weight. And some, like Downward- and Upward-Facing Dog, help strengthen the arm bones, which are particularly susceptible to osteoporotic fractures. In an unpublished study conducted at California State University, l. a. , yoga practice increased bone density within the vertebrae. Yoga’s ability to lower levels of the strain hormone cortisol may help keep calcium within the bones.

     

                                                      

7. Increases your blood flow
Yoga gets your blood flowing. More specifically, the relief exercises you learn in yoga can help your circulation, especially in your hands and feet. Yoga also gets more oxygen to your cells, which function better as a result. Twisting poses are thought to squeeze out blood from internal organs and permit oxygenated blood to flow in once the twist is released. Inverted poses, like Headstand, Handstand, and Shoulderstand, encourage blood from the legs and pelvis to flow back to the guts , where it are often pumped to the lungs to be freshly oxygenated. this will help if you've got swelling in your legs from heart or kidney problems. Yoga also boosts levels of hemoglobin and red blood cells, which carry oxygen to the tissues. And it thins the blood by making platelets less sticky and by cutting the extent of clot-promoting proteins within the blood. 

 8. Drains your lymphs and boosts immunity
This will cause a decrease in heart attacks and strokes since blood clots are often the explanation for these killers.
When you contract and stretch muscles, move organs around, and are available in and out of yoga postures, you increase the drainage of lymph (a viscous fluid rich in immune cells). This helps the systema lymphaticum fight infection, destroy cancerous cells, and eliminate the toxic industrial waste products of cellular functioning.

9. Ups your pulse
When you regularly get your pulse into the aerobic range, you lower your risk of attack and may relieve depression. While not all yoga is aerobic, if you are doing it vigorously or take flow or Ashtanga classes, it can boost your pulse into the aerobic range. But even yoga exercises that don’t get your pulse up that prime can improve cardiovascular conditioning. Studies have found that yoga practice lowers the resting pulse , increases endurance, and may improve your maximum uptake of oxygen during exercise—all reflections of improved aerobic conditioning. One study found that subjects who were taught only pranayama could do more exercise with less oxygen.

         

                           

 

10. Drops your vital sign
If you’ve got high vital sign , you would possibly enjoy yoga. Two studies of individuals with hypertension, published within the British medical journal The Lancet, compared the consequences of Savasana (Corpse Pose) with simply lying on a couch. After three months, Savasana was related to a 26-point drop by systolic vital sign (the top number) and a 15-point drop by diastolic vital sign (the bottom number—and the upper the initial vital sign , the larger the drop.

                                                                                        

  M. MEGHANA                                                   PHARM D 3^RD YEAR

JOGINPALLY B R PHARMACY COLLEGE.