Doing a few easy yoga asanas can help you support the healing process and help the person experience symptoms with more centeredness and less distress
June 21 is International Yoga Day—which symbolises the ancient practice of mindfulness and provides physical and mental health benefits for people of all ages. According to experts, if you are going through an illness or recovering from surgery and living with a chronic condition, yoga becomes an integral part of your treatment and potentially hastens healing.
Doing a few easy yoga asanas can help you support the healing process and help the person experience symptoms with more centredness and less distress.
Improves strength, balance
You can try poses like tree poses, which allow slow movements and deep breathing to increase blood flow and warm up muscles, while holding a pose builds long-term strength and balance.
Helps with back pain
A good stretch in the form of a yoga asana can help you ease pain and improve mobility in those who suffer from long-term lower back pain. Try the classic cat and cow pose, which increases spinal flexibility, reduces back and neck pain, improves posture, and reduces stress.
Benefits heart health
Regular yoga practice helps reduce stress levels, thereby helping to lower inflammation and contribute to healthier hearts. Inflammation in the long run can lead to high blood pressure and obesity – both of which can be lowered with the help of yoga.
Gives energy
Regular yoga practice helps you feel more energetic and gives you mental energy as well – it also boosts alertness and enthusiasm along with lowering negative feelings after getting into a routine of practising yoga.
Eases symptoms of arthritis
Doing yoga poses daily helps ease the discomfort of tender and swollen joints for those with arthritis and inflammation in joints.
Reduces anxiety
Yoga can help reduce anxiety disorder – especially through yoga nidra – a body scan meditation, which reduces feelings of sadness and other physical symptoms like increased heart rate.
Boosts immunity
While stress can negatively affect your immunity levels, it also makes you more susceptible to illness. Yoga is also a scientifically backed alternative treatment for stress. Studies say there is a distinct link between practising yoga and better immune system functioning. It happens due to yoga’s ability to fight inflammation and in part to the enhancement of cell-mediated immunity.
Helps you sleep
Insomnia affects all parts of your body – physical and mental. However, according to experts, yoga improves how quickly you can fall and stay asleep – which happens partly due to the after-effects of working out and the mental calming stress can give.
Promotes posture
Yoga helps improve brain functioning in the centres responsible for interoception – which recognise sensations within your body and posture. Try adding yoga poses during breaks in your workouts to promote better posture.
Helps ease burnout
Burnout or excessive exhaustion affects your health in the long term due to high stress. During the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors recommended yoga-based techniques that helped reduce the effects of burnout by improving body awareness. This is the ability to notice internal signals and respond appropriately — meaning yoga may help people become more in tune with, and even more likely to listen to, their body’s signals.
