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Top 8 Remarkable Health Benefits of Yoga for Men
Discover the benefits of yoga for men and enhance your overall well-being. The practice helps build strength, improves flexibility, and reduces stress levels.
It’s time that all the benefits of yoga for men get the recognition they deserve. Typically, when men of any age decide to get fitter and look after their physique, they sign up for a gym membership, fix a route for running, or make plans for a sports evening. Laying on a yoga mat and practicing yoga, almost never crosses their minds. Yoga sessions have been touted as the best exercise for women, but overlooked for men. This ancient practice narrates the union of mind, body, and soul. This gender and age-neutral practice is for all, and you are about to know the highlights of yoga exercises and the amazing reasons why men should do yoga.
Is Yoga Good for Men?
The yogic asanas are the holistic amalgamation of physical postures that involve breathing mechanisms, stretching, meditation, flexibility, balance, and the overall promotion of health and wellness. The men’s fitness space is not completely devoid of yoga, there are many athletes, fitness enthusiasts, and celebrities who do not fail to incorporate yoga into their routines. Yoga can be added as an additional mini-workout to your existing roster or performed as a warm-up before strength training. The yogic sessions will help balance your entire fitness regime by inducing mobility and flexibility, besides the following benefits.
10 Benefits of Yoga for Men
1. It Helps Improve Flexibility
Improved flexibility is one of the most well-known USPs (Unique Selling Propositions) and driving forces of yoga. In our bodies, due to restricted movements and mobility, the neglected cartilage tends to wear out over time, exposing the underlying bones, which may lead to conditions like arthritis, back pain, chronic pain, and osteoporosis.
Practicing yoga ensures that the joints are completely within their range of motion and aids the unused areas of cartilage with nutrients, fresh oxygen, and blood. Consistent practice of yogic asanas, eventually loosens up the muscles and tissues around bones and joints, while also maintaining muscle strength. All these benefits together increase flexibility, release muscle tension, and prevent the aforementioned physical conditions (1).
2. Helps Improve Blood Flow And Circulation
Some of the other highly-revered perks of yoga are —increased oxygenated blood flow in the body through improved levels of hemoglobin and red blood cells. Certain twisting yoga poses function in a manner that wrings out the venous or deoxygenated blood from the organs while letting the fresh and oxygenated blood flow in when the posture is released (1). Twisting asanas like seated spinal twists or revolved side angles, benefit the spinal discs with increased blood flow to the spine.
3. Boosts Cardiovascular Health
A 2012 study revealed that consistent and long duration of yoga proved to enhance cardiopulmonary endurance, among adults (2). It was observed that during yogic exercises, oxygen utilization, anaerobic threshold, and blood lactate increased overall endurance and lowered the resting heart rate, improving cardiovascular functioning and preventing heart disease (1).
4. Improves Mental Health
Depression, anxiety, stress, and insomnia constitute poor mental health and are pretty common among individuals today. With increased awareness around the subject, people willingly go for therapies to cater to their mental health needs. Yoga is one of the most prominent and proven practices for dealing with such issues and get stress relief.
Performing yoga and meditation activates one’s relaxation mode by shifting the focus from the sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic system. This means that your mind deviates from the fight or flight mode to a rather calm and tranquil mode. This happens due to the breathing techniques observed in yoga which also help in managing blood pressure, lowering cortisol levels, and increasing blood flow (1).
5. Helps One Stay Calm And Relaxed
Yoga is touted as one of the top-notch self-care practices for various reasons, such as achieving a tranquil mind, getting in touch with your innate thoughts and mind, attaining relaxation, feeling calm, improving attentiveness, and an overall optimistic outro. Yoga works to stimulate the pleasure centers in the brain that lead to pleasurable thoughts and a calm demeanor by overcoming the state of fear and aggression. The manifestation of balanced and positive energy through yoga, along with inhibition to the sympathetic effects, aids in controlling heart rate, anxiety, blood pressure, and breathing (1).
6. May Help Relieve Back Pain
Many people find themselves complaining about lower back pain due to various reasons like poor sitting posture, a sedentary lifestyle, etc. Not only is it uncomfortable to bear the pain, but it also hinders the daily chores and affects the lifestyle. Thankfully, research has shown the positive effects of practicing yoga for relieving lower back pain, for a long time (3).
7. Helps with Glucose Regulation
Studies and reviews regarding the effects of yoga in managing type 2 diabetes and risk associated with insulin resistance syndrome showed improvement in various indices, postintervention. Another study indicated the short-term positive effects of yoga related to diabetes. It was also observed that practicing yoga as compared to medication, signaled a prominent reduction of fasting glucose in people with type 2 diabetes (2). For every study, it is essential to note that there are various variables and dynamics involved, and further research is required in the field.
8. Helps Improves Sexual Functioning
Based on the standard Male Sexual Quotient, a study revealed the evaluation presented by the participants. It was found that with regular yoga, people felt an improvement in their sexual functionality (4). Another study concluded that yoga is an easy and non-medicated practice for treating premature ejaculation. The relaxing properties of yoga are directly related to improvement in sexual health (5).
9. Helps Improve Sleep
Now that you know the mindful and relaxation-inducing benefits of yoga, you must have guessed about its advantages for insomnia. Performing yoga regularly has shown significant results in better sleep quality. The study showed that yoga is useful for undisturbed and well-rested sleep. As yoga helps in relaxing the mind, while also calming anxiety and stress, it is beneficial for those who struggle with such issues and remain devoid of good, restorative sleep (6).
10. Reduced Risk of Injuries
Complementing your high-impact workouts like weightlifting, boxing, running, etc with yoga will prove to reduce the risk of injuries, as you gain an enhanced self-awareness through yogic asanas and meditation, there is an improved balance in the body and a higher concentration.
Conclusion
Since there are numerous benefits of yoga for men, why not incorporate the 3000-year-old wellness practice into your daily routines? The best way for it is to perform yoga as a pre-workout warm-up or take up at least three sessions per week. With consistency, you will notice improved mental and physical health. If you are a beginner, you should consult a yoga expert and practice under their guidance. Over time you will see increased flexibility in your body and you will be able to perform even some of the tricky poses.
ALSO READ: Kundalini Meditation: Balancing Mind, Body, And Spirit
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