Health Benefits of Yoga are countless. The word yoga has been derived from the Sanskrit word yug. This Indian knowledge of the body has been around for several thousand years. While it was earlier presumed to be just a form of physical exercise- a stretching, bending, turning and twisting of the body into complex forms while breathing rhythmically- it also offers a variety of other benefits.

Yoga helps to keep your mind healthy as well as your body. It is a form of lifestyle that people often take up to relieve stress from the mind as well as the body. Despite having existed for so long, yoga has never diminished in its importance.

People all over the world regard it as a highly beneficial form of exercise that helps alleviate several health concerns naturally (1).

How Can Yoga Improve Your Health?

Yoga is a form of exercise. Hence, it not only helps you gain flexibility but offers you a great way to start living a healthy life. Being a form of exercise all by itself means that taking up an extensive routine of different asanas will help you achieve all that you wish from jogging on a treadmill. It offers you flexibility, as well as a healthy and fit body (2).

Yoga is also a great way to help you reduce weight. Different asanas allow you to achieve your ideal weight with respect to your body structure since yoga improves the health and functioning of your internal organs as well. There are many effective Yoga Asanas to lose weight. It does not require any extra cost once you learn it.

Yoga is a great way to relieve stress, either physical or mental. And, in doing so it also helps you maintain better inter-personal relationships with your family and friends. It is believed to help people achieve “inner peace”- a state of physical and mental well-being- which helps improve family and business relationships.

Different yoga poses to promote the betterment of different systems of the body. It is important to know exactly which poses will help you and how they do so. Gaining knowledge about the variety of different yoga poses will help you in coming up with a routine of poses that will actually work towards improving your own personal health concerns. (3) (4) (5)

35 Health Benefits of Yoga

It is no secret that having a good family and work life is important for the overall well-being of an individual; hence, ultimately yoga provides an individual with numerous health benefits.

1. Improves Immunity

It helps improve the immunity of an individual. The human body is a complex system of several different interconnected organs that work together to help the body function normally. Yoga asanas help improve the functioning of the internal organs and improve an individual’s immunity. This is one of the best Health Benefits of Yoga. (6) (7) (8) (9)

2. Boosts Energy Level

Yoga also helps in boosting an individual’s energy. This actually enables an individual to go about their entire day with little to no problem. (10)

Read More: A Complete Guide on Bikram Yoga Poses

3. Improves Posture and Flexibility

Yoga poses also help improve an individual’s posture. Along with this, an individual’s flexibility also improves. As you go on practicing different asanas, you will notice a gradual increase in your flexibility, by helping your muscles loosen and become flexible. Tight and inflexible muscles and ligaments influence your bad posture and several aches and pains. (11)

4. Builds Muscle Strength

Yoga builds muscle strength; this prevents you from succumbing to health problems such as arthritis as well as back or hip pain. You can also try HIIT workouts and other strength training exercises along with Yoga to improve Muscle Strength. (12) (13)

Read More: Yoga for Weight Gain (Bonus: Ramdev Baba Yoga Asanas for Weight Gain)

5. Improves Bone Health

It helps improve your bone health. Exercises that are weight-bearing help improve bone health. Several yoga asanas require you to lift and balance your own weight. This is quite beneficial for your bones, and also acts as a preventive measure against osteoporosis and Knee pain. Also, improve the consumption of calcium-rich foods to Improve Bone Health. (14) (15)

6. Improves Blood Circulation

Blood circulation is also improved through different yoga poses. The relaxation poses help circulation improve especially in the extremities of the body. Twisting and turning helps to “wring out” the deoxygenated or “venomous” blood in the body, while inverted poses help blood from the lower extremities flow into the lungs. This helps them pump out oxygenated blood in the body.

7. Improves Heart Health

This improvement in blood circulation helps in improving the health of your heart. By allowing more blood to flow into the lungs, more oxygenated blood is circulated throughout the body. Improved heart health is one of the best Health Benefits of Yoga.  (18) (19)

Read More: Prenatal Yoga Poses, Asanas and Sequences

8. Improves Hemoglobin Level

Yoga helps in improving the hemoglobin and red blood cell count, which helps in transferring oxygen to the different tissues of the body. It helps in reducing the stickiness of platelets by lowering the level of proteins that promote the clotting mechanism of the blood, which helps the blood become thinner. (20)

Since the chances of blood clots are reduced, this helps in preventing incidences of strokes as well as heart attacks. Along with Yoga, a proper intake of Iron-rich foods and Protein-rich foods is required to improve Hemoglobin Levels.

