Yoga and Mental Wellbeing
If you’re reading this, you’re either curious about what yoga can do for you: Or, you’re already practicing and wanting to learn more about how and why yoga makes you feel better. Because, let’s face it, it’s pretty good at having a positive effect.
Why is yoga good for your mental health?
Yoga is a practice that goes way beyond physical movement (asana), it is a 3,000 year old discipline that has been shown to improve your wellbeing over and over again.
Yoga can improve your self-awareness through mindfulness practices. It can reduce stress, too, which in turn can reduce your risk of various other diseases that stress can lead to.
UK Mental Health Stats
Stress is a huge public health issue at the moment and here are some stats to help you understand how the UK Stress situation is at the moment:
Over 8 million people will be suffering an anxiety disorder at any time.
60% of employees experience anxiety (but only 10% of them access mental health support services).
1 in 6 adults in the UK are experiencing depression.
79% of people frequently experience workplace stress.
One person dies by taking their own lives, every 40 seconds.
Source: https://championhealth.co.uk/insights/mental-health-statistics/
Benefits of Yoga for Mental Health
Activates the parasympathetic nervous system (the relaxation one)
Reduces breathing and heart rate
Decreases blood pressure
Lowers cortisol levels
Improves self-confidence
Improves self-awareness
Reduces irritability
Encourages optimism
Reduces anxiety
Reduces depression
Gives more clarity of thought
Ten ways to use yoga to improve your Mental Health?
Even the simple act of moving your body with purpose can have an effect on your mental wellbeing, but here are some specific practices that you can try:
Breath awareness practices e.g belly breath
Nadi Shodhana (alternate nostril breathing)
Brahmari Pranayama (Humming Bee Breath)
Matsyasana (fish pose)
Bhujangasana (cobra pose)
Savasana (corpse pose)
Yoga nidra (yogic sleep)
Body scan meditation
Trataka meditation
Mantra
This is not an exhaustive list as I simply couldn’t fit all the ways that yoga can benefit your mental wellbeing into one blog.
For more information about how yoga can improve your mental and physical wellbeing, make sure you sign up to my newsletter here.
Recommended Yoga Books
If you’ve made it down here, maybe you’d like to learn even more about yoga. Here are a couple of books that I think will be really useful for you.
Enjoy!