Yoga can improve people’s quality of life
The practice of yoga has been carried out and used for over 5,000 years. That is 5,000 years of healing and improving the quality of life for people of various generations. For over a millennium yoga has been helping people of diverse cultures, situations, circumstances and much more to come back to themselves and heal their body. The practice of yoga is using your body and breathing to connect and create a balance of your mind, body, and soul; which allows for healing of a person’s overall well-being. Yoga is a spiritual practice and tool that can help align people’s lives to be healthier, happier, and uniquely balanced.
Yoga has been a practice that can help people improve their mental health. Yoga allows people to come down to their breathing and as a result relaxes the mind and body. Yoga has been known to be very vast in helping people with different mental health concerns. Mental health conditions and illnesses like depression and anxiety have been vastly affecting people in their daily lives. Using yoga to deal with these issues has been highly effective in healing and connecting people to healthier mind patterns. Yoga can help children with their mental health which is especially important because it can establish a healthy life for them later in life. Children are young and impressionable so having a healthy mindset and outlook on life can help them establish a healthy well-balanced life in the future. This concept is portrayed in the following lines. “Yoga may help children and young people cope with stress and thus contribute positively to balance in life, well-being, and mental health, Thus, yoga may contribute to healthy development and good mental health,” (Hagen ingunn, Usha. S. Nayar, Page # 1, line #22). This quote explains how yoga has been known to create a balance for children and adolescents’ mental health, which establishes a healthy life. Yoga can improve children’s mental health through training of the mental and physical aspects of their body. Allowing them to get a healthy development of themselves all around. The self-regulation that comes from yoga creates an overall well-being. So, with the practice of yoga their lives have the potential to be well-balanced. leading to these kids having beautiful impactful lives. It is the practice itself that creates this balance in life. It is children using its practice to connect themselves and heal. which is powerful.
The therapeutic effects of yoga can improve the quality of life in people. Yoga allows people to become their own healer. People who practice yoga tap into who they are and their struggles. Yoga allows them to heal their mental health and trauma. Yoga also helps people become stronger and healthier, physically. The mind and the body are the main thing that controls and dictates people’s overall well-being and quality of life. Yoga creates a space where people can be in their own energy, understand their minds and its triggers as well as work on their body. This is beautifully described in the following lines. “yoga is self-empowering; the student is his or her own healer. Yoga engages the student in the healing process; by playing an active role in their journey toward health, the healing comes from within, instead of from an outside source and a greater sense of autonomy is achieved,” (Woodyard Catherine, page #3). This quote from the article expresses how yoga can help people’s mental health and overall well-being. The article states that the reason yoga can help people’s mental health is because yoga is self-empowering. Yoga allows people to activate healing from within rather than letting outside sources disconnect and unground them from themselves. Yoga acts as therapy for some. The connected breathing flowing through the mind, body, and spirit creates peace mentally. Which improves people’s quality of life.
Another point made in the article is that yoga can improve the body’s health in many ways. The article elaborates on the several ways the body’s health can be improved by yoga. Yoga’s practice includes a steady flow within the blood’s circulation. This is particularly important and crucial for one’s body health. The article further elaborates on the many areas of the bodily functions that benefit from yoga. Some of the ways yoga can help people stated in the article are the following. “Muscular strength, flexibly, respiratory function, cardiovascular, recovery from treatments of addiction, reduce mental disorders, and stress,” (woodyard Catherine, page: 1). This quote from the article states how the physical aspect of yoga helps people improve their quality of life through many aspects. Yoga allows for the body to become stronger and more flexible which can restore the body’s strength and health. Being healthier establishes the ability to create a healthier life in all aspects, not just physically. Yoga can help people overcome addictions, stress, anxiety, and other mental disorders that deteriorate a person’s quality of life. Yoga can help people fix and improve the issues regarding health that have been plaguing their life. Yoga’s ability to heal and help people with their health creates overall well-being in a person’s life.
