5 Great Reasons to Make Yoga Your New Years Resolution

• Lose weight • Improve my health and fitness • De-stress • Create some ‘me-time’ • Learn something new. These are some of the most popular new years resolutions that people make. They’re also 5 great reasons to make yoga your new years resolution!

1. Lose Weight

While some forms of yoga will have you sweating it out in a 40 degree torture chamber, hatha yoga is a more gentle form of exercise. However, yoga in any form is an effective way to help lose or control weight. A good yoga class will exercise almost every part of your body, activating your cardiovascular system (heart and arteries) and strengthening your musculoskeletal system (bones, muscles, joints and ligaments), helping you to burn calories.

2. Improve your health and fitness

Regular yoga practice can improve your posture, muscle tone, flexibility, balance and general range of movement.  Yoga postures also stimulate the endocrine system, releasing hidden reserves of energy and feel-good hormones.  Yoga improves your circulation helping to flush toxins from your body, supporting the functioning of your major organs and immune system by removing waste products from the cells more quickly.

3. De-stress

Prolonged stress will eventually manifest itself on a physical level.  Each time you find yourself under pressure your hypothalamus stimulates the release of stress hormones including adrenalin and cortisol.  Many studies have shown the ongoing activation of our stress-response system disrupts almost all of the body’s major processes, putting you at risk of numerous health problems including:

  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • Digestive problems
  • Heart disease
  • Sleep problems
  • Weight gain
  • Memory and concentration impairment

Combined with the positive physical effects yoga has on your hormonal system, yoga helps you develop your powers of concentration and mindfulness, and learn to manage the way you respond to stressful stimuli.

Using aspects of breath, postures and visualisation yoga students learn to calm the mind and direct the thoughts.  As you develop these skills you can learn to extend them to other aspects of your life, both to manage negative stress and to improve focus and clarity for enhanced performance.

4. Create some ‘me time’

When you stop to consider our modern way of life, there’s not much peace to be had for most of us.  We have so many things to contend with, constantly!  Aside from the pressures of work, family and finances we have the constant demand of our televisions, mobile phones and computers – keeping us continually tuned in to the external world.  Is it any wonder that the rate of sleep disorders, anxiety and depression have sky-rocketed over the last couple of decades? Combined with our sedentary jobs, motorised travel and less than ideal diet, the constant demands of modern life are leading many of us to an early grave.

In contrast, yoga calls for you to be still and take time to look inside, to listen to your body and still your mind. To appreciate the beauty of just being.

5. Learn something new

As well as learning the physical yoga postures (asana’s) yoga students learn how to use the power of breath, and control the thoughts and calm the mind.  Yoga also helps you develop a much greater physical awareness and understanding of your body. For those who wish to go deeper, yoga has a wonderfully rich spiritual tradition dating back over 4,000 years.

So, there it is! 5 great reasons to make yoga your new years resolution and achieve all these goals in one hit.

photo credit: One Way Stock via photopin cc