What Yoga Can Do for You

Benefits that Can Have Many Positive Effects on Your Body and Mind

According to the Yoga Research and Education Center, there are now more than 20 million yoga practitioners, which is more than triple the six million practitioners in 1994. With such a large base, more and more people are finding yoga to be a real stress reliever.

Yoga provides many benefits.

• Improved concentration and focus
• Better awareness of movement, weight distribution, and posture
• Develops core strength — valuable in virtually every activity
• Increases flexibility

Yoga for Weight Management

There are many other benefits of yoga. For example, yoga can help you meet your weight goals. Depending on the type of yoga you practice, you could burn quite a few of calories doing yoga.

• The amount of calories you burn depends on your sex, size, weight, body type and length of session time.
• A realistic range for a yoga session that lasts 60-90 minutes is 250-400 calories burned.
• Yoga offers a triple benefit — it burns calories, reduces stress and increases flexibility.

Yoga Benefits for Your Back

Back pain is a common health issue and has been a curse to sufferers for ages. Yoga has been around almost as long – some experts say about 4,000 years. You might think of yoga as just a way to relax and stretch, but it can also help prevent, reduce and even eliminate back problems. Yoga:

• Gently stretches and strengthens the muscles of the lower back
• Increases blood circulation
• Brings healing nutrients to injured tissues

Although yoga is a stress-reducing and healthy activity in many respects, practicing it may or may not result in these benefits. As always, a qualified doctor should be part of your decision process when choosing any exercise program.