With mental health practitioners and drug treatment centers taking a more holistic approach to healing and health, yoga has become one of the alternative health techniques that is gaining more attention. Yoga stress relief techniques have been used for many years to help individuals divert their energies toward healthier lifestyle choices.
Health Improvements from Yoga
According to MedicineNet, one of the benefits of regular yoga practice can be stress reduction. With regular practice yoga poses can result in better blood pressure control and improved heart rate. Additional benefits that can be realized through regular yoga and meditation practice reported from MedicineNet, include better control of blood glucose for people with diabetes, improved overall mood, relief from back pain and even better control of pain associated with cancer chemotherapy treatment.
Yoga as Adjunct Therapy
In an article written by the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI), alternative relaxation technique approaches such as Tai Chi, yoga and meditation can be extremely beneficial to individuals with mental illness. In their recent Hearts and Minds initiative, NAMI emphasizes that using a holistic relaxation method can be extremely helpful in providing methods for patients to control the symptoms of their illness. According to the article, “The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) is providing a new dimension to its Hearts & Minds initiative, an educational program that promotes ‘mind and body’ health practices for individuals who live with mental illness,” which includes Yoga.
NAMI also points out that some patients with mental health issues, other than stress and anxiety, can benefit tremendously from yoga for stress relief. For example, they cite patients, who experience psychotic symptoms of auditory hallucinations and hearing voices, being able to use meditation and yoga practice as a way to calm their mind and find relief from their symptoms.
Better Chronic Illness Management
In a recent study by the Mayo Clinic, one of the benefits of yoga for stress relief is that it can help manage chronic illness symptoms. Yoga has been found to be beneficial to patients who have symptoms of depression, anxiety, insomnia, fatigue and cancer.
Additionally, the Mayo Clinic states that people struggling with eating disorders can get better control of their eating habits as one of the benefits of yoga. In particular, individuals who struggle with binge eating can benefit tremendously from using yoga for stress relief, since often the practice of yoga results in changes in lifestyle that are much healthier.
Improved Overall Health
Another of the benefits of yoga as a relaxation technique, may be that you experience an overall improvement in your health. Yoga poses and practice results in improved range of motion, improved strength, better flexibility and better balance. In addition to simply feeling better, people who experience such dramatic improvements in their health also report improvement in quality of life and more ability and desire to engage with others in general.
Yoga stress relief has been practiced for centuries throughout the world and has only gained in popularity in Western culture over the past several decades. By adding yoga as a relaxation method into your daily routine, you can benefit from stress reduction and a multitude of other health advantages that will improve your life overall.
– The Alternative Daily