Did you know?
****** Health insurance can provide cover for yoga *******
This is because the benefits of yoga are so well known. It indicates the wide acceptance of yoga as a form of injury treatment and as an effective means to prevent future injury and ill health.
Look at this recent IBIS World Industry Report on yoga and pilates:
Doctors and health professionals are increasingly recommending (yoga and pilates) industry services …. as a means of maintaining health, managing injuries and controlling weight … (yoga practitioners) are increasingly finding work in the public sector, including schools and aged-care facilities. (IBIS World Industry Report OD4198 Yoga and Pilates Studios in Australia, May 2015 by Stephen Gargano
****** How yoga increases your quality of life *******
Yoga postures (asanas) and breath work (pranayama) and relaxation can be used as a form of treatment for health conditions, preventing, reducing or alleviating structural, physiological, emotional and spiritual pain, suffering or limitations.
Yoga practice can build muscular strength and body flexibility, promote and improve respiratory and cardiovascular function, promote recovery from and treatment of addiction, reduce stress, anxiety, depression, and chronic pain, improve sleep patterns, and enhance overall well-being and quality of life.
Regular yoga practice facilitates personal behaviour change, greater self-control, compassion, a sense of calmness and friendly wellbeing. It
produces a physiological state opposite to that of the flight-or-fight stress response and with that interruption in the stress response, a sense of balance and union between the mind and body can be achieved.
Thus
lowering your breathing and heart rate, decreasing blood pressure, lowering cortisol levels, and increasing blood flow to the intestines and vital organs ….
… and stimulating the rewarding pleasure centers in the median forebrain and other areas leading to a state of bliss and pleasure.
… female yoga practitioners attribute their positive feelings and sense of well-being to yoga practice and report less self-objectification, greater satisfaction with physical appearance and fewer disordered eating attitudes compared to non-yoga practitioners.
… There exists an indisputable connection between a person’s overall physical and mental health and the inner peace and well-being yoga is designed to achieve. Yoga suspends the fluctuations of the mind and by acting consciously, we live better and suffer less.
(From The benefits of yoga – review article – Exploring the therapeutic effects of yoga and its ability to increase quality of life by Catherine Woodyard, International Journal of Yoga, Vol 4, July – Dec, 2011)
