Practitioners of yoga (yogi/yogin=male yogini=female) talk about a unification of the body, mind and spirit acquired through practicing the yoga exercises and techniques.
One of the basic beliefs of yoga practitioners is that our mind and body is a unified structure, which can find harmony and heal itself, when in a proper physical, emotional, and mental balance.
As a result of these basic principles, as well as the many visible examples of the positive results obtained through the practice of yoga, many doctors consider yoga as having therapeutic results, and recommend it for curing a series of illnesses, mainly related to the nervous system.
Yoga is not a recent life philosophy. It has been practiced for thousands of years and during all this time, people benefited from the great results obtained. Furthermore, they conducted investigations, in order to clearly establish the areas in which people can obtain health benefits, by an extended practice. The information obtained after conducting the investigations was grouped in three categories, establishing that yoga practitioners are likely to observe improvements in what concerns physiological, psychological, biochemical aspects.
From the physiological point of view, prolonged yoga practices can cure pulse rate decreases, respiratory and blood pressure dysfunctions, it can contribute to stabilizing the nervous system equilibrium, to normalizing gastrointestinal functions and endocrine function, to increasing the joint range of motions, endurance level, energy level, immunity to diseases and cardiovascular efficiency, to improving eye-hand coordination, reaction time, dexterity skills, depth perception, sleep, etc.
The second category, comprising psychological benefits, points out that yoga can also contribute to increasing somatic and kinesthetic awareness, self-acceptance and self-actualization, social skills, well-being, as well as to improving concentration, memory, attention, mood, learning efficiency, symbol coding, etc.
As for the biochemical benefits of yoga, we can enumerate substantial decreases of glucose, sodium, cholesterol, total white blood cell and remarkable increases of vitamin C, total serum protein, hemoglobin etc.
Furthermore, various studies revealed that yoga exercises are extremely effective when it comes to increasing the level of joint flexibility, together with the level of lubrication of joints, ligaments and tendons. Another interesting aspect has to do with the fact that yoga is one of the very few techniques, which contributes to massaging all the internal organs and glands, including the ones that are hardly ever stimulated during the lifetime of a person, such as the prostate. The stimulation and massaging of the internal organs proves to be beneficial when it comes to preventing and keeping away diseases.
Moreover, these ancient and efficient techniques guarantee a complete detoxification of your body. When stretching the muscles and performing a thorough massage, due to the complexity of the yoga exercises you ensure the optimum quantity of blood supply you need. As a consequence, toxins are eliminated from your body and certain undesired processes, such as aging, are considerably delayed.
As a final remark, all the benefits presented above come in addition to the most important aspect provided by yoga practices, meaning the harmony and the synchronization between body and mind, as well as strengthening your meditation and emotional systems.
