How Practicing Yoga improves Muscle Tension, your Health

Practicing yoga, with the added benefit of flexibility and meditation, goes a long way to helping achieve harmony in the mind and body. Often in our lives we find ourselves unable to function properly because of the stress and anxieties of everyday life, which creates a heavy weight on our minds.

The biggest problem that affects all of us is stress — and this affects the emotional and physical side of us all. Meditative practices are able to heal and sustain one’s well-being.

A vast majority of people think that meditative practices are only for spiritual people. But this belief is totally wrong. Religious or not, anyone can begin to start practicing yoga. You will see and feel the difference at the same time and find out how it works for you.

The cleansing effects of practicing yoga has been proven to be very effective in aiding the healing process of many disorders. The postures used when practicing yoga are known to increase the flexibility of your body, including parts that you have forgotten about.

When you are practicing yoga exercises, you will gain the benefits of flexibility, as well as a wide variety of additional benefits. Some of these increased benefits of flexibility include a massaging effect that helps the inner organs to combat disease. The extra awareness that you will experience also helps the senses in detecting impending infections and health disorders.

Stretching also is a benefit. You will notice, when stretching out any muscle tension and joints, that the flexibility in your body becomes more remarkable, stiff joints become more lubricated, tendons and ligaments become more flexible and there is an increase in your blood flow throughout your body.

Meditative practices detoxify your complete body — and needless to say, this helps combat the aging process and significantly increases energy levels and zest for life. Another great benefit of flexibility within meditative practices is body toning, which is a simple by-product of practicing yoga.

The true purpose of practicing yoga is to unite the mind, body and spirit, and in doing this you will be achieving eternal bliss, emotional balance, calmness, a positive outlook and an excellent physically healthy body. Regular practice is important in achieving your goals as you are practicing yoga. The more you are continuously practicing yoga within your daily routine, the easier it becomes.

Having the ability to stretch very well doesn’t make one a better yogi. Once you start having this feeling, like you are making some progress in your practice, you’ll know what is most important, as it is in all areas of life. Most people are amazed at the rate at which they start gaining flexibility, after a short time of practice. This can make you want to continue practicing and make more improvements. After some time of practice, you will start experiencing a decline. This doesn’t mean you should give up or quit. It is time for you to press on, look inwards and make some adjustments. It is not enough for you to stop trying because you felt like your flexibility has reached its limit. The truth is, you will start seeing results when you stop worrying yourself about how flexible you are.

Here are a few tips that will help you gain flexibility:

• Be patient when practicing yoga. It doesn’t matter if you are practicing yoga and are unable to do all of the poses. Do not expect improvements in your flexibility immediately. It took a long time for your body to become stiff, so it will still take time for it to open up again. Remember that practicing yoga is not all about flexibility. It is about practicing and accepting who you are.
• Concentrate on specific areas with muscle tension. We all have them — those tight areas that feel like they will never open up. The most affected areas are the hips, shoulders and hamstrings. When we feel some tightness in some areas, we tend to avoid doing poses that require flexibility in those areas. Instead, we focus on poses that we can perform with ease. It’s important to note that our fears and insecurities about our lack of flexibility are the major reason why areas that are stiff remain that way. Give yourself a push and practice some yoga poses that will open up those stiff areas.
• Don’t try to force your meditative practice. Hatha yoga is sometimes translated as “forceful” or “willful.” The traditional mindset that people have is that stretching should be done with force, even when it is painful. Well, it is a fact that some amount of force is needed to stretch out the muscle tension, but we should understand that flexibility is as much mental as physical. One major reason why we experience tightness or muscle tension is that the mind thinks that it needs to protect our body from any form of pain. For this reason, it gives instructions to loosen up muscle tension so they don’t tense up, when you go deeper into stretches and postures. While this might be a good idea, we should remember that we are practicing yoga to gain some perfection. It is a good thing that our mind is protecting us, but we must try to teach our minds that is safe to do the stretching. Once we can successfully do this, everything else will follow.