Read More: Best Ramdev Baba Yoga Asanas for Weight Loss

9. Relieves Stress and Improves Mental Health

Yoga asanas have been employed for several thousand years to help improve mental as well as physical health. It is often used as a stress reliever, which promotes a happier atmosphere for the individual to function in. Due to this, personal and professional relations improve, and the emotional lifestyle of the individual improves vastly.

It is a well-known fact that yoga asanas help improve the functioning of the internal organs. This helps in keeping the several systems of the human body healthy and fit, thus ensuring better physical health of the individual. Try yoga for depression incase you feed depressed, it will help a lot. (21)

10. Regulates Blood Pressure

It helps you regulate your blood pressure. Individuals with high blood pressure benefit greatly from certain yoga poses. These poses help reduce your blood pressure safely and naturally. Restorative yoga poses which induce a calming effect are especially beneficial in reducing blood pressure. (16) (17)

The yoga for high blood pressure helps in keeping the blood pressure in control.

11. Strengthens Digestive System

A healthy routine of yoga asanas helps you ensure the proper and good functioning of different systems of your body. Especially your digestive system, which helps flush out toxins and detoxify your body. This, naturally, helps in your growth. (22)

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12. Helps to Increase Height

Moreover, yoga poses essentially stretch out your entire body, especially lengthening the spine as well as leg muscles. It also helps you improve your posture, which removes any hindrance to your increase in height. A proper diet along with Yoga and Exercises are required for a proper increase in height for an individual.

13. Helps in Improving Respiratory System

Yoga helps in improving your respiratory system. Breathing exercises are very common in yoga. It helps bring a rhythm to the entire routine as well as help you with any sort of breathing problems. Additionally, by allowing more blood to flow into the lungs, different yoga poses to ensure that lungs expand and contract to the best capacity.

Several respiratory problems such as bronchitis or asthma greatly benefit from different forms of yoga. (23)

14. Improves Concentration Levels

Being unable to concentrate on your work is a major hindrance to productivity in the workplace as well as home. Yoga is very helpful in improving concentration. It helps the mind focus and push distracting thoughts towards the periphery of attention. (24)

15. Helps in Strengthening Pelvic Muscles

Yoga poses help in the strengthening of all kinds of muscles. Poses that focus on the lower extremity of the body often focus on the strengthening of the pelvic muscles which help with urinary problems.
Yoga helps rejuvenate cells and reduce stress.

16. Regulates Blood Sugar Levels

This has a massive impact on the parasympathetic nervous system. In turn, the parasympathetic nervous system increases the level of insulin the blood and thus lowers blood sugar level effectively. Hence, it is quite beneficial to diabetic patients. If you have diabetes practice yoga along with a proper diet for Diabetics.

17. Stimulates Sexual Arousal

By helping contract pubococcygeal muscles slightly, yoga poses help in creating a seal and trapping energy into the body. By contracting these muscles, the circulation in the pelvic region improving and this can help stimulate sexual arousal.

18. Helps in Weight Loss

Regular practice of yoga helps in toning your muscles and strengthening your core, this helps you in reducing body weight. Along with this, as yoga is a form of exercise different poses help you burn different amounts of calories. Actor Shilpa Shetty is so fit and she is a regular practitioner of yoga.

19. Improves Body Balance

Yoga helps you improve your flexibility, which aids in maintaining a perfect posture during a complex pose. However, to achieve complicated poses balance is necessary, and with regular practice, yoga helps in improving your balance.

20. Help Massage Internal Organs

Yoga poses help massage the internal organs. By stimulating the liver it acts as a preventive measure and guards against liver cirrhosis, or damage by fibrosis, inflammation, etc.