Yoga allows people to have a better quality of life in the long run because yoga utilizes breathing and yogic movements to uplift people’s life. Yoga does this by using affirmations and mantras that equip people with a healthy mentality and outlook on life. The meditation aspect of yoga allows for people to create more mindful reactions to their life that can give them a lot of peace. These elements restore a balance in the emotional and physical body. Helping restore these aspects of your life keeps you happy and content with your life. Mindfulness is the act of overall awareness of your life and the current circumstances that flow in it. Which allows for people to reflect on themselves, which leads to them working on themselves. Yoga allows for mindfulness to flow in and out of a person’s body in their everyday life. This aspect is expressed in the following quote. “The many tools of yoga, including physical postures, yogic breathing, use of meditation, mantras, and affirmations, help balance the emotional and physical body. This provides individuals with greater awareness so they can better cope with difficult situations and feel more connected to themselves and their surroundings,” (Refresh MH, Urban Balance, page: 1, section: 2). This quote explains how yoga creates a better quality of life by helping people form a relationship with themselves through mindfulness. Yoga’s practice of moving the body and using positive words of affirmation creates an overall well-balanced life. There is a healing that comes from yoga, it helps people form a beautiful relationship with themselves and as a result creates well-rounded people who can cope with their current life circumstances.
Yoga is effective in preventing disease further down the line in humans. Yoga is a very ancient practice that has been used for centuries to help aid in the prevention of diseases in people. Yoga is just like any sport, and it can help people overcome their physical defaults. Yoga improves flexibility, strength, and can even bring energy and vitalization throughout the body. This is stated perfectly in the following quote. “Furthermore, the overall enhancement of physical and mental fitness from yoga practice is likely to provide additional reduction in disease severity through a number of indirect pathways,” (Sat Bir. Khalsa, page: 1, section: 2). This quote states that yoga can create an enhancement in a person’s physical and mental health. Mental health and physical health is something that cannot live without the other. If you are healthy physically but not mentally you will not have the proper head-space to enjoy or even maintain that health. The same goes for mental health, if you are healthy mentally but not physically being able to do things healthy people can do can bring fear and stress. The fear and stress that comes with being unhealthy can affect your mental health negatively. Meaning yoga creates a balance between them which allows them to never affect the other negatively. People who practice yoga have a balance between both which allows them to live their life happily and freely.
In my own experience yoga has helped me create a better life because it made me look inward into who I am, and what life I was creating for myself. Yoga silenced everything around me and caused me to look at myself deeply in a spiritual way. This made me move through life with mindfulness patterns and it was a result of yogic practice and meditations. I adapted because of yoga and created a better life for myself that healed me for the better. Yoga healed my mental health which allowed me to have a better perception of myself and life. This concept is conveyed in the following quote. “Yoga philosophy and the practice itself shifted my awareness to looking at myself and seeing that I actually have more power than I give myself,” (Seth Jay, Gillihan PhD, page: 1). Gillihan conveys that the practice of yoga and its philosophy has helped him realize his own personal power. Which is something I and other people who practice yoga have found out for themselves as well. Just like I and other yogis experienced this you can too. Yoga and its practice are personally empowering. When people are empowered, they take charge of their life more positively. Which is why yoga is so transformational and beneficial for people in improving their lives.
Yoga can improve people’s overall quality of life. Yoga can transform people’s lives physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Yoga does this by creating a balance between these aspects. With the use of mindfulness and self-empowerment people create a healthier version of themselves in life. Yoga causes people to look inward at who they are deeply. As a result, they change their lives accordingly to better themselves. Yoga is transformational and can help people create a beautiful meaningful life. Yoga can help people improve their mental health. Having a balanced mental health lets them be happier and move throughout life with an effortless approach to things. Yoga is also known to help heal people who have serious mental disorders like anxiety, depression, OCD, and the list goes on. Yoga can help people who struggle with mental conditions find better coping mechanisms. A person’s physical health can improve drastically because of yoga because yoga helps people better their physical health through yogic movements and stretches. Overall yoga is known to help transform people’s quality of life for the better through the many aspects that impact them.
Works cited
Hagen ingunn, Usha. S. Nayar, Yoga for Young Children and Peoples Mental Health and well-being: research review and reflections on the mental health potentials of yoga, Frontiers, 2014. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2014.00035/full
Woodyard Catherine, Exploring the therapeutic effects of yoga and its ability to increase quality of life, NCBI, 2011. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3193654/
Refresh MH, Practice yoga to attain better mental health, Urban Balance, 2015. https://www.urbanbalance.com/practice-yoga-to-attain-better-mental-health/
Sat Bir. Khalsa, Yoga for psychiatry and mental health: an ancient practice with modern relevance, Indian Journal of psychiatry, 2013. yoga for psychiatry and mental health: an ancient practice with modern relavancy
Seth Jay, Gillihan PhD, how can yoga make your life better? 2019, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/think-act-be/201906/how-can-yoga-make-your-life-better
