Yoga - Benefits

There are two types of benefits you get from doing yoga. Yoga helps your physical body and it also helps your mood, which is good for your mental health. Yoga is a kind of medicine because it helps prevent illness and disease.

Here are some of the physical benefits of yoga:
decreases pulse - your heart doesn’t have to work as hard
decreases respiratory rate
Blood pressure decreases - good for your heart
increases alpha brain waves
makes your heart stronger
help stomach problems
makes you more flexible
posture gets better
muscles get stronger
more energy
more endurance
helps control your weight
improves sleep
improves balance
improves dexterity and hand/eye coordination
decrease in glucose - less likely to become diabetic
decreases cholesterol - helps the heart
increases immunity - when you have a strong immune system, you’re less likely to get sick

Here are some of the ways yoga will help your mental health:
improves mood
increase self acceptance - you learn to like yourself more
Get along better with people
less anxiety
less angry
less depression

Yoga is great for teenagers and kids. School and family can be very stressful; even your friends can give you peer pressure. If you’re worried about homework or tests, yoga helps with memory and concentration. It’s also good for focusing on your schoolwork and it’s been used to improve the ability to learn. Yoga will help reduce the stress in your life. You’ll learn how to relax and be calm. The best thing is you’ll get self confidence and you’ll like yourself more.

sources (all verified February 10, 2004):

http://www.iayt.org/benefits.html
http://www.vh.org/adult/patient/internalmedicine/prose/yoga.html
http://www.abc-of-yoga.com/beginnersguide/yogabenefits.asp
http://yoga.org.nz/benefits/physiological_benefits/benefits_physiological.htm
http://yoga.org.nz/benefits/psychological_benefits/benefits_psychological.htm