There are a number of reasons why yoga works. With modernisation of yoga, the term yoga itself is now a household term. Anyone from age 8 to 80 pretty much has heard of the word yoga. They have an idea of what yoga may look like even though it may not be exactly what yoga is really about. Most people can picture something like this.
But why does twisting your arms and crossing your legs particularly work on your mental and physical health? Moving your body is good for your physical health. That’s a no brainer. A balancing pose like this can work wonder on your joints, muscles and even your internal organs. That’s the same for any other activities. Exercise is good for you, period. But what’s interesting is that yoga adds breath as a bridge between your mind and body.
What we do during a yoga practice is not (hopefully) simply stretching your body to the limits. By using a specific way to match the breath with the movement, we are not only accessing our nervous system but also, if done correctly, we are taking control of our own nervous system.
Most of the time, we are under the influence of nervous system’s workings. Our nervous system is influenced by external stimuli and we react to them. Let’s say you are in a car in a hurry to make it to your yoga class. You are just a little late. You are already on edge because you know your yoga teacher doesn’t allow people to walk in too late. You’ve had a difficult week at work and really could use a concentrated relaxation time. Then suddenly, someone cuts in front. You stomp on the brake and honk angrily at the other car. At this rate, your heart rate as well as your blood pressure are increased. You’re breathing shallowly and you are totally engulfed in the anger that’s bubbling inside of you. You change the lane to pass this car that cut in front of you and just as you pass by, you look at that driver angrily. Then you realize it was your co-worker who happens to have had that terrible presentation badly earlier in the week and it wasn’t her fault. You know this because you happened to attend to that meeting and watched her crumble in front of everyone. You were feeling incredibly sad for her about her presentation because you’ve done it before and you know how hard it was. Immediately, your anger melt away. You feel differently. By the time you reached at the yoga studio, you realized you have a few more minutes before the class starts. Your heart rate decreases in relief. You have completely forgotten about how someone cut in front of you in traffic.
I’m sure you can relate to this kind of up-down emotional roller coaster ride. We are constantly being subjected to the reactions towards our perceived external stimuli.
But in these upsetting situations, what if you had remembered what yoga taught us while we practiced our poses? And the teaching goes something like this: When it’s hard to let go, we shift our attention to our breath. There is a great saying in yoga.
“Wherever your attention goes, prāṇa flows.”
By skillfully aligning our attention to our breath in the moment someone cut you in front in traffic, we avoid our anger entirely. We arrive swiftly at the yoga studio and your unexpected swift arrival to the class would be an added bonus of delight. Yoga allows us to question “what if…..what if our entire life worked like this?”
What if we avoided as much unnecessary frustration, anger and irritation as possible? Yes, life is unexpected but what if we can change the way we react to things in life entirely? Would that be something we are all interested in?
I would bet that we are. And that’s only the surface of what yoga could potentially offer for your mental health as well as physical health. This is just one example of yoga works a little deeper and has a longer lasting effect on us than other activities. There are so much more. And the more you practice, the more opportunities arise for these yoga teachings to show us the way in life.