21. Improves Awareness

By helping in improving concentration and allowing the mind to focus, yoga actually helps in better awareness. By focusing on the present, the individual is able to live in a situation with greater awareness.
Since an individual has improved focus, concentration, and awareness, they are able to fixate on the work in front of them.

As yoga helps promote a healthy emotional atmosphere, individuals can focus on their work and career better. Thus, yoga actually helps in improving productivity at work.

22. Improves Sleep Quality

Yoga is a form of exercise; hence it tires you out easily. Moreover, it helps loosen up the tight muscles and ligaments and pushes your body into a much more relaxed state. This actually improves your sleep quality as your body is not tight from tension, but loose and pliant.

23. Helps Improve Self-Esteem

Yoga is a great way to improve your self-esteem. By allowing your mind to focus and reduce stressful thoughts, it helps you combat anxiety better as well as reduce negative thoughts. It promotes a healthy emotional environment.

24. Combats Sinus Problems

By helping improve the respiratory functioning of the entire body, yoga also helps in combating sinus problems.

25. Improves Eye Health

Our eyes are controlled by muscles. Since yoga helps in improving the health of our muscles, it is no surprise then that they also help with the muscles of the eye. Eye yoga asanas are some special asanas solely dedicated to helping improve the functioning of your eye and promote good eyesight. There are many Eye Exercises to Improve Vision and Eye Health

26. Helps Reduce Negative Thoughts

By making the muscles of the body lose and pliant, yoga poses push the body into a relaxed and pliant state. It acts as a stress reliever and helps you to reduce negative thoughts so that you can enjoy yourself and live a happier life.

27. Promotes Healthy Hair Growth

Many Yoga poses focus on helping our blood circulate freely and effectively throughout our body, especially the extremities. Inverted yoga poses not only help in allowing the blood to flow into the lungs, but also to the head. The cells in our scalps are rejuvenated as well as oxygenated.  This helps them function better, hence yoga to stop hair fall promotes healthy hair growth.

28. Helps Improve Interpersonal Relations

It goes without saying that yoga helps improve your mood by promoting a healthy emotional environment as well as reducing stress. It helps you improve your interpersonal relations which help in social growth and development.

29. Helps Strengthening Core

Yoga helps in strengthening your core as well as improve your flexibility and posture. All of these factors help reduce any aches and pains that you may be having. Lower back pain is commonly caused by bad posture, and the strengthening of the pelvic muscles help reduce it.
Yoga helps all our internal systems work normally and effectively. It especially helps the digestive system, ensuring better health for your stomach.

30. Improves the Health of Spine

Yoga poses aim at stretching out the entire length of your body. This means that most of them focus on stretching your spine and allowing it to become more flexible with practice. It actually helps in improving the health of your spine.

31. Helps in getting rid of Addiction

Yoga helps you get rid of addiction by reducing negative thoughts. It allows your mind to focus on one aspect- improving your health. It allows you to take control of the situation and prevent you from making harmful decisions.
Through regular yoga practice, you can help strengthen your core.

32. Prevents Cancer

By helping your organs function as they should, yoga promotes a healthy and fit body. It also helps reduce the chances of any health issues such as cancer. Moreover, by helping reduce stress, anxiety as well as negative thoughts, yoga also helps cope with the symptoms of any severe health problems.

33. Simple and Easy to Learn

Yoga has been around for several years and has always held a great deal of importance. It is a natural way to cure many life problems and can be accessed by beginners very easily. It is important to note though, that beginners do require someone to guide them towards the correct posture.

34. Helps to relieve constipation

If you practice yoga daily, it will improve the health of your internal organs. Your stomach, intestine and rectum muscles will get a good stimulus to work efficiently. Yoga for constipation is very effective and helps you from side effects of medicines you would take otherwise to get relief from constipation.

35. Good for hemorrhoids patients

Hemorrhoids or piles are very painful, and there are various yoga poses for piles which can help you reduce the pain and get rid of piles.

36. Yoga improves skin health

Practicing yoga daily gives you a flawless, clean, glowing skin. You can try yoga asanas for glowing skin if you are troubled by various skin issues.

With the growing health concerns around the world, the need to improve our health becomes more pressing every day. With only a few simple yoga poses we can vastly improve the quality of our physical as well as mental